Smartshunt DC meter usage in VRM

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bierchen asked May 24, '24

Smartshunt DC meter usage in VRM

Ahoy,

fairly simple system here: 48v battery bank, isolated/no ground to chassis, Multiplus 2 GX 5k. Everything working perfectly for a year, now enhancing the system with a B2B charger from Sterling. Using a Smartshunt with ve.direct to USB cable to the MP to monitor and feed the SOC.

Shunt config is DC meter and set to solar charger. Can see the incoming wattage and Battery Meter/SOC, which is the MP, is rising aswell so i am happy from a functional standpoint.

But: Why, although i have read dozens of threads and howtos can i only use it in DC meter/Solar Charger mode and not any more senseful Shunt config/setup like DC DC Charger, Alternator etc... VRM will show the wattage then but no impact to SOC. And no, it does not matter whether i turn "has DC system" on or of within GX.

This leaves me puzzled as that "has DC system" option seemed to be crucial for most other users with 3rd party charging to a GX monitored battery bank. As i said, when set as solar charger it all works perfectly so there is no real problem - just the question, why this is not integrated better since these issues are know and discussed since 2022. I have updated the GX two weeks ago and the shunt just yesterday.

Thanks for any help and maybe this also gives assurance to anyone in a similar scenario when planning. Besides the "solar charger" glitch this is awesome and i can use VRM for SOC view.

VRM SmartShunt

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Answer 1 · 2024-05-24T19:40:15Z

kevgermany answered · May 24 at 07:40 PM

Mine is renamed to motor as it's monitoring the power of an electric motor.

Not quite sure where the problem is.

When you configure the shunt as a meter, the following options are available as well as solar charger.

You can also rename the shunt... The name you give it shows up in VRM advanced.

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Answer 2 · 2024-05-25T02:42:52Z

bierchen answered · May 25 at 02:42 AM

Thank you Kevin for sharing your insights. I am not a developer, however it seems to me that it should be fairly easy to integrate this feature better. It helps integrate 3rd party products which sometimes need to complement the victron ecosystem and as this feature has been reported across discussions to be in development since 2022, i am simply curious whether there is something on the timeline.

The good thing is though, my generator is effectively charging my battery bank with working SOC gauge and all there is to it is the fact that it VRM shows it as a solar charger. This does not need to become a beauty contest, however, as certain types of smartshunt config options are technically the same as a solar charger but just need a different label - such as a generator or DC DC charger, i struggle to see how this can still be in development 2 years later.

If anyone close to the victron dev team can chime in, this would make the appearance of VRM even more nice to look at. Maybe a stereotype selector within gx or simply some icons for each option that is selectabke in the smartshunt config, that would be brilliant. The GX already sees the type of meter which is selected, i can spot that on the console...

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Answer 3 · 2024-05-28T15:31:25Z

bierchen answered · May 28 at 03:31 PM

I would like to nudge this topic - what is the use of so many different values for DC meter type if only "PV Charger" is leading to a "Charging" state of the SOC tile in VRM?

This option has been discussed for more than 2 years now and everybody is well aware that there is no technical problem - but does really nobody care that the VRM view shows "PV Charger" when there are so many alternatives?

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