Anyone else running Victron Cerbo GX on a static van? Curious what you're actually monitoring

Had mine set up on the static for about eight months now and it's been a revelation, honestly. Before the Cerbo I was basically flying blind — just checking voltage with a cheap multimeter and hoping the 200Ah Fogstar lithium wasn't getting hammered overnight. Now I've got proper SOC, charge history, alarms, the lot. Should have done it years ago, frankly.

The bit I'm still not fully sorted is the remote monitoring side. VRM portal works fine when the park has decent 4G, but signal drops out regularly and I lose hours of logging. Considered adding a dedicated SIM router just for the Cerbo but feels like overkill for a weekend static. Anyone bodged a workaround that doesn't cost a fortune?

Also curious what triggers people actually bother setting alerts for. Right now I've got low SOC at 20% and high battery temp, that's it. The Cerbo throws so many possible alarms it's hard to know what's genuinely useful versus what'll just spam your phone at 2am over nothing. What's your setup?

@OhmsLaw mine's on the garden office rather than a van but same story — went from "seems fine I reckon" to watching my Fogstar 200Ah battery's every breath like an anxious parent at a school play.

Great thread! I've got a Cerbo GX on my static up in the Scottish Borders and honestly the VRM portal is what changed things for me. Being able to check in remotely when I'm away is brilliant — had an alert last winter when a panel connection was playing up and caught it before it caused any real grief.

The thing I find most useful beyond the obvious SOC monitoring is tracking the yield history over time. Really helped me understand where my consumption black holes were (turns out the electric blanket was savage on the batteries 😅).

@DaveMoore70 curious whether you've set up any custom alerts on yours? I tweaked the low voltage thresholds quite a bit from the defaults — found the factory settings a bit conservative for my setup.

@RobButler the VRM portal is genuinely underrated for the historical data side of things — I've got 12 months logged now on my shepherd's hut setup and being able to go back and see exactly what was happening during that brutal cold snap in January is invaluable for sizing decisions.

What I'd add that nobody's mentioned yet: the Node-RED integration on the Cerbo is where things get really interesting. I've got automations running that adjust my Multiplus charge profile based on weather forecast data. Took a weekend to configure properly but now the system essentially manages itself.

Also worth enabling the alarm notifications for low state-of-charge thresholds — saved my Fogstar Drift lithium bank at least twice when I'd underestimated overnight draw in winter. The email alerts aren't instant but they're good enough for a static application.

@OhmsLaw running one on my shepherd's hut build and the thing I didn't expect to find useful was the generator run-time logging. I've got a small Honda EU22i as backup and I can now see exactly when it kicked in, for how long, and correlate that against the solar input data. Turns out I was running it far more than necessary in autumn — panels just needed a clean.

Also worth enabling the tank level monitoring if you've got a water setup. Bit of a faff to wire in but once it's there you've got everything in one dashboard.

@Macca64 the historical data is brilliant for sizing decisions too — I used my 12 months of VRM data to justify upgrading from 200Ah to 300Ah Fogstar cells rather than just guessing.

Been on Cerbo for about 14 months now on my static in North Wales and the thing that's genuinely surprised me is how useful the tank level monitoring has been alongside all the electrical stuff. Got sensors on both my water tank and LPG, so I can see everything in one place on the GX Touch rather than trudging outside in horizontal rain to check.

@BoatSteve the generator runtime thing is handy isn't it — I've started tracking mine against battery state-of-charge to figure out the optimal point to kick it on rather than letting it run unnecessarily.

One thing I'd flag for anyone new to VRM: set up the alerts early. Got a low battery notification once while I was away for a weekend and it saved me coming back to a flat system. Absolute game changer that feature.