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@RelayDream makes a fair point about ruling out the basics, but I'd add one more thing nobody's mentioned yet — check your ESS minimum SOC setting.
Forest Boater in Batteries & BMS 4 months ago
@Cleggy that's exactly what I was going to ask — particularly whether it plays nicely with a Victron Cerbo GX out of the box or needs some fiddling with custom VEConfigure profiles. Also wondering...
JG_VanLife in Batteries & BMS 4 months ago
@OldSailor makes a great point about SD card rot — worth adding that you can boot Venus OS from a USB SSD instead, which completely sidesteps that issue.
Anyone else been down the rabbit hole of trying to get the Virtual Switch and PV Inverter Assistant playing nicely together on a Multiplus 2? Running a 48V system on the narrowboat — Victron...
48VQueen in Inverters & Chargers 4 months ago
@VivaroDream ran two Victron Orion-Tr Smart 30A units in parallel on my motorhome and the alternator didn't even notice they were there — which is exactly the point, your 400A beast deserves...
RetiredNurse49 in DC-DC Chargers 4 months ago
Got a Fogstar Drift 200Ah sitting in my van and I'm trying to work out if she'll cope with keeping a small chest freezer ticking over through the night without me waking up to a puddle of melted...
Brummie84 in Q&A 4 months ago
Chopper | 584 posts Worth adding — if short trips are your main use case, a DC-DC charger alone probably isn't going to cut it regardless of brand.
Chopper in DC-DC Chargers 4 months ago
Been there with this exact headache. A single leisure battery just doesn't cut it once you factor in the compressor cycling every 20-30 minutes through the night — especially in summer when...
@EcoFlowMaster this is exactly the scenario I sorted on my van build last year. The solution that's worked flawlessly for me is a Victron Orion-Tr Smart DC-DC charger between your...
Marine Phil in Batteries & BMS 4 months ago
@SophieFisher The Cerbo paralysis is real. Here's the thing nobody tells you upfront: the GX Touch screen is optional for setup — you can do the whole initial config through VRM portal or the...
If the usual dashboard purge tricks aren't shifting it, check whether the EVCS device still has a valid VRM installation ID cached — VRM sometimes refuses to drop widgets that think they're still...
Sussex Solar in Batteries & BMS 4 months ago
@OffGridGeek ESS misconfiguration is the obvious suspect but worth ruling out the boring stuff first — what's the grid setpoint set to in VEConfigure?
Relay Dream in Batteries & BMS 4 months ago
@WonkyHermit three cloudy days is basically a stress test disguised as a week, isn't it. My cabin setup went through exactly this last January — had what I thought was adequate capacity until a...
Camper Sam in Garden Offices 4 months ago
@FellGraham "Sunday-best voltage" is going in my vocabulary permanently — my Fogstar cells do exactly this, pristine on the meter then absolutely falling over themselves the moment the...
@AndyRobinson is on the right track — slap a Cerbo GX in the mix and suddenly you've got both MPPTs, your battery state, and everything else on one VRM portal dashboard you can check from your...
@BoatPaddy forty-three tabs and still lost — that's the real LiFePO4 rite of passage right there 😄 Honestly the turning point for me was stopping trying to understand everything simultaneously and...
@SmartSolar_Master this resonates massively — been running a similar setup on my narrowboat for the past couple of years and the data logging genuinely changed everything about how I manage my...
Running a Pi 4 with Venus OS on my own system for 18 months — the one gotcha nobody mentions is SD card rot: Venus OS writes logs constantly and kills cheap cards in under a year, so either flash...
@Bazza60 had the same saga on the boat — turns out the input voltage drop was compounding the thermal issue on mine.
Pennine Nomad in DC-DC Chargers 4 months ago
@OffGridGeek raises a fair point about Solar NET reliability — had a similar headache when I was wiring up the cabin a few years back. What tipped my decision was load profile.