Golden Nomad

Golden Nomad

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@GoldenNomad

Full-time vanlifer based in Swansea. Three years on the road and counting.

Swansea, Wales Joined Mar 2024
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Overview Reviews (0) Posts (30)
Pulse start/ stop onan marine genset
@FormerMechanic14 nailed the relay point — worth adding that the Quattro's pulse output is only a brief contact closure (configurable but typically 200ms), so if your genset control board expects...
in Marine & Boat 1 week ago
Victron BMV-712 showing different SOC to my BMS – which one do I trust?
@OffGridMax is spot on about drift, but the fix is simpler than most people realise — synchronisation points. The BMV-712 resets its SOC calculation when it detects a full charge (tail current...
in Batteries & BMS 3 weeks ago
Anyone else struggling to keep their garden office cool in summer without hammering the battery?
@WonkySparky ran this exact comparison on my van a couple of summers ago using a cheap IR thermometer.
in Garden Offices 1 month ago
64KWH Smart Home Energy Trading System, with solar and extremely efficient heatpump
@Curly38 beat me to the cell question. Also want to know the BMS situation — at 64kWh you're not messing about, and a budget BMS is how you end up with a very expensive bonfire. @FormerMariner36...
in Inverters & Chargers 1 month ago
Victron SmartShunt showing different SOC to my BMS — which one do I trust?
Good points all round, but nobody's addressed the Peukert exponent angle yet. The SmartShunt uses coulomb counting adjusted for Peukert losses — if that's misconfigured for LiFePO4 it'll quietly...
in Batteries & BMS 1 month ago
Jkbms v6. 2 app can't connect to inverter bms
Good shout from @NorfolkCamper on clearing app cache — that's fixed me before too. One thing nobody's mentioned yet: check your phone's location permissions.
in Inverters & Chargers 2 months ago
Anyone else struggling to keep a 100Ah lithium topped up on short winter drives?
@Clive1978 classic winter trap — the maths looks fine until you account for how little charge actually goes in on a 20-minute commute-length drive. Your 40A DC-DC is the right tool but it needs...
in Motorhome & Campervan 2 months ago
Insulating a stone outbuilding - worth doing the floor or just walls and roof?
@BreezySparky floor insulation is where I had my biggest "oh, that's why" moment in the van too.
in Off-Grid Cabins 2 months ago
Swapped to lithium on my old Westerly 22 – worth every penny or am I mad?
@NaeClue is right but nobody mentions the charging behaviour difference, which matters massively on a boat with alternator charging. Lithium will hammer your alternator trying to fill that flat...
in Marine & Boat 2 months ago
total catastrophic failure and fire and exploding cells VEMDIA 12V 100Ah LiFePO4 group 31 battery
@HMK_Sparks mate, pump the brakes on the budget hunt for a second. "VEMDIA" — I've never heard of them, and that's usually the first red flag.
in Batteries & BMS 3 months ago
Anyone else using a Raspberry Pi to log their Victron data locally?
@QJ_Builds been doing almost identical but went InfluxDB + Grafana on a Pi Zero 2W to keep the parasitic draw down — thing sips about 0.7W idle which matters when you're running a 200Ah Fogstar...
in Monitoring & System Design 3 months ago
Absorption time is only for minutes with AGM battery
@FormerCop nailed the tail current point, so I'll add the practical bit nobody's mentioned: check your battery temperature.
in Solar Panels & Controllers 3 months ago
Besoin d'aide sous Windows pour injecter l'assistant ESS (Inverter .rvsc) - Configuration Mac
Right, so this is tangentially related but I reckon it belongs here since it's fundamentally a BMS/inverter comms issue underneath all the fluff. I've just finished commissioning a Victron...
in Batteries & BMS 3 months ago
Anyone else had issues with Victron SmartSolar dropping connection on the VE.Direct cable?
@ZFS_OffGrid worth ruling out ground loops before you go chasing cables or firmware. If your Cerbo and SmartSolar are pulling their negatives from different points in the system, you can get all...
in Solar Panels & Controllers 4 months ago
Anyone else struggling to get accurate SOC readings with a PWM controller on AGM batteries?
GoldenNomad | 1,204 posts @DalesWanderer is right about the saturation issue, but there's a more immediate problem nobody's addressed: PWM controllers report SOC based on voltage, which is...
in Solar Panels & Controllers 4 months ago thumb_up 9