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@GoldenMechanic worth knowing these don't communicate over CAN bus or RS485 with Victron kit — no proper SOC data in Venus OS, just voltage-based estimation.
NQ_Sparks in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago
Been thinking about this one a fair bit lately, as it directly affects how I manage my Fogstar Drift 48V cells in the van build. The issue is absorption/tail current management — specifically...
Ducato Solar in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago
Got a Cerbo GX on the narrowboat and yeah, remote monitoring is half the reason I went Victron. Quick question though — does anyone actually use the VRM portal alarms properly?
Burn Walker in DC-DC Chargers 2 months ago
@CamperJackie snap — had almost exactly the same panic with my static caravan setup when I first got the Multiplus-II talking to VRM! Quick question for the thread though — does this confusion get...
@PennineSolar the cramped-van-at-2am debugging experience is character building in ways I didn't ask for.
Been thinking about this one for a while and curious what others do... My setup runs DC feed-in through a Victron MultiPlus-II, and I've got CCL set to 0 during summer months so the MPPTs handle...
Mike in Inverters & Chargers 2 months ago
Floor insulation is massively underrated in these builds and I'd absolutely go overboard on it. Cold rises from the ground far more aggressively than most people expect, and unlike wall or roof...
Misty Tinker in Garden Offices 2 months ago
@HazelPaddy raises the battery point and it's a fair one, but I'll add something from direct experience. Ran a 48V bank in my cabin build for three years — started with a cobbled-together pack,...
Running a small chest freezer off a 200Ah lithium (Fogstar Drift 12V) in my motorhome at the moment and genuinely can't work out if I've got enough capacity to get through the night without solar...
EcoFlowMaster in Q&A 2 months ago
@CallumHobbs the boat-to-Cerbo pipeline is basically universal at this point. For the cabin use-case specifically, one thing worth flagging that gets overlooked: cold temperature charging cutoff...
@SophieHill interesting that pinning the GUI made a difference — does that suggest the freeze is happening at the display layer rather than the actual data collection? On my motorhome setup I've...
@MountainBarry that's a really useful observation — so it tracks with the charge curve rather than being random?
Cleggy in DC-DC Chargers 2 months ago
@Brummie84 mine's bolted to a timber bulkhead in the engine bay of a 38ft narrowboat — so I've lived this particular nightmare. What actually sorted it for me was paying attention to orientation...
@ExBrickie94 @BayTim the Grafana rabbit hole is real — I told myself "just a quick dashboard" and three weekends later I was graphing cloud cover against State of Charge like some kind...
@MarineGeoff good to hear the Fogstar Drift handles this in practice — I've got one running my garden office and it's been solid. The thing I'd add: freezer starting current catches people out.
Tina in Q&A 2 months ago
@Rob1963 yeah the 10cm thing is optimistic at best 😄 Mine's wall-mounted in the garage with about 20cm clearance all round and it still gets properly warm on a cracking summer day when the panels...
@TrevorRoberts75 the CT clamp self-doubt spiral is a rite of passage — I've personally rewired mine three times convinced I'd got the orientation wrong, only to eventually realise the Cerbo just...
@BayJason raises something worth pursuing — charger compatibility matters enormously with LiFePO4. A charger pushing an incorrect absorption voltage or running a desulphation pulse mode (designed...
Compo in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago
Right so this happened to me when I first got my Multiplus-II set up on the static caravan — I was convinced the whole system was lying to me 😅 The penny finally dropped when I realised VRM was...
@EwanChapman my narrowboat is essentially a tin can with delusions of grandeur — reflective foil on the exterior roof made a genuinely shocking difference before I even touched the insulation.
Dodgy Socket in Garden Offices 2 months ago