Connect Orion Smart XS to Cerbo from house to bow thruster battery

DIY
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Hi,

I have a Orion Smart XS already installed to charge my lithium house battery from my starter battery (which is connected to an alternator). The lithium house battery is the output on the Orion, the starter battery is the input battery. I connected this through ve.direct through my cerbo and it’s working well with my VE bus bms.

Now I want to have another Orion Smart XS but the lithium house battery would be the input and the bow thruster battery would be the output. I also want to connect this to my Cerbo so I can see the details of this.

However, as far as I know the Orion Smart XS would be visualised and threated as ‘alternator’ which is not true. Normally the BMS shuts off the orion smart xs when ATC is not true. But now it should be the opposite as it’s an output battery so it’s ATD. Is this configurable in a way?

1 Like
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Anyone has any insights on this?

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The orion has high and low signal inputs, so you can use the same signal connected to different inputs.

You should not connect the second xs to cerbo as this can manage only one battery system.

You might install a bmv712 to the bowthruster battery …

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Its essentially part of the same system if you look it from the perspective that the Orion XS for the bowhtruster would be a consumer from the current system. Instead of a producer for the new system.

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Try it and see how cerbo reacts…

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I will do that next month when I am on the boat. But I can imagine it’s designed like that hence the question. Maybe this then becomes a feature request instead. As this use case seems not to be taken into account yet.

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Just found a related topic with the same problem: Orion XS charging voltage too high - #5 by NewDatum

Seems to be indeed a missing feature

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Over the ve.direct system cerbo is connected to rhe secondary system on the xs, normally the house battery.

When your input of the xs is connected to house, you can’t usefully connect xs to cerbo, as cerbo only manages ONE battery system.

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This is a known design limitation of the Orion XS. I reported the same deficiency here last here: Orion XS not charging - #9 by silvercreek

The solution in my mind is to update the firmware to add a toggle for whether the Orion participates in DVCC or not. That way, we could connect the Orion for monitoring from Cerbo or VRM without DVCC getting confused about which battery it’s charging.