Hello,
I am new to this community and my knowledge of Victron products is limited.
I set up a system in my caravan and I need a little help configuring the Venus O/S. See attached picture and list of system components. My problem is that i do not see incoming voltage/amperage from my solar charger. Did i miss a setting, do I need a plugin to my Venus O/S, or do I need to buy an additional component? Any help is greatly appreciated. See attached picture. I posted this earlier in the wrong section, sorry about that
List of components:
2 x ECO-Worthy 280Ah LiPO4
4 x ECO-Worthy 130W panels
1 x Victron MPPT 150/45
1 x Victron Blue smart charger 20A
1 x Victron SmartShunt IP65/500
1 x Victron Smart Battery Sense Temperature and Voltage
1 x VE.Direct Bluetooth Smart Dongle
1 x V.E Direct USB/Serial
1 x Rasperry Pi Venus O/S
1 x JARXIOKE Inverter 3000W
Hi Marc, thank you replying, the reason I connected a BT adapter to the MPPT solar charger is because it doesn’t have built-in BT.
I guess maybe I can connect the RPi to the MPPT and hope that the V.E direct network will find the solar charger anyway. If I understand things correctly, the V.E. network works similarly to a CANBUS system and I would be able to connect several devices without the need of a dedicated V.E. connector. Is that correct ?
This is what I see in my VictronConnect app:
Do you need the temperature for charging? You need to consider if you set up a Bluetooth network which you can and will work quite well. You won’t get data on the venus os other than the shunt which might be fine. If you need temperature with VE Direct to USB into the RPI you will need to add a temp sensor to the shunt. You will also need to setup a Bluetooth network with the shunt from the AC charger so it gets voltage and temperature data.
Hi Owen, thank you for replying. I do have a temp sensor and it is connected to the SmartShunt.
I have it because I live in Sweden and my thought was that it could tell the system to stop charging at low temperature. So, to answer your question, yes, temperature sensor is quite important at least when off-grid. I take a pragmatic approach to solving things and I appreciate every input. So everybody keeps telling me that BT and VE.Direct don’t work together. This means that I have to decide which readings are most important to see on the VRM and which can be read via BT when in proximity. I’d say that battery SOC, PV-charging and temperature are quite important.
I found a YT channel yesterday called OffGrid-Garage and he promoted a 4 port USB to TTL UART adapter
I made the drawing in Visio if anybody wants to modify it and show a graphical solution for better visualising the response. @owenb79 could you please describe once more how you would connect things together?
Anyways, once again thx for the feedback
/Mike
I can’t see the temperature readout on the shunt in the screen grab. If you do have the BMV series temperature sensor to connect to the shunt then you can connect that to Venus OS and the solar charge controller will be externally controlled by Venus OS using that temperature reading. There is a danger if you lose communication with the RPI the solar charge controller will charge without temperature. The only way for you to get the temperature without Venus OS is with a Bluetooth V.ESmart network and that solar charge controller will not have Bluetooth when connected by VE Direct. That is one thing to think about. You don’t need the smart battery sense because the shunt can do everything, voltage, current and temperature. You need to set up a VE.Smart network with the AC charger so it gets voltage and temperature from the shunt.
If you are using a GX, put a temp sensor on the smart shunt so that the GX receives temp data.
Remove the BT network it will cause headaches if used concurrently with the GX. I suppose only the ip22 blue smart and the bat sense can remain since neither connect via comms to the gx?
