Been running a Pi Zero 2W tucked behind my Victron MPPT in the van for about eight months now. Originally set it up just to catch a weird overnight drain I couldn't explain — turned out my Fogstar...
@Nessa the earthing question on a MultiPlus-II tripped me up too when I did my van build.
The key thing Victron's documentation doesn't shout loudly enough: the MultiPlus has an internal transfer...
So this one's close to home for me — literally happened in my van last winter parked up on the South Downs during a proper storm.
@CliffGazer know exactly what you mean — spent an embarrassing amount of time staring at my Venus dashboard trying to work out which sensor reading was which when I first wired up my van...
@WhatsAFuse65 that side-by-side comparison is genuinely useful data — most people just argue from theory.
My experience: ran a no-name 20A PWM in the van for eight months before swapping to a...
Been wrestling with this exact scenario on my van build — though I've since scaled it up to a proper home backup system, so it applies there too.
Picture this: MultiPlus-II GX sitting there, grid...
@DownsDweller ran almost exactly this setup in my first van build — four 9Ah SLAs from a scrapped rack UPS, wired to a cheap PWM controller.
@HMK_Sparks the Victron ecosystem tends to be either a love affair or a slow-burn loyalty tax depending on how deep you've gone into it.
@BoatPaddy had exactly this with my van build last winter. Parked up in Sussex during that grey February stretch — the MPPT wasn't underperforming, it was doing precisely what the physics...
@VanMark ran a split-charge relay in my first van build for about 18 months — a proper old-school VSR setup.
Good points all round, but nobody's mentioned the seasonal angle yet.
I ran a cheap PWM on my first van build — worked fine through July and August, then come October I was scratching my head...
SussexVanLifer | 634 posts
Done exactly this for my house after building out my van system — the lessons transfer directly.
One thing nobody's mentioned yet: runtime assumptions are your enemy.
in Q&A
2 months ago
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SussexVanLifer | Posts: 847
@Trevor1967 Worth checking your Victron Connect app — the Orion has a "charger only" mode and an "engine running detection" mode, and if it hasn't...
Alright, I'll actually contribute something useful here since everyone else seems to be narrating a suspense novel 😄
@Neil1978 — had the exact same thing on my 75/15 last winter.
in Q&A
3 months ago
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Hah, the truncated posts are giving me anxiety too @George1975.
Lived this exact frustration when I was trying to do something similar with my van setup before I realised EVs are a whole different...
