Monitoring 6 strings EVE LFP280K cels with Boostech AND 6 Victron shunts with extra? cerbo

Interesting topic this — been wrestling with something similar for the cabin setup.

Currently running Fogstar Drift 280Ah cells in a 16S configuration with a JK BMS, monitored through a Victron Cerbo GX. Works well enough but I've been eyeing up a second bank and the monitoring question becomes a headache pretty quickly.

The idea of using Boostech alongside Victron shunts is something I hadn't considered before — does anyone have experience getting both talking nicely to the Cerbo without it becoming a nightmare of conflicting data? My concern would be the Cerbo getting confused about which SoC reading to trust when you've got multiple inputs.

For anyone running multiple independent strings, how are you handling the aggregation? I've seen people use a SmartShunt per bank and then manually sum things up in Node-RED dashboards, but that feels clunky when you scale up to 6 strings.

A few questions for the thread:

• Are the Boostech units reporting via CAN or Modbus to the Cerbo?
• Does a second Cerbo actually solve the data aggregation problem or just push it one level up?
• Anyone found a cleaner way to surface per-cell voltage data across multiple banks without it becoming a full-time job?

The 3x Multiplus2 5K setup mentioned in similar discussions is hefty — presumably that's a three-phase arrangement? Curious how load balancing works across that when your battery banks are on separate BMS units with slightly different SoC readings.

Would love to hear from anyone who's actually got this running rather than just theorising — real-world stability over 12+ months is what I'm after before committing to expanding my setup.

Foggy80 | 847 posts | ⚡ Off-grid since 2019

@Davo24 interesting setup! One thing worth flagging — with 6 separate strings you'll want to think carefully about how the Cerbo handles multiple shunt inputs. It natively supports one SmartShunt as the "battery monitor" source, so additional shunts typically show as DC loads/sources rather than true battery monitors.

For the EVE cells specifically, the JK BMS UART connection to Cerbo via a RS485 adaptor gives you proper cell-level data which the shunts simply can't provide anyway.

Have you considered whether you actually need both the Boostech monitoring AND the Victron shunts? Feels like potential duplication there. What's the Boostech adding that your JK BMS data isn't covering?

The Fogstar Drift cells are cracking by the way — solid capacity retention in my experience. What's your intended discharge rate across those strings?

Got a shepherd's hut build running something similar — ended up with a Cerbo GX handling multiple battery banks and honestly it's a bit of a rabbit hole once you start adding VE.Direct devices to the mix.

One thing nobody's mentioned yet: if you're pushing 6 strings through separate shunts, the Cerbo's device limit fills up faster than you'd expect. You'll hit the VE.Direct port ceiling pretty sharpish with 6 SmartShunts plus an inverter plus MPPT controllers all queuing for attention.

Worth looking at the VE.Can network instead for some of those devices — frees up the VE.Direct ports considerably. Took me an embarrassingly long time to realise this on my own setup.

Also @Davo24 — what JK BMS variant are you running? The RS485 ones talk to Cerbo much more cleanly than the Bluetooth-only models in my experience.

Got 6 strings myself and the Cerbo GX handles the lot without breaking a sweat — though my knees can't say the same after crawling round the battery enclosure to wire it all up.

AndyReid | 312 posts | 🔋 Off-grid since 2021

@Davo24 one thing I'd add that nobody's mentioned yet — if you're polling six separate shunts through the Cerbo, keep an eye on the VE.Direct port limitations. The Cerbo GX only has three native VE.Direct ports, so beyond that you're looking at a USB hub arrangement or leaning on the VE.Can network instead. Works fine, but worth planning the cabling before you're knee-deep in the install.

Also with EVE 280K cells specifically, I'd recommend getting a baseline capacity test per string before you commit to your monitoring thresholds — there's quite a bit of variance batch to batch and your SOC readings will thank you for it later. @RetiredElectrician74 might have thoughts on balancing tolerance across multiple strings too.