I am planning to use either an Orion-Tr Smart 18 or an Orion XS 50 to maintain the charge on a 12 volt 44 amp hour AGM bow thruster battery. The input voltage will be supplied by my 600 Ah house bank. The house bank is charged directly from the main engine alternator when the engine is running, or by a Xantrex inverter/charger when connected to shore power.
The Orion manuals are exceptionally thorough when documenting the remote enable and engine shutdown detection set up, but the manuals only refer to the alternator as supplying the input voltage. I hope to be using a battery bank as input voltage.
My question is about shutdown detection and how to use the remote input in my application. I have an existing battery switch that cuts power on the positive lead to the bow thruster. I want to be able to use that same switch to control the Orion charger. Can I simply cut the input power to the Orion using the existing switch? Cutting power is essentially what happens when the engine shuts down. Is switch off the input voltage an acceptable way of turning the Orion DC-DC chargers off and back on when the circuit is completed again by closing the switch?