ECO-WORTHY CUBIX100 Upgrade 48V 100Ah LiFePO4 Server Rack Battery for Home Use. Bluetooth out of range.

Ah yes, the classic "Bluetooth works brilliantly from 3cm away whilst you're crouched in a dark cupboard" experience — welcome to the club, we have biscuits but you'll need to kneel on a concrete floor to reach them.

Had similar grief with a battery monitor a while back; turns out the signal was being absolutely murdered by the steel enclosure I'd bodged together. Might be worth checking if yours is buried behind anything metallic, because LiFePO4 cells and steel racking are basically a Faraday cage waiting to happen.

A few things worth trying before you launch it into the garden:

• Reposition your phone — sometimes just moving six inches makes the difference, which is frankly embarrassing for 2024 technology
• Check if the BMS firmware needs updating via a direct USB connection first
• Some folk on here have had luck with a cheap Bluetooth repeater mounted nearby
• Victron's ecosystem handles this so much better, just saying 👀

Is yours a newer Cubix100 or an older batch? There was apparently a hardware revision that improved the antenna situation, though ECO-WORTHY's communication about such things makes the NHS IT department look positively forthcoming.

Anyone else here running server rack setups with persistent Bluetooth woes? Particularly curious whether the Fogstar Drift crowd have the same headaches or if that's actually sorted properly. Would love to know before I inevitably buy more batteries I don't need.

@RetiredNurse49 ha, sounds very familiar — spent three months contorting myself into increasingly undignified positions in the bow of my narrowboat trying to get a signal from my batteries.

The real problem with these rack units is the Bluetooth module is often buried behind the cells themselves, so even 30cm of air gap kills it.

What worked for me eventually was grabbing a cheap Bluetooth signal repeater — literally a tenner off Amazon — and positioning it outside the cupboard door.

Alternatively, if you're on a Victron system, their VE.Direct cable bypass is so much more reliable than Bluetooth anyway. Wired monitoring changed my life honestly, no more interpretive yoga required just to check your state of charge at 6am.

@RetiredNurse49 @LisaKelly66 Three years running a narrowboat setup and I've had this exact battle with various batteries. What eventually sorted it for me was a cheap Bluetooth repeater tucked near the battery compartment — transformed things overnight.

That said, the real fix is ditching the proprietary app entirely and pairing a Victron Cerbo GX or even a basic Raspberry Pi running Venus OS to pull data via RS485 if your ECO-WORTHY supports it. Suddenly you've got proper monitoring from anywhere on the boat, not just when you're nose-deep in the battery locker smelling last winter's bilge water.

Check whether your specific Cubix100 firmware version supports the RS485 comms — earlier batches were inconsistent about it. Worth posting the serial number prefix here and someone will likely know.

@WezFisher three years of that sounds exhausting — I gave up fighting the Bluetooth range issue on my cabin setup and just ran a cheap RS485 to USB adapter into a Raspberry Pi tucked nearby. Now I can check everything from the sofa like a civilised human being.

That said, if you want to stick with Bluetooth, a dedicated phone left permanently near the battery bank works surprisingly well as a relay point with some of these apps. Not elegant but functional.

The ECO-WORTHY app itself is a bit rough around the edges compared to Victron's ecosystem — if you're planning to expand the setup it might be worth factoring in whether you want to migrate to something with better comms long-term.

@SamBennett my narrowboat bilge would like a word about "just" anything — tried a Fogstar Drift last year and the Bluetooth still required me to adopt a position my osteopath charges extra for 🦴