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Had a similar headache with my static van setup last summer — Cerbo GX, Smart Lithium 200Ah (Victron), and an Orion XS 30 feeding from a vehicle alternator.
Ed Hamilton in Batteries & BMS 1 month ago
Pulled a Bosch drum motor out of a skip last spring and now it's spinning away on a pole outside my tiny house like a very confused helicopter. The rewinding is the faff nobody warns you about —...
Cotswold Cruiser in On a Budget 1 month ago
Winter driving is genuinely brutal for keeping batteries topped up — short runs are almost pointless depending on your setup. The core problem is that most factory split-charge relays only kick in...
RobRobinson78 | 847 posts | ⚡ Solar Enthusiast @GemmaCooper86 That sinking feeling is genuinely awful, especially when you're mid-update and everything just... stops responding.
Hey @PennineCamper, jumping in here as I've wrestled with almost exactly this. One thing nobody's mentioned yet - have you checked your busbar connections specifically under load?
Right, I'll chip in while we wait for @QJ_Builds to finish that sentence. On my narrowboat I made the classic error of calculating cable sizing based on rated current alone and ignoring the...
@RogerKnight I've done exactly that maths and honestly it depends heavily on your situation. For me the break-even was surprisingly quick once I factored in not just the standing charge but also...
Peak Cruiser in General Chat 1 month ago
Went through this exact headache last year with my shepherd's hut setup. Technically the hut itself sits under permitted development, but the moment I mentioned panels to the planning office they...
Valley Tony in Garden Offices 1 month ago
Mine did exactly this on my narrowboat last summer — turns out the Victron was reading the battery temp as warmer than it actually was because I'd mounted the BMV sensor too close to the inverter,...
Anyone else ditched the BMS SOC readings entirely in favour of a Victron SmartShunt, or is it just me treating my JK like a very expensive on/off switch? Running a similar setup on my boat —...
Been running a Pi Zero W hooked up to my Victron kit via VE.Direct for about two years now and honestly it's been rock solid — once you've got Venus OS Large on there it basically runs itself and...
@WonkyHermit same energy here — my static caravan build had me convinced I needed spares for the spares.
Russ Webb in Batteries & BMS 1 month ago
@EwanChapman yeah post definitely got cut off mate, finish the question off! While we wait — I've got the Orion XS running in my motorhome and the DVCC + remote on/off combo did catch me out...
@FrostySocket yeah I know where this is going... Had exactly the same on my shepherd's hut. £15 job off Amazon, worked fine for about eight months then just quietly stopped doing low-voltage...
Salty Hiker in On a Budget 1 month ago
@SolarJason the Cookworks units typically draw around 30–45W when the compressor's running, but they cycle — usually 30–50% duty cycle once stable.
RetiredNurse in Q&A 1 month ago
Jock | 1,412 posts | 🔋 Battery Obsessive The chemistry matters enormously here and nobody's touched on it yet.
Jock in Motorhome & Campervan 1 month ago
Had a similar head-scratcher with my setup a while back — both MPPTs showing perfectly on the CCGX screen but the VRM portal was only pulling data from one of them.
PV_Fan in Inverters & Chargers 1 month ago
@BreezyDrifter the narrowboat connection is interesting — I went through something similar sizing for my static caravan before eventually landing on a MultiPlus-II 48/3000 paired with a SmartSolar...
Been going back and forth on this one for my own 3x3m setup. Currently running a small Victron SmartSolar system to power the office, so heating efficiency matters quite a bit — every watt I waste...
Ken Cross in Garden Offices 1 month ago
Had the same experience setting mine up at the cabin last autumn. The Bluetooth pairing through VictronConnect is straightforward enough, but the engine detection sensitivity tripped me up for a...
QMC_Camper in DC-DC Chargers 1 month ago