dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50 - Emulates a physical Grid/Genset/AC Load Meter from Shelly PRO EM50 CT sensors via MQTT data

This fork of Mr Manuel's repo (all credits to him for making this feasible!) essentially just remaps the Shelly out of the box MQTT payloads to the relevant Venus OS DBus data

Disclaimer

I wrote this script for myself. I'm not responsible, if you damage something using my script.

Purpose

The script emulates a physical Grid/Genset/AC Load Meter in Venus OS. It gets the Shelly Pro EM50 MQTT data from a subscribed topic and publishes the information on the dbus as the service com.victronenergy.grid.mqtt_grid-shelly-EM50, com.victronenergy.genset.mqtt_genset or com.victronenergy.acload.mqtt_acload with the VRM instance 31.

Config

Copy or rename the config.sample.ini to config.ini in the dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50 folder and change it as you need it.

JSON structure

Minimum required with just one CT clamp (L1)

The Shelly sends the required data under two distinct topics :

YourShellyID/status/em1data:0

{
    "id":0,
    "total_act_energy":123.45,
    "total_act_ret_energy":12345.67
}

YourShellyID/status/em1:0

{
    "id":0,
    "current":1.234,
    "voltage":123.4,
    "act_power":123.4,
    "aprt_power":123.0,
    "pf":0.12,
    "freq":12.3,
    "calibration":"factory"
}

Currently not implemented : import of the second CT clamp data (would be easy to do, but I have currently no use case for second clamp)

Install

1. Login to your Venus OS device via SSH. See Venus OS:Root Access for more details.

2. Execute this commands to download and extract the files:

   # change to temp folder
   cd /tmp
   
   # download driver
   wget -O /tmp/venus-os_dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50.zip https://github.com/Zaphod-dev/venus-os_dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50/archive/refs/heads/master.zip
   
   # If updating: cleanup old folder
   rm -rf /tmp/venus-os_dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50-master
   
   # unzip folder
   unzip venus-os_dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50.zip
   
   # If updating: backup existing config file
   mv /data/etc/dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50/config.ini /data/etc/dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50_config.ini
   
   # If updating: cleanup existing driver
   rm -rf /data/etc/dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50
   
   # copy files
   cp -R /tmp/venus-os_dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50-master/dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50/ /data/etc/
   
   # If updating: restore existing config file
   mv /data/etc/dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50_config.ini /data/etc/dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50/config.ini

3. Copy the sample config file, if you are installing the driver for the first time and edit it to your needs.

   # copy default config file
   cp /data/etc/dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50/config.sample.ini /data/etc/dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50/config.ini
   
   # edit the config file with nano
   nano /data/etc/dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50/config.ini

4. Run bash /data/etc/dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50/install.sh to install the driver as service.

   The daemon-tools should start this service automatically within seconds.

Uninstall

Run /data/etc/dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50/uninstall.sh

Restart

Run /data/etc/dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50/restart.sh

Debugging

The logs can be checked with tail -n 100 -F /data/log/dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50/current | tai64nlocal

The service status can be checked with svstat svstat /service/dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50

This will output somethink like /service/dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50: up (pid 5845) 185 seconds

If the seconds are under 5 then the service crashes and gets restarted all the time. If you do not see anything in the logs you can increase the log level in /data/etc/dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50/dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50.py by changing level=logging.WARNING to level=logging.INFO or level=logging.DEBUG

If the script stops with the message dbus.exceptions.NameExistsException: Bus name already exists: com.victronenergy.grid.mqtt_grid-shelly-EM50" it means that the service is still running or another service is using that bus name.

Multiple instances

It's possible to have multiple instances, but it's not automated. Follow these steps to achieve this:

1. Save the new name to a variable driverclone=dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50-2

2. Copy current folder cp -r /data/etc/dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50/ /data/etc/$driverclone/

3. Rename the main script mv /data/etc/$driverclone/dbus-mqtt-grid.py /data/etc/$driverclone/$driverclone.py

4. Fix the script references for service and log

   sed -i 's:dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50:'$driverclone':g' /data/etc/$driverclone/service/run
   sed -i 's:dbus-mqtt-grid-shelly-EM50:'$driverclone':g' /data/etc/$driverclone/service/log/run
   

5. Change the device_name, increase the device_instance and update the topic in the config.ini

Now you can install and run the cloned driver. Should you need another instance just increase the number in step 1 and repeat all steps.

Compatibility

It was tested on Venus OS v3.31 on the following devices:

• RaspberryPi 2b
• MultiPlus II

Screenshots

Power and/or L1