Your site is very intesting and I keep learning with your installations.
I have a camper mounted over a pickup and want to keep de double battery setup under the bonnet. I just want to have a way to join both setups (car and camper), just for charging the crank and auxiliary batteries from the lithium battery. Not permanent integrated but having the posibility of emergency charging is a plus.
I will try to upload a little diagram of the setup I am thinking of. In the diagram I draw a cloud where the should be the link between battery banks.
Any other thinkings are welcome, I didn’t start nothing into the camper side, so all of you feel free to comment. Any help about every device (model, amps, protections, etc) will be very valuable. DC-DC chargers, solar charger, inverter, shore charger…
Personally id use a Multiplus instead of a seperate AC charger and inverter.
You didnt mention the vehicle system voltage. If its 24V as well, then you can simply use the MPs trickle charger to charge the starter battery.
If the vehicle uses 12V, then an Orion Smart 24/12 could do the charging.
Depending on the type of isolator used between starter battery and aux battery, the aux battery would get charged automatically as well.
If you need one or more shunts depends on what you understand under “battery status”. A SmartShunt can fully monitor a single battery, giving you an SOC, voltage, Ah used and so on, plus it can measure a secondary voltage, for example the aux battery. But nothing more, you only get the voltage of the secondary input.
So if you want to fully monitor each battery, you will need a shunt for each.
I dont think thats really necessary. An Orion to charge the starter battery, wich automatically gives you the option to check the starter battery voltage, and a shunt to monitor the cabin battery plus measure the aux battery voltage
The alternator and lead-acid start battery are 12v and so it’s the aux battery 12v gel. But it could be 24v.
So, an Orion between the start and the aux batteries.
And an MP to cope with the 24v solar panels, shore charger and cabin battery, and doubling as inverter. I didn’t put like this because I feel an MP, with so many jobs, its a dangerous single point of failure, but it’s easier really.
And which could be the device and the route for charging from solar and external AC the start and aux batteries?
You can, but not really necessary. Do you currently have no battery combiner or similar between the two?
A MultiPlus does not include an MPPT, for that you would need an EasySolar for example, but usually you just use seperate MPPTs. Also does not include a battery. Its solely an inverter/charger
From the 24V cabin battery to the 12V starter battery you can use an Orion 1400, or a smaller Orion Smart 24/12
Yes, I’ve an old redarc isolator, very simple device coming from my old 4x4 12 years ago, still does what it have to do.
And, your advise, then, is using an Orion 24/12 from the Cabin 24v battery to the start battery. But where on the start battery? To the positive terminal of start battery?
And if I want to replace my old redarc isolator with a new Orion Tr Smart DC-DC charger, where must I do connect the cable coming from the Orion 24/12?
Yes, since your schematic states that all negatives are common, then theres no need to worry about the negative. Just connect the Orions negative to a nearby convenient spot on the frame/body or some negative busbar.
The output positive of the Orion 1400 still connects to the starter battery positive, theres no change with that. Whether or not you keep the combiner doesnt influence the Orion 1400.
If you want to exchange the redarc combiner, then connect the additional Orion Smart 12/12 with its input positive to the starter battery and with its output positive to the aux battery, and the negative to the frame/body. Very likely you could change the combiner to an Orion Smart 12/12 without the need to pull any new cables, looking at the schematic of a current redarc combiner model
