RPi4 works, RPi3 doesn't

[shabbab]

Hi there,

I have some strange problem.

Hardware is RPi 3. Fresh install of the latest VenusOS release 3.60, with no modifications except enabling root, SSH, MQTT.
Installed latest dbus-mqtt-driver 0.9.0
No errors reported, ended with "Setup complete".
reboot

Check /var/log/dbus-mqtt-devices/current and it shows an error
2025-06-19 15:48:16.792007500 ERROR:device_manager:Unexpected error: <class 'yaml.scanner.ScannerError'>

When registering the given example device the validation fails:

2025-06-19 16:25:04.645562500 INFO:device_manager:Received device status message {'clientId': 'fe001', 'connected': 1, 'version': 'v1.0 ALPHA', 'services': {'t1': 'temperature'}}
2025-06-19 16:25:04.645572500 ERROR:device_manager:status message is invalid: {'clientId': 'fe001', 'connected': 1, 'version': 'v1.0 ALPHA', 'services': {'t1': 'temperature'}}
2025-06-19 16:25:04.645580500 WARNING:device_manager:Status message received from topic device/fe01/Status failed validation and has been rejected

Started from scratch 3 times now with consistent results.

I did the same thing a couple of days ago on a RPi 4 with no problems. Registrations worked OK and I got a few simulated batteries to work as expected, including MQTT proxy. I did not check the log on the RPi4 to crosscheck if the same error is shown as it just worked OK out of the box.
Sadly I don't have access to the RPi4 (its on my sailboat and I'm back home with only the RPi3)

Any ideas what to look for?

[freakent]

Hi, it looks like a YAML parser error to me. Have you made any changes to services.yml ?

I can't think of any reasons why it would work on a PI 4 and not a PI 3.

Edit: you could try running the setup.sh again just to make sure yaml parser is installed correctly. But in my experience, if the yaml parser is missing we get a different error.

[shabbab]

You are right, I made a change to the services
I copied over a section which I also used in the RPi4. Maybe I made some cut & paste error there.
I will have a look, thanks for the quick help!

[freakent]

Top tip: if you edit any YAML by hand, copy paste it into https://yamlchecker.com to ensure the syntax is valid.

Out of curiosity, what change did you make to services.yml? I'm always interested to know if there is something I should add to services.yml.

[shabbab]

stupid me. I had a cut & paste error.
Works great now, thanks!

[shabbab]

I added these properties to the battery section of services.ym. I guess down the road I'll have to add more like alarms, TimeToGo, individual cell voltages, ...

Info/MaxChargeCurrent:
format: "{} A"
description: "A"
Info/MaxDischargeCurrent:
format: "{} A"
description: "A"
Info/MaxChargeVoltage:
format: "{} V"
description: "V"
System/MinCellTemperature:
format: "{} °C"
description: "MinTemp"
System/MaxCellTemperature:
format: "{} °C"
description: "MaxTemp"

Again, thanks for the quick help. Its working now!

Background:
I have a sailboat with 2 LFP batteries each using JK-BMS, RPi4 running venus large (NodeRed), plus other Victron gear (MPPT, chargers, inverter).
Last season I tried MrManuel's dbus-serialbattery to read the batteries and control the solar chargers. However BT connection of that driver was never really stable and in the meantime BT support has been dropped entirely.

So for this season I got myself some esp32 to read the battery data over BT and feed it into the Venus MQTT: https://github.com/syssi/esphome-jk-bms

Using Nodered to aggregate the two physical batteries into one bigger virtual battery which is used as the venus master BMS.
Both physical and aggregated virtual battery are sent to dbus using your fine driver.

That works now. Next step is to replicate the charge control logic of dbus-serialbattery so venus can adapt solar charger production to battery charging needs.