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@WheresMeWires87 @CoastalCamper solid points both of you. Worth adding that on a boat or van this is fairly straightforward, but if you're doing a static off-grid install at a property, it's still...
Relay Life in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago
@OldSailor75 worth checking your SmartShunt's charged voltage threshold and tail current settings in VictronConnect.
Gaz Price in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago
Really useful thread this — I've been wondering the same thing for my cabin backup setup. One thing I've been curious about: does the off reason field in the VE.Direct protocol give any useful...
@ExPostie86 check your VRM site location settings — had this exact thing in my shepherd's hut setup and it turned out the GPS coordinates had somehow reset to 0,0 (middle of the Atlantic 😂).
Lefty in Inverters & Chargers 2 months ago
@BatteryPaddy the SmartShunt is only as good as its calibration — if your charged voltage threshold or tail current aren't set correctly, it'll never properly synchronise and the drift compounds...
ExPostie in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago
Been doing this since Pi 3B days — the real gem nobody mentions is pairing Venus OS Large with Node-RED and pushing data to InfluxDB + Grafana locally, no cloud dependency whatsoever. @CamperShaun...
@OldSailor75 the root cause is almost certainly a synchronisation drift issue. The SmartShunt calculates SOC via coulomb counting from its last "100% full" sync point — if it hasn't seen...
Good shout from @ShaunHamilton on the BMS comms side — that caught me out when I upgraded my motorhome setup to 48V last spring. One thing nobody's mentioned yet: reconfigure your charge profile...
WattAMess25 in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago
@MelKing83 curious about this too — does the Flexboss21 handle parallel stacking natively or does it need additional comms hardware like Victron does with the VE.Bus?
Great thread, this. I had the same headache with my van setup a few weeks back. What finally cracked it for me was going into my phone's app settings and clearing the Bluetooth cache completely,...
@ExJoiner the integration headache with EG4 controllers is the comms protocol — they typically use a proprietary RS485 implementation rather than proper VE.Direct or VE.Can, which means Victron's...
My Fogstar's been happily slurping solar for two years now — turns out lithium doesn't care where the electrons come from, just that they keep coming.
Wayne Knight in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago
@MarineGeoff fair point, though I did once trust a "Grade A" listing on there and received cells that had clearly been on a brief holiday inside a skip first — my Victron BMV told tales...
Thistle Vicky in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago
@CopperWelder mate, I nearly made the exact same mistake with my shepherd's hut — EcoFlow's lovely until you want to actually expand it and realise you're trapped in their ecosystem like a fly in...
Boat Paddy in General Chat 2 months ago
@CamperCarl SD cards in Pis are basically the off-grid equivalent of a cheap PWM controller — works until it spectacularly doesn't, usually at the worst possible moment.
@VoltMax the Fogstar Drifts report temperature via their BMS over their respective comms, but the trick is getting it all aggregated cleanly.
Simon Kelly in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago
@OldSailor75 classic headache this one. Short answer: trust the SmartShunt for day-to-day SOC, but respect the BMS for protection limits. The Fogstar BMS is almost certainly reporting...
MrBodge65 in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago
@BatteryPaddy had almost identical situation in my van conversion with a Fogstar and SmartShunt combo. Short answer: trust the BMS for lithium, it's measuring cell voltages directly.
Wonky Mender in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago
Worth adding — the absorption time is what catches people out more than the voltage. Even in LiFePO₄ mode, if your battery isn't quite full when absorption kicks in, the charger can sit there...
@Moorey13 is right about the error codes, but also check whether the transfer switch relay has stuck — classic symptom after an overload event on the Multiplus-II.