dbus-gensetgeneric

Integrate any genset into Victron Energies Venus OS

Purpose

With the scripts in this repo it should be easily possible to install, uninstall, restart a service that sets up the DBUS structure for any genset in VenusOS and GX devices from Victron. The idea is to fill this structure later on via MQTT. The genset then shows up in Venus OS and VRM. Forked from dbus-goecharger by vikt0rm.

How it works

Why?

I have a generator with a homemade controller and I want to supply the status of the generator to VRM.

Details / Process

What is the script doing:

• Running as a service
• connecting to DBus of the Venus OS com.victronenergy.genset.generic_{DeviceInstanceID_from_config}
• Paths are added to the DBus with default value 0 - including some settings like name, etc
• After that a "loop" is started which can handle updated values by callback - nothing in there yet
• After successful DBus connection all data points need to be updated via MQTT. The coding of the data points is listed in CCGX-Modbus-TCP-register-list.xlsx in the field list under com.victronenergy.genset
• The DBUS data point /Start can be used for generator start/ stop. Alternatively you can select "connected genset helper relay" in the settings for Relay 1 and use the built in Relay for start/ stop

Install & Configuration

Get the code

Just grap a copy of the main branch and copy them to a folder under /data/ e.g. /data/dbus-gensetgeneric. After that call the install.sh script.

The following script should do everything for you:

wget https://github.com/kaischmitz/dbus-gensetgeneric/archive/refs/heads/main.zip
unzip main.zip "dbus-gensetgeneric-main/*" -d /data
mv /data/dbus-gensetgeneric-main /data/dbus-gensetgeneric
chmod a+x /data/dbus-gensetgeneric/install.sh
/data/dbus-gensetgeneric/install.sh
rm main.zip

⚠️ Check configuration after that - because service is already installed an running and with wrong connection data (host) you will spam the log-file

Change config.ini

Within the project there is a file /data/dbus-gensetgeneric/config.ini - just change the values - most important is the deviceinstance under "DEFAULT". More details below:

Section	Config vlaue	Explanation
DEFAULT	SignOfLifeLog	Time in minutes how often a status is added to the log-file current.log with log-level INFO
DEFAULT	Deviceinstance	Unique ID identifying the genset in Venus OS
DEFAULT	CustomName	Custom name of the genset
DEFAULT	ProductName	Product name of the genset

Usefull links

• https://github.com/victronenergy/dbus_modbustcp/blob/master/CCGX-Modbus-TCP-register-list.xlsx
• https://github.com/victronenergy/venus/wiki/dbus#generator-data