NMEA2000/SAE J1939 protocols and sensors/displays

Has anyone gone deep on this subject yet? Happened to find out there's a marine version of the Xantrex inverter charger I'm looking at, so started down this rabbit hole. Seems like it's a proper CAN protocol, and should allow nearly endless support for all different types of sensors/data, as long as you have the CAN ID (and compatible sensors).

I'd be using this in a RV/van, but have several electronic components I would ideally like to read from, with some others as well (air pressure and moisture in my compressor circuit), potentially fresh/grey water levels, etc.

It looks like the Xantrex app itself sucks (rated 1.8 stars), but we should be able to use any other monitoring device that can interface w/ the network. Good app developers are hard to come by it seems, and I don't know if I'm savvy enough to full DIY a monitoring setup with a RPi yet. Victron seems to have a NMEA2000 interface device from their VE.Can described here:



Sorry, meant to post this in advanced, if a moderator could move, that would be great!

Apologies in advance for the long reply that may not be helpful to you. I thought your post was interesting since its a nice departure from the usual questions about voltage drop in a wire or something equally as engaging.
Xantrex Brand is owned by Schneider electric and I believe uses the same Xanbus protocol as Schneider Solar products. While Xanbus is a CAN based system it seems to be proprietary and I was unable to find any published data that would allow direct communication via the Xanbus network. Instead Schneider has chosen to offer a ComBox product (now called a Gateway) that aggregates the Xanbus network data and presents it via Ethernet or ModBus RS-485. As such Schneider does publish ModBus Maps for their solar inverters, charge controllers, battery monitor etc. Conveniently, Schneider also owns Modicon Brand PLC's and states that their equipment can be monitored and controlled via a PLC.
I'm using an RPi with a PiCAN Duo to capture data from a ZEVA BMS. Hired a programmer who set up Websocket D on the RPi so I can remote desktop into the RPi and view the BMS data via Ethernet on an HTML page.
I've attempted to capture the Xanbus data from my ComBox with the RPi CAN hat but with limited success. Sometimes the data streams and then stops or doesn't stream at all. Was hoping I could capture the SoC data from the BMS and send it through the Xanbus to the Combox so it would display as a value rather than N/A on the Webpage that is served up. Unfortunately I have no "hacking" skills. For me it makes more sense to try using the RS-485 interface since that seems to be the method Schneider recommends.

Ah interesting. I did not know about Xanbus. Since there's a "NMEA2000 add-on card" for the Xantrex Marine line, maybe you can do something similar w/ their other units. That said, while I am not attached to NMEA2000, it does look like there are some off the shelf display units that you could just plug in, it might make an interesting plug-and-play affair that is brand agnostic.

i.e.

https://navstore.com/electronics/nmea-devices/nmea-2000-en-2/displays-en/

they have a published modbus map for the xw+ dont they, im looking at this for a client, but i wanted to make a grafana page to overview a large off grid setup but haven't been able to figure out the hardware end.

Xantrek says this

“
nbus is a proprietary CAN based protocol developed by Xantrex. The protocol is based on J1939 with inverter specific PGNs which are unique to Xantrex products. These PGNs are only available to qualified Xantrex customers.

Xanbus is a Schneider Electric SA trademark.

Xanbus System Installation Guide

“

Why not email them and ask ?

Nmea 2000 can easily be hacked using a gateway

That’s a freedom Xc pro marine version that’s nmea2000 compatible so it could in theory display info on any compatible display