Victron Owners: VEDirect Java Library

[kazetsukai]

Hey folks,

I bought a VE.Direct USB cable a while back that I'm just now getting around to programming for. I'm trying to write a generalized Java library to allow for communication with these types of devices, wondering if anyone else out there can help test. I only have one type of Victron product (Smart Solar MPPT) so there are limits to what I can do.

I'm about to start fleshing out the README, feature requests are welcome.

https://github.com/kazetsukaimiko/victron-java


The VE.Direct protocol is silly simple, I think it is also read-only. This is what you get back, raw:

PID    0xA059
FW    146
SER#    HQ1748J433S
V    24480
I    0
VPV    37340
PPV    0
CS    5
MPPT    1
OR    0x00000000
ERR    0
LOAD    ON
Relay    OFF
H19    27969
H20    3
H21    22
H22    3
H23    22
HSDS    292

Currently I have a few fields working. I map the PID to a product name with a fairly elaborate enum mapping:
https://github.com/kazetsukaimiko/vi...onProduct.java
I also have a Math library embedded around Potential (Voltage), Current (Amperage), Power (Wattage), and Energy (Wattage/Time), which I modeled after Java 8+ java.time for unit conversion. Its still rough, but will hopefully be worth expanding as time goes on:
https://github.com/kazetsukaimiko/vi...java/kaze/math


Example of what is currently working:

VEDirectMessage{product=SMARTSOLAR_MPPT_150_100_REV2,  relayState=OFF, firmwareVersion='null', offReason=null,  resettableYield=279.69 kWh, yieldToday=0.03 kWh, maxPowerToday=22 W,  yieldYesterday=0.03 kWh, maxPowerYesterday=22 W}

This was all implemented according to Victron's own PDF on the matter, "VE.Direct-Protocol-3.27.pdf" available on their website.


The packets from the VEDirect device look like this, its a read-only protocol from what I can tell. To manage the devices I'll need to implement their equivalent HEX protocols, something I may do later if there's demand for it.

[Marceps]

Thanks for sharing your work. It's too bad Victron feels that vendor-locked smartphone apps are a higher priority than releasing a library, instead leaving such work to a lone skoolie, apparently--though it's nice that they at least published documentation of the protocol.

[kazetsukai]

Originally Posted by Marceps

Thanks for sharing your work. It's too bad Victron feels that vendor-locked smartphone apps are a higher priority than releasing a library, instead leaving such work to a lone skoolie, apparently--though it's nice that they at least published documentation of the protocol.

I'm also puzzled why they do this as well. They themselves would benefit from a generalized library to do this kind of work.



I could pretty easily put a REST frontend on it if people are interested, like localhost:8080/victronDevices/ttyACM0/ to get one message from the device, etc. Or a command line interface. For now I'm going to focus on documentation a bit.

[kazetsukai]

I built some pretty nice electrical unit conversion code into victron-java with 100% code coverage.

You can do things like:

// Scale
Power thousandWatts = Power.of(new BigDecimal("1000"), PowerUnit.WATTS); // 1000 W
// Specify unit
Power oneKilowatt = thousandWatts.scale(PowerUnit.KILOWATTS); // 1 kW
// Normalize to nearest functional unit
Power autoOneKilowatt = thousandWatts.normalize(); // 1 kW

// Compare
Power hundredWattsAsKilowatts = Power.of(new BigDecimal("100"), PowerUnit.KILOWATTS); // 0.1 kW

Power hundedWatts = hundredWattsAsKilowatts.normalize(); // 100 W

if (Objects.equals(hundredWatts, hundredWalls)) { // True
}
if (thousandWatts.greaterThan(hundredWatts)) { // True
}
if (thousandWatts.subtract(hundredWatts).greaterThan(hundredWatts)) { // True
}

There are equivalents for Power (Wattage), Energy (Watts over Time), Potential (Voltage) and Current (Amperage).


The result as JSON for reading my solar charge controller: