Feature Request: Orion XS Umschaltung bei BMS-Abschaltung

Anyone else running Victron Orion XS units and quietly dreading the moment their BMS throws a strop mid-charge?

My static caravan setup has a pair of Orion XS units doing the business from a leisure battery bank into my Fogstar Drift lithium cells, and I've been poking around in the settings wondering why there's no clean automatic fallback when the BMS triggers a charge disconnect — the unit just sort of... sits there looking confused, like a labrador that's lost its ball.

The original discussion that got me thinking was around marine installs (twin Orions on a catamaran — living the dream), but the problem's identical on land: if your BMS pulls the plug to protect the cells, you ideally want the Orion to recognise that, back off gracefully, and maybe retry after a cooldown rather than needing a manual reset or a firmware poke.

Feature request / wishlist question for the forum:

• Should Victron add a proper BMS-disconnect detection mode to the Orion XS?
• Automatic retry with configurable delay — is that too much to ask?
• Anyone managed a workaround via the remote on/off pin and a BMS signal wire?

I've had a rummage through VictronConnect and the firmware changelog after the recent update, but nothing obvious jumps out — feels like it's almost there but not quite.

Keen to hear if anyone's bodged something clever with an REC BMS or similar that handles the handshake properly, or whether we're all just submitting politely worded feature requests into the Victron void and hoping for the best.

@24VPro mate, my Fogstar Drift cells have thrown more BMS tantrums than a toddler in a supermarket, and the Orion XS just sits there blissfully unaware like it's watching telly while the house burns down. 🔥

Victron really need to add proper BMS comms handshaking on the XS range — the Orion-Tr Smart at least plays nicer with the VE.Bus ecosystem. Until then I've bodged a Cerbo GX into the loop with an assistant script that kills the charge line the moment my BMS goes dramatic, but it's proper duct-tape engineering.

A native "pause on BMS signal" feature request on the Victron Community portal would get my upvote instantly — someone submit it before I do it during my lunch break.

@24VPro this is something I've thought about with my cabin setup too. The Orion XS is great but it does feel like it's missing a graceful shutdown handshake with the BMS.

What I'd actually want is a configurable input trigger — wire it straight to the BMS load disconnect signal, so the Orion ramps down cleanly rather than just getting the rug pulled. Victron could do this in firmware no bother, the hardware's already there.

Raised something similar on the Victron Community forum ages ago. Didn't go anywhere but the more people requesting it the better. Worth posting there directly — they do actually pick stuff up from there occasionally.

@24VPro this is exactly the kind of thing keeping me up at night with my narrowboat setup! 🚢 When you're mid-cruise and the BMS decides it's had enough, the last thing you want is the Orion XS just sitting there confused with no graceful fallback.

Has anyone actually logged what happens on the Victron side when the BMS pulls the plug? Like, does it throw a proper fault code you can catch in VRM, or does it just go silent?

Wondering if a Cerbo GX in the loop would help here — could you use Node-RED or similar to trigger some kind of controlled shutdown sequence before the BMS reaches its limit? Or is that just overcomplicating things when really this should be native Victron firmware behaviour?

@LindaClark90 welcome to the forum — narrowboat setups are always interesting to hear about, glad you've joined.

Genuinely curious whether the Orion XS behaviour differs depending on which BMS triggers the shutdown. Has anyone tested this with a Daly versus a JK BMS specifically? I'm wondering if the Orion XS responds differently to a hard disconnect versus a proper CANbus signal.

For my shepherd's hut emergency backup I've been considering adding a small relay on the alternator line as a buffer — but I'm not convinced that's the right approach without understanding what the Orion XS is actually "seeing" when the BMS pulls the plug.

Is there a Victron community thread on this? Seems like something their firmware team should be addressing if it's causing real-world issues across multiple setups.

@24VPro this is directly relevant to my van setup — I'm running a Fogstar Drift 100Ah and the BMS disconnect scenario is something I've actually stress-tested deliberately.

The specific behaviour I'd want clarified before calling this a "feature request" vs a "bug report": when the BMS pulls the load disconnect, does the Orion XS fault-latch, or does it attempt to resume once voltage recovers? That distinction matters enormously for unattended operation.

Has anyone actually checked the Orion XS changelog since firmware 1.07? Victron have quietly adjusted reconnect logic on other units before without fanfare. Worth verifying on VictronConnect whether your current behaviour is documented-as-designed or simply undocumented.

@LindaClark90 narrowboat use is arguably higher-stakes than a static caravan given you genuinely can't just "nip to the shops" if things go sideways mid-river.