I’m going to try use this, but how do I set it up ?
It asks for Name. Address and Advertisement Key. I have no idea what to enter 
Hey @zenmartian, not sure if you found your answer or not. I found your post looking for the same thing. In the issues there was a request for setup docs, they referenced a Reddit post that had recently been deleted but there was enough info for me to go off from the github issue comment: Instructions · Issue #89 · keshavdv/victron-hacs · GitHub
I think the important part is getting an ESPHome Bluetooth proxy setup and close (very close for a shunt) to the equipment. Once that occurs and the integration is installed mine self discovered the first two properties. I say very close because I’m pretty sure my phone has a stronger bluetooth range for connecting to these and I need to be within a few feet for the shunt and maybe 10-15 feet for a charge controller. I have my ESP32 with a bluetooth proxy hanging a few feet from both of my devices
Name: SmartShunt BL (some identifier)
Address: the Bluetooth mac address of the device
Advertisement Key: this is looking for the encryption key, it was pretty easy for me to get mine from the android app (below)
Open the device from the android app, enter the Product info menu (I forget how I did this, but I think it was the three dot vertical ellipses in the upper right corner to show a menu with product info)
I already had Bluetooth enabled with a pin code and such with Instant readout via Bluetooth enabled on the shunt and my charge controller
At the bottom there is a field called “Encryption data” with a SHOW button, hit show and the mac address and encryption key are there for the copying.
1 Like
I’ve only been running this integration for a day but I’m already quite impressed. I’m coming from a Renogy and had to run this project on a raspberry pi for integration, which took quite a bit of work and I was never impressed with the charge controller anyways. For the Victron shunt I was running another pi that was much closer and running on my battery, also python based and demanded an active bluetooth connection.
Some of the things I like about this victron setup:
- It uses BLE so it doesn’t tie up the Bluetooth connection so the app can still be used
- If you already have a bluetooth proxy set up and access to your encryption keys, it’s extremely easy and simple to use.
- With the proxy, there is less to go wrong on the remote end, e.g. with python/rpi renogy and victron integrations, I had to write watchdog services that would look for connection failures and restart the pi (rather than mucking with trying to restart bluetooth) to get it back going. This integration is a passive BLE integration so if it can hear broadcasts it sends them over the proxy.
hi, anyone know if that HACS integration works with the 300 amp version of the Victron SmartShunt? thanks