Hello,
We have an installation with 4 VE Direct MPPTs and an Octo GX. 3 of the 4 MPPTs are in a constant off state as shown in the photo. Second photo shows that they have an appropriate PV voltage and the battery SOC is only 30%.
We have tried switching the VE direct cables and also different VE direct ports on the Octo but it is always the same 3 units in the off state. The firmware was updated on all units and there is no error state on any of them.
Any ideas?
I am the engineer who was on site when this problem occurred. On the remote console connection, under the device parameters for each of the MPPT’s the connection states USB. This should be VE Direct. I believe that the MPPT,s are on the USB Bus not the VE Direct Bus. Anyone have any ideas how to rectify this?
It will most likely be that (some) of the physical VE.Direct ports on the OctoGX talk to the CPU over a USB Bus rather than a native UART.
I don't know of many CPU / MPU chip sets which have that many native UARTs, so a USB Bus would be the only way to present that many serial (VE.Direct) ports to the outside world.
Some of the VE.Direct ports may connect to UARTs on the CPU, but I have not had the back off of an OctoGX, so I don't know for sure.
Thanks for the info. The first charger that was connected to the array is charging the battery and is on the USB bus. I disconnected all chargers (and reset factory defaults on each via Victron connect) then reconnected all except the one that was formerly charging. The same problem was there, none would charge, although they all showed battery and array voltage. I reconnected the one that was formerly charging and it worked fine. It seems that the octo has assigned a privilege to the working one, perhaps through its MAC address. But the main problem is that I need to get the chargers off the USB bus and on the VE.Direct bus.
Hi @Stevo07
Engineer logged on to the Octo, the mppt's state the 'remote input' is not ok, can it be the remote bridge connection is missing?
@Stevo07 & @Daniël Boekel (Victron Energy Staff)
Apologies, there was some site glitch and some of your follow up comments were lost. This is as best as I could recover. I have reported the bug.
@Stevo07 : This fixed the issue, many thanks! It was not immediately obvious that this should be checked, do you know where this info is contained?
@Daniël Boekel (Victron Energy Staff) : It is in the start up procedure in the MPPT manual, under cable connection sequence. It also comes connected from the factory, so someone has removed it.
Is the charger enabled in Victronconnect?
A disabled charger will show an "Off" state in Venus.
