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Introduction

Venus OS is the software on our GX Product family.

From a more technical perspective, Venus OS is the Victron Energy Unix open source software distribution with a linux kernel. Read the sales pitch for its features. Go to the main readme for building.

Venus OS is also available as a (free) download and available to install on micro PCs such as:

• RaspberryPis (how to install)
• Beaglebone Black and Beaglebone Enhanced (howto install - unmaintained!)

Besides there and on this wiki, there is more general Victron information for developers on the Open source page on Victron Live.

For whom is this information?

The information here is intended for software developers. Normal Victron end-users, installers, dealers or distributors do not need this information. Its not part of the normal installation and user documentation.

Some examples to explain for whom this information is:

• End-users who want to run Venus OS on a RaspberryPi, not covered by warranty or support.
• End-users with a software engineering or IT background that want to make their Victron installation do something extra or special.
• People wanting to add a driver, for example for a particular brand of Generator controller for which we not already have a communication driver.
• Companies making hardware, using Victron equipment in their product.

Community

For support, e.g., how to install on a RaspberryPi, or how to use a GPS or this or that other thing, please use the Modifications section on Victron Community.

Open source / want to contribute?

Some parts of Venus OS are open source, in that case available on our GitHub account. Some parts are not.

Before starting to write code, we recommend to outline what you want to do and why on a post on community, see above link.

Generic info

• commandline - operational
• commandline - development
• root access
• howto add a driver to Venus
• howto add a new machine to venus
• howto install and use the sdk
• release cycle
• watchdog
• data partition
• machines - info on CPU modules in the various GX devices

D-Bus

• dbus-api - the interface specification
• dbus - description of data available on the Venus OS D-Bus

Machines

Venus can be built for multiple different hardware. The different machines conf files are in meta-victronenergy/meta-bsp/conf/machine. More info in machines.

Besides building a full images for the machines above, we also build some Debian and Raspbian packages out of the recipes in Venus. See install-venus-packages-on-Debian.

Open Embedded version (Rocko), branches and repos

See here: repos and their branches

Color Control GX

• ccgx booting and buttons
• ccgx serial console
• ccgx boot log
• mounting an ubi image
• Introduction to the CCGX Hardware
• ccgx customization

Venus GX (BeagleBone)

• project bbb page <- includes project status
• bbb hardware spec
• bbb user instructions
• details of the different peripherals:
  • bbb adc
  • bbb gpio
  • bbb canbus
• bbb boot process overview
• bbb boot log
• and many more pages, see pages on the right