question

tacass avatar image
tacass asked

Victron Battery Monitor Connecting to Generic (not Victron) Shunt?

I have a Magnum Inverter and their ME-BMK battery monitor with a generic shunt. My charge controller is a Victron SmartSolar MPPT 250/85. Is there a variant of a Victron (or third party) battery monitor which can connect directly to the generic shunt (no quick PCB) and then connect to the CC via the VE.Can or VE.Direct connections? I don't have room to swap the original shunt for a Victron shunt, which would otherwise be one solution path.

MPPT ControllersBMV Battery Monitor
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2 Answers
wkirby avatar image
wkirby answered ·

If using a BMV battery monitor, it is possible to use a different shunt resistor.
You can unscrew the PCB from the original shunt and then using the same screw holes, these are the contacts, screw it to the shunt that you want to use.
You'll then need to configure the parameters of the new shunt in VictronConnect to suit.
1661064375705.png


As a side note, the shunt is not designed to be connected directly to the MPPT. The VE.Direct ports on the BMV / MPPT are either for configuration with a USB dongle or for connecting to a gateway device like the CerboGX.

EDIT: I dod not mention that the MPPT can get Voltage, current and optionally temperature from BMV-712 over Bluetooth using VE.Smart Networking.


1661064375705.png (12.0 KiB)
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tacass avatar image
tacass answered ·

Thanks @WKirby for the detailed answer. Your suggestion of mounting the quick PCB on my shunt is a good one, although I'll have to adapt a bit as the specs show the spacing of the small side terminal screws is different on my shunt.

It's an interesting design choice to not be able to use one of the two serial ports (VE.Direct and VE.Can) to allow a wired connection to a battery monitor, although the Bluetooth connection capability to some BMV models is nice (just not as trustworthy to me).

My main goal is to allow the CC more precise measurement and control over the current to the battery, independent of whatever current is going to the inverter. But then I'm assuming that the MPPT would do something smart with that info, but that's just a guess. But I may be overthinking it because the BMS of the LFP battery may just do the right thing in terms of taking current only when it should.

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