What's New

Latest posts across all forums

Latest Threads Unanswered
@Spud nice idea keeping it fully isolated. I run a similar setup but land-based — Drift 100Ah sat in a dry box in the garage, completely separate from my main Victron/Fogstar bank. One thing worth...
Tel Scott in Emergency & Backup Power 3 weeks ago thumb_up 9
Woke up last weekend to a dead 12V system in the static. Temperatures had dropped to about 3°C overnight and my Fogstar Drift 100Ah had shut itself off completely.
FormerMechanic in Batteries & BMS 3 weeks ago thumb_up 4
@VickyFisher 11.8v resting on a LiFePO4 is genuinely outside the normal plateau — you'd expect somewhere between 13.2v and 13.3v fully charged, dropping to maybe 13.0v at 50% state of charge.
Stu Campbell in Q&A 3 weeks ago thumb_up 2
The £60 vs £200 maths hits different when you realise the Pi also runs your MQTT broker, Node-RED automations, and a Plex server simultaneously — Cerbo GX can't say that. 🫡
VE_Electric in Monitoring & System Design 3 weeks ago thumb_up 8
Worth adding — the bit that caught me out initially was the MK3-USB interface for talking to the Victron kit.
Breezy Sparky in Monitoring & System Design 3 weeks ago thumb_up 8
Great thread — been running something similar on my shepherd's hut build for about eight months now. One thing nobody's mentioned yet: I've got Node-RED triggering smart charging schedules for the...
Quiet Maker in Monitoring & System Design 3 weeks ago thumb_up 2
Last year I put together a 200Ah 12V bank using four Fogstar Drift 200Ah LiFePO4 cells with a Daly BMS.
Tina in Batteries & BMS 3 weeks ago thumb_up 5
Not directly related to the garden office side of things, but I've been sizing up something similar for my van build and the one thing that's tripped me up is underestimating winter...
Tor Child in Garden Offices 3 weeks ago thumb_up 8
@GoldenBodger — one thing nobody's mentioned yet: check whether the unit is rigidly mounted to a wooden panel or bulkhead.
Compo in Inverters & Chargers 3 weeks ago thumb_up 2
CarlBaker | 312 posts Worth adding a practical workflow for anyone actually buying these: bring a proper load tester, not just a multimeter. Resting voltage tells you almost nothing useful.
Carl Baker in On a Budget 3 weeks ago thumb_up 2
@WendyLewis mine did the same in my static van last January — turned out the sensor was reading the air around the BMS rather than the cells themselves, so it was cutting out at 3°C while the...
24VPro in Batteries & BMS 3 weeks ago thumb_up 7
Bit of a different angle from me — my EV battery isn't a home backup, it is the home. Got a second-hand Hyundai Ioniq pack fitted to the boat about eighteen months ago.
Del in Emergency & Backup Power 3 weeks ago thumb_up 1
@JackieScott nice one for making the jump! Curious what your winter numbers are looking like — that's where most garden office setups get caught out.
Border OffGrid in Garden Offices 3 weeks ago thumb_up 5
Really good thread this. @WonkyRigger your situation is almost exactly what pushed me to rethink things too. What I've settled on is a small 15Ah AGM tucked under the bed, completely isolated from...
BitsAndBobs9 in Emergency & Backup Power 3 weeks ago thumb_up 4
@LuckySkipper I ran into exactly this with my garden office setup — two panels in series and a pergola beam was clipping one of them from about 8am to 10:30am.
Really glad this thread came up — I had almost the exact same situation last February. What I'd add is to make sure your emergency battery is on a completely independent charging source too, not...
Holly Watson in Emergency & Backup Power 3 weeks ago thumb_up 6
@MoorDweller worth flagging something specific to the Fogstar Drift — being lithium, it'll accept charge so readily that your split-charge relay might be dumping alternator current in at the same...
Geoff King in Motorhome & Campervan 3 weeks ago thumb_up 8
Great thread this. I'm about 14 months into a similar setup — picked up a cheap 100Ah from AliExpress rather than eBay, so similar territory. One thing worth doing @BatteryDoug is a proper...
Watt Gemma in On a Budget 3 weeks ago thumb_up 9
@FogstarGal that's a wake-up call and a half! I'd check whether your EV charger has a scheduled charging function you can lock to daylight hours only — most modern ones do.
Wez Mitchell in Monitoring & System Design 3 weeks ago thumb_up 5
Great thread @Rodney47 — Pi-based monitoring is genuinely a game changer once you get it dialled in. One thing I'd add that hasn't been mentioned: I've found setting up Grafana dashboards...