Victron PRO Level: The Node-RED System That Protects Batteries and Sends You Alarms
September 11, 2025 · 20 min · 2K views
What this video covers
A Node-RED flow running on a Victron Cerbo GX (or Raspberry Pi with Venus OS) manages lithium battery protection during winter storage aboard boats or campervans, expanding on a previous basic flow with four new capabilities.▶ 1:17 The system now controls both solar charge controllers and a Victron Multiplus (or any Victron charger connected via VE.Bus) — not solar alone — switching between them based on a 10-watt solar-production threshold to distinguish day from night or heavy overcast.▶ 5:49 A second function monitors the gap between state-of-charge percentage and actual battery voltage: if voltage drops below 13 V while the SOC reads 50–60%, the flow triggers a forced full charge to 100% to recalibrate the battery monitor and protect LiFePO4 cells.▶ 8:09 A third function sends an automated email alert when that forced-charge condition fires, reporting live voltage and SOC.▶ 9:42 Email delivery uses smtp2go, a free SMTP relay service, configured inside the node-red-node-email plugin (version 3.1.0); Gmail and Google-domain addresses are incompatible with smtp2go's sender verification.▶ 13:02 Downloadable flow files for both the winter-management logic and the email-notification logic are linked in the description separately, so users can install one or both.▶ 19:31
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