Orion strange behaviour

Seeing a similar head-scratcher with my Orion-Tr Smart 12/12-18 and wondered if anyone else has run into this.

Running it in my Transit to top up the leisure battery that feeds my garden office setup. Everything looks fine — I'm getting a solid 14.2v at the input terminals when the engine's running, confirmed with a multimeter. But the Victron Connect app is consistently reporting something like 11.8v on the input side, and the unit just sits there refusing to kick into charge mode.

A few things I've already tried:

• Factory reset (no change)
• Swapped to a different phone for the app in case it was a Bluetooth glitch
• Checked all connections and cable runs back to the starter battery

The wiring is pretty short and beefy — 10mm² cable — so I'd be surprised if there's enough voltage drop to explain a 2v+ discrepancy. The unit does seem to occasionally spring into life, almost randomly, which makes me think it's not a catastrophic fault.

My suspicion is it might be a dodgy voltage sense internally, or possibly something weird with the firmware. Has anyone seen the Orion misread its own input voltage like this? Worth contacting Victron directly, or is there a known fix floating around?

Also curious whether anyone's had issues with the isolated vs non-isolated versions behaving differently — mine's the non-isolated variant if that's relevant.

@TransitConvert what's the actual behaviour you're seeing? You've not described the problem yet 😄

That said, a few common Orion gotchas I've hit on my narrowboat setup:

• Engine detection threshold — if your Transit's alternator voltage doesn't climb high enough under load, the Orion won't wake up. Check your input threshold in the VictronConnect app
• BMS communication — if your leisure battery has a smart BMS cutting charge prematurely
• Ignition wire — worth wiring the H/L terminal to ignition rather than relying on voltage sensing alone, far more reliable in my experience

What leisure battery chemistry are you running? LiFePO4 behaves very differently to AGM with the Orion's charge profiles. Also worth checking firmware — Victron pushed an update a while back that fixed some wake/sleep logic quirks.

Drop your VictronConnect screenshots if you can, makes diagnosing this much quicker.

@TransitConvert yeah DorsetSolar's right, need more detail — but I'll throw in something that caught me out with mine on the shepherd's hut build.

Check whether you've got the engine detection threshold set correctly in VictronConnect. Default is 13.2V but Transit alternators can sometimes sit below that at idle, especially in winter, which makes the Orion think the engine's off and it shuts down mid-charge.

Also worth confirming — are you running the isolated or non-isolated version? Makes a difference in how you'd wire and configure it.

Mine behaved erratically for a week before I realised the input voltage threshold was the culprit. Bumped it down to 12.8V and it's been rock solid since.

@TransitConvert yes, what @DorsetSolar said — what's actually happening? Is it cutting out mid-charge, not starting at all, or showing odd readings in the VictronConnect app?

Asking because I've got an Orion-Tr Smart in my tiny house build and had a weird one where it looked like it wasn't charging but was actually just sitting in the storage mode threshold. Fooled me for ages.

Also worth checking — are you running it in standalone or connected to a Cerbo/GX device? Behaviour can differ quite a bit depending on that. And what's your alternator situation — some of the newer Transits with smart alternators cause all sorts of grief with DC-DC chargers if you've not got it set to the right input voltage threshold.

What specific voltage thresholds have you configured in the VictronConnect app? I'm running a similar setup — Orion-Tr Smart feeding a Fogstar lithium in my garden office — and found the default input lockout settings caused some odd behaviour until I adjusted them to match my alternator's actual output range.

Also worth checking: are you using it in standalone or networked mode? If it's networked via Bluetooth with other Victron kit, there can be charge state conflicts that aren't obvious from the LED indicators alone.

What does the history tab in VictronConnect actually show when the behaviour occurs?