Victron Connect History showing actual days, not active solar days as expected

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jeffb asked Jun 13, '20

Victron Connect History showing actual days, not active solar days as expected

I have a SmartSolar 100/30 MPPT which is connected to my RV - so it sees intermittent use - around 50 days per year. I happy with the performance of the unit - and the charts and graphs really helped me understand and track our electricity usage. However during one of the constant updates, the behavior of the History feature changed - happening maybe the last quarter of 2019? Previously, each day in the history was triggered by a charge cycle - the solar panel seeing sunlight and charging the battery. Times / days when the panel was disconnected from the system were ignored. And my panel is disconnected / dark when the RV is not being used. This app behavior was exactly what I wanted to see.

Subsequent to this fateful update, the History chart is now determined by calendar days - apparently by the clock in in the smartphone. Now all the days in between my RV trips are filled in with blanks - making the History function mostly useless for me. How can I get back the previous functionality? For stationary application - where the solar system is used every day, this change doesn't make any difference. But for me - where I use the solar system intermittently - this change crippled one of the most useful tracking features in the software.

VictronConnect

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Answer 1 · 2020-07-08T06:51:18Z

jeffb answered · Jul 08, 2020 at 06:51 AM

So looks like there's no hope of getting any help with this. I noticed that someone rewrote my title - but missed an important point. The actual title should be -

Victron Connect History showing actual days, not active solar days as it originally did.

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Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) ♦♦ commented · Jul 08, 2020 at 07:05 AM

Sorry @JeffB,

I thought that I replied to this when I changed the title.

I asked the developer of VictronConnect and he will ask one of the MPPT firmware developers if anything has changed there.

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Leslieanne Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) ♦♦ commented · Jul 08, 2020 at 08:19 AM

Hi, I also noticed this change. I think it came with firmware 1.42 or maybe 1.43 soon after...middle of last year anyway. Previously it worked exactly as Jeff described, a new "day" for each time the controller powered up. The dates as listed were wrong, of course. But this was a minor glitch, to be expected when days were missed in a van not used every day, with solar (and often battery) turned off between trips. At least we had a history of the last 30 days-worth of charging. Now, that useful data is discarded if more than 30 calendar days have passed.....great for home systems always in use and pedants who insist their dates are correct!!

Perhaps in a future victron connect and firmware update we could be offered a menu selection to chose a "date" or a "day" method of recording and viewing the history.

I am quite sure the mppt initially does log the history in the original way....a new day for each new start up (although there was a change that stopped that happening when the PV interuption was brief). After all, the mppt does not have an in-built clock. So likely it is only when you connect the app and look, that the dates get logged. A bit like Schrodingers cat really.........

Cheers, Leslie

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jeffb Leslieanne commented · Jul 08, 2020 at 09:10 AM

Nice to know I'm not imagining things. Personally I don't care much about displaying dates - but others probably feel differently. A menu selection for "date" vs "day" History logging sounds great to me! And if I had to decide between getting some dates right vs throwing away lots of useful information, well you can figure out what my decision would be!

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Answer 2 · 2020-07-08T08:50:18Z

jeffb answered · Jul 08, 2020 at 08:50 AM

Thanks for the reply!

There was definitely a change in the behavior of the Victron Connect History chart - maybe the last quarter of 2019. There is no possibility that panels are connected - the cable is unplugged and the panel stowed inside. Although the charge controller does remain connected to the battery. I haven't yet tried disconnecting that.

The behavior continues - I've just got 30 days of blanks in my History chart, and my last charge cycle was June 4th. The Victron Connect version is 5.27. Although there will probably be a new update when I fire up the system in a couple days.

I am very willing to believe this was an inadvertent change. You won't even notice unless you run a test where the usage is intermittent. Daily use continues to look just the same as it always has.

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Answer 3 · 2020-07-08T10:31:51Z

Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) answered · Jul 08, 2020 at 10:31 AM

I have got some information back;

It will change to a new day every 24h, or if it sees the sun rising again after having seen 4 hours of day and 4 hours of night the previous day, while the battery is connected.

This was changed a while ago.

What you can do to pause the timer is isolate both panels and battery from the MPPT, then days won't change until the battery and/or PV is reconnected.

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