PI Venus Looses Connection to Smart Shunt

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Uwe Knöfel asked Jan 14, '22

PI Venus Looses Connection to Smart Shunt

Hello,

I have a PI running Venus OS, setup and configuration no problem.

Connectto the PI are 2 Smart Shunts & one GPS Antenna. Data Transfer is via LAN cable to a Netgear LTE router in my camper.

issue is : the connection to the shunt of the starter battery disappears randomly every few days. I couldn‘t make up a rule so far.

The connection via Bluetooth from Mobile to the shunt works all the time.

After a restart of the PI the connection is established immediately.

I am not using the original cable, as the distance from PI to the shunt is around 5 meter.

I am looking for a hint how to analyze the problem further and evtl solve it.

many thx.

Uwe

Venus OS Raspberry Pi connection issue

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johnny-brusevold commented · Jan 14, 2022 at 09:48 AM

@Uwe Knöfel

I'm guessing it's the cable, but of course it could be something else

I have bought and tested several dozen of the cheap ones on ebay and ali. You get 30 pieces for the price of one victron, but you can not trust that they work satisfactorily. In a package of 10, there may be 6 that are stable over time. Some of the china copy chips, if you test it on a windows machine, the chip is set to disabled by the win driver and works neither on win nor linux. I also bought some PL23203HX from Germany which also turns out to be china copy chip.

But there are good options, but for just one cable I would have gone for a Victron cable.

5 meters should work great, if you also use a good quality usb 3 extension cord (it is blue at the end). I myself have a stable connection of 8 meters usb, but then with a joint in the middle where an isolated rs232 converter is, so it works like a repeeter

EDIT

You can test the cable over some time with a serial loopback program. you just connect tx and rx at the end of the cable.

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Answer 1 · 2022-01-14T08:45:30Z

Stefanie (Victron Energy Staff) answered · Jan 14, 2022 at 08:45 AM

Hi @Uwe Knöfel,

I think one of the first things to try is one of the original Victron VE.Direct to USB dongles, even if it's just for testing.

There have been so many issues with diy VE.Direct cables that it becomes almost impossible to track the error down. In most cases the diy cable was the issue.

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