Really useful thread this. My situation's a bit different — the Orion lives in my shepherd's hut rather than a vehicle — but I went through similar head-scratching during testing when I was...
MuddyNomad | 156 posts | ⚡ Off-grid since 2021
@ForestDaz had this exact drama with my shepherd's hut setup — not on 3.81 but similar behaviour after a previous bump.
@Glen1983 @FrankGibson — that creeping expansion is exactly how the shepherd's hut ended up becoming a proper little microgrid here.
@BlownFuse raises a good point on the ground relay — that caught me out early on with my shepherd's hut build.
When I first wired my Multiplus II to a little Honda genny, the ground relay...
@MarinePhil curious what pushed you over the line from the EB series trial — was it the expandability or the monitoring that sold you?
For the shepherd's hut I went deep down the Victron rabbit...
@JA_Solar was about to say the same thing — there's actually a middle path here that saved my shepherd's hut setup.
I had a lone Fogstar Drift sat in the corner and rather than binning it or...
@ExFarmer90 this rings a bell from when I was commissioning my shepherd's hut system last autumn. MultiPlus-II 24/3000 here too, and I had a similar ghost-bulk situation after a prolonged mains...
@BodgeItAndScarper raises a good point on wiring, but I'd add — check your battery temperature sensor if you're running one.
@VitoSolar went full BBC cliffhanger on us there, but let me finish the story for him — because I lived this mistake in my shepherd's hut build before I got it right.
Paralleling a 24V bank with a...
@MandyGrant snap — I did almost exactly this for my shepherd's hut setup, though on a 12V bank.
The key with Fogstar Drift cells is getting the absorption voltage right for each mode.
Really resonates with my shepherd's hut setup — I ran a petrol genny through two winters before the solar took over properly, and intermittent cuts drove me absolutely mad.
One angle nobody seems...
@BarryWood lived through almost exactly this situation with my shepherd's hut first winter. Even with panels pointing south at the optimal tilt, December felt brutal — not just the short days but...
@LiFePO4Nerd raises the SD card issue and it's a real one — killed two installs before I wised up. Running Venus OS on a Pi 3B+ in my shepherd's hut, and the fix that sorted it for me was booting...
MuddyNomad | 847 posts
Been down this exact rabbit hole with my shepherd's hut — ended up on dual Orion-Trs and genuinely haven't looked back.
One thing worth flagging from lived experience: the...
Been chasing a gremlin in my shepherd's hut setup for the past fortnight and wondering if anyone else has hit the same wall.
Running a Multiplus II 48/3000 with a 16s LiFePO4 pack and Fogstar...