Victron Energy VEDirect Bluetooth

@KinDR I would like to implement your project “ve.direct” to MQTT with ESP8266 (nodemcu v1) to integrate my BlueSolar Victron controler MPPT 100/30 into HA.

Do I understand correctly that the following steps are needed:

  1. Get/prepare physical cable connection between controller and ESP8266 (that is easy for me)
  2. Upload your code and confih.h to ESP8266 (Which tool do you recommend ? Is Arduino IDE OK ?). Here little “How to” would be appreciated
  3. Setup sensors in HA (this looks easy)

Assuming all is OK it should work.

Any other hint ? Thank you !

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Hi all, victron mppt custom componnets for esphome its now available on my GitHub

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Yes it’s done
check my GitHub

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Now i testing SmartShunt

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Great work @KinDR

Do you have a schematic available.

I have a ve direct usb cable that I’m chopping up when I get round to doing this. Is it just a case of tx to rx and vice versa, or does it need a little more?

Cheers

Hi im use only tx and gnd pin from ve.direct port

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Nice one. Thank you

Note: if you use power from Battery pack (with stepdown for wemos) connect only TX pin NO gnd :wink: from ve.direct port

Hello KinDR

What are the other two black cables from ve.direct?
Are they needed or are they involved in something else?

Thanks a lot

I think they are +5v and ground. it should be adequate enough to power a ESP chip. I haven’t tried it but @KinDR may have done.

Hi ,

  • black cables NC (RX and +3.3/+5V)
  • ve.direct port has current limit (15-20mA) it’s small for powering esp !!
  • ve.direct to esp has connected only 2 pins (TX and GND other pin it’s not connected !)
  • if you use power from Battery pack for powering esp (with stepdown for wemos) connect only TX pin NO gnd !! from ve.direct port
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Thanks a lot :slight_smile:

@ KinDR Thank you for share you work.
I installed and work very great. The good part is that the bloetooth and wi-fi work in paralel :smile: for smartshunt in my case.

I thank you​:wink::relaxed:

Hi,

Have you attempted this work on ESP32? I am guessing it should work.
Also, since ESP32 has more HW UART, does it mean we can attach multiple Victron devices (e.g. Smart shunt and MPPT) on UART to ESP32?

hi, esp8266 also has more UART, I haven’t tried it. I use one wemos for each device, some items have the same name in the ve.direct protocol, so I can’t even recommend this

I see, I will give it a try first only with 1 Mppt on ESP32 and update here

Tested with platform: ESP32 and board esp32-poe. Works simply good with MPPT/Pheonix inverter.

Wich Connector do you use at the VE.Direct port ?

That is so awesome! Thanks much for your work on that! I hope ESPHome will integrate your solution!