Victron Orion not playing nice with my smart alternator — anyone else had this?

Had this exact headache last year on my motorhome. Smart alternators are a nightmare — they throttle voltage all over the place and the Orion just gets confused, keeps dropping in and out.

What sorted it for me was enabling the ignition input on the Orion-Tr Smart rather than letting it sense voltage from the alternator directly. Wired a feed off the ignition circuit and it's been rock solid since. No more false shutdowns.

Few things worth checking:

• Are you on the latest firmware? Victron pushed an update a while back that improved smart alternator handling
• What's your absorption/float voltage set to on the unit? Some people leave it at default and that causes grief
• Is your starter battery a standard lead-acid or an AGM/EFB? Makes a difference to how the alternator behaves

The other option people swear by is a Battery-to-Battery (B2B) charger from Sterling — their Pro Batt Ultra is built specifically with smart alternators in mind. I nearly went that route before the ignition fix worked for me.

Also worth joining the Victron Community forum if you haven't — their engineers actually respond, which is rare.

What van/motorhome is it? Some makes are worse than others. Ford Transit smart alternators are particularly awkward in my experience. Curious if others have found a cleaner solution because I still feel like my fix is a bit of a workaround rather than a proper resolution.

@DownsCruiser oh mate, I lived this nightmare aboard my narrowboat and the motorhome — double the suffering, double the wisdom.

The key thing nobody mentions: you want the Orion-Tr Smart in non-isolated mode with the engine detection set via ignition wire, not voltage sensing alone. Smart alternators can sit anywhere between 12.5v and 14.8v depending on their mood — voltage-based detection just sends the Orion into a perpetual identity crisis.

Wire a dedicated ignition feed to the remote on/off pin. Job done. The Orion then knows the engine's actually running rather than playing guessing games with a voltage that bounces around like a labrador at a sausage factory.

Also worth checking: bulk/absorption current limit — keep it under 30A on smaller alternators or you'll stress the belt drive something rotten.

@DownsCruiser had the same drama with my tiny house build on wheels — the Orion-Tr Smart in non-isolated mode was throwing a tantrum every time the alternator did its fancy voltage dance.

Fix that actually worked: enable the "engine running detection" via voltage threshold in VictronConnect rather than relying on the ignition wire — smart alternators idle at weird voltages and confuse the poor thing.

Also worth checking your BMS remote on/off isn't cutting in and making it look like an alternator issue when it's actually your Fogstar cells getting stroppy about charge current.

Took me three weeks of head-scratching before I realised my setup was fighting itself on two fronts simultaneously — grids on and off, technically.

@DownsCruiser had this on my shepherd's hut build when I was road-towing it regularly. The fix that actually worked for me was enabling the engine shutdown detection in the VictronConnect app and bumping the alternator voltage threshold up slightly. Smart alternator on the tow vehicle kept fooling the Orion into thinking the engine had stopped.

Also worth checking — are you running it in isolated or non-isolated mode? @ROW_OffGrid mentioned non-isolated causing grief, and I'd second that. Switched mine to isolated and things settled down considerably.

One thing nobody mentions: make sure your firmware is current. There was a specific update a while back that improved smart alternator handling noticeably. Made a real difference on mine alongside a decent inline fuse on the input side.

Relevant to me this — got a similar setup in the motorhome with a Ford Transit base and the smart alternator is definitely doing odd things.

Quick question for anyone who's cracked this: does the isolated vs non-isolated version of the Orion-Tr Smart make any practical difference here? I've seen some suggestions that isolated handles the voltage fluctuations better but I can't work out if that's actually true or just forum mythology.

Also — is there a minimum threshold you'd recommend setting the input voltage to? I've been experimenting but not sure if I'm making things worse by setting it too conservatively.

@Smudge78 curious what fix you landed on, the post got cut off before the good bit!