sales pitch - victronenergy/venus GitHub Wiki

Venus is short for Victron Unix like distro with a linux kernel. The Venus OS runs on the Color Control GX and the Venus GX. It is also available for several variants of the Beaglebone- and also the RaspberryPi families and Allwinner and i.MX6 platforms.

Proven & backed

  • Venus OS runs on 50.000+ devices, with 5000+ being added every month.
  • The CCGX and the Venus GX are crucial products to Victron: we'll keep maintaining and improving Venus. When we switch to a newer hardware platform, we'll keep the Venus OS software. See the GX product customer document.
  • Venus is based on the Openembedded, a common Embedded Linux creation platform.

Robust for unattended setups

Many of our systems run in remote locations. Think first a helicopter followed by a few hours of walking. example.

Related features:

  • standard watchdog
  • run watchdog around connman (the networking manager) & dbus-daemon (the messaging bus)
  • keep watchdog enabled during a reboot: ensure a reboot in case something gets stuck during the Linux shutdown procedure

Reliable & automatic updates

  • Venus can be updated from the internet. One of four feeds can be configured on the device, ranging from untested to fully tested and released: develop, testing, candidate and release
  • Update from an sdcard or usb-stick
  • By using a dual-rootfs system, system integrity is always ensured. See more info here.

Energy Storage System control

  • Control of grid power. Whenever possible the power taken from the grid will be kept at 0W. Optionally another grid power setpoint can by supplied on the D-Bus.
  • Battery life & minimum SoC level: battery discharging will be stopped at low SoC to keep the battery healthy.
  • Demand response mode: direct charge/discharge power control.
  • PV power throttle to prevent feedback to grid. Works only with Fronius Inverters.

See ESS manual for details.

Upstream protocols

Communication protocols used to communicate to the outside world

  • HTTP / HTTPS is used to send data to the database behind the VRM Portal
  • ModbusTCP
  • MQTT For example very suitable for Energy Arbritage, combining many residential storage systems into one large one. Read more in the dbus-mqtt/README.md

Device protocols

  • VE.Bus: Inverters/Multis/Quattros
  • VE.Direct: MPPT Solar Chargers, Small inverters, BMV Battery Monitors, Peak Power Packs and more
  • VE.Can: MPPT Solar Chargers, Skylla-i, Lynx Shunt and more
  • Canbus BMS: LG Resu, Sony, Pylon, BMZ, Freedomwon and more brands of lithium batteries
  • Sunspec PV Inverters
  • NMEA0183 for USB-GPS
  • NMEA2000
  • IMT Solar Irradiance sensors
  • All popular brands of CAN-bus batteries such as BYD, Pylontech, BMZ, Freedomwon and others
  • Redflow batteries
  • ... more

More features

  • Remote Console: users love it. And speeds up adding feature too: add a feature to the gui, and it is immediately available remotely as well. No need to also add it into some website for example.
  • Generator start/stop
  • Remote Support (reverse ssh tunnel via pivot server)

Companies that adopted Venus

  • Smartflower
    • Modified the GUI to their own colors; and added windspeed meter and a few more devices.
  • Oceanvolt electric drive systems
    • Modified various things
  • Moixa
  • Greenrock

Community

  • mailing list
  • community testing and reporting issues
  • community is adding things (Raspberrypi2 image & Morningstar ModbusTCP for example)