I have a problem with the store InvertersRUs and will no longer be purchasing anything from them

After spending $$$$ over the past month or two with InvertersRUs I am stating publicly that I will no longer be dealing with them.

Why? Their lack of support, their lack of care, their lack of compulsion to make things right with their customers.

I am new to the Victron Energy ecosystem, and as such I do not know all the ins-and-outs of the products yet.

I bought a new Color Control GX from InvertersRUs, based on their website product description that talks about all of its capabilities and features. I am immediately let down by how incapable and useless the device actually is. I am getting reboot after reboot after reboot and getting constant error 67 “Lost communication with BMS” errors, and more reboots. I want to try to eliminate signal quality as a cause, if I could only get a terminator. I have searched elsewhere, they are difficult to source or I would have not even bothered SOK I would have had one on the way two weeks ago.

EDIT: Sorry I skipped a bit there in my frustration. My battery shipped without an 8 pin terminator which everywhere I search says is necessary for the CAN bus especially when using 500kbits interlink. SOK tried to give me a runaround at first telling me it wasn’t necessary unless I had four batteries or more, but my constant rebooting and errors hinted otherwise and they sent one - it went somewhere I am sure. Not to me. I have been trying to get a terminator for a month just so I can rule out signal reflections as a source of the reboots. After two weeks of waiting I got tired of waiting on SOK and attempted to contact InvertersRUs for a terminator. They told me they weren’t sure what they were supposed to do about it. I should feel blessed that they would make an attempt to contact SOK and ask them to send me one.

But as for the Color Control GX, I made the suggestion that InvertersRUs should change their product listing to mention that the device is not recommended for new installs on modern systems, and should only be sold as a direct replacement for older systems. This is in line with EVERYTHING I READ everywhere online. It is inline with Victron’s own opinion on the device. I regret that I ok’d the purchase for the CCGX but I wanted a unit with buttons instead of a touchscreen, and I wanted a small display that didn’t attract attention. So I got the CCGX. Little did I know it was entirely incapable of running a modern system. I asked for partial (MONEY since I can’t say the C word here) on a return of the CCGX and they denied me. I asked for a discount on a new CCGX and they said they’d have to ask a manager. Then I asked to speak to a manager, and the guy told me no joke “you want to talk to a manager so you can tell him to update our product listing with your opinion?” Well again, it wasn’t just my opinion it was Victron’s own opinion as well as the opinion of the tech I spoke to FROM INVERTERSRUS who said “yeah we only sell 2 or 3 of those a year” - With their disrespectful reply I ended the call and I will never give them another dollar of mine. I want others to know that they have GREAT products and GREAT shipping speed, but if you EVER have an issue you might be talked to condescendingly and told you should have done your own research before buying.

I certainly will. That was my fault for buying the CCGX after weeks of considering the Cerbo, then randomly seeing the CCGX page and upon reading every glowing word of its product description, I decided that would work since it had a screen, wasn’t touch enabled, and seemed to do everything the Cerbo did. Not a single word that it was a single core boat anchor.

So in closing, with what might be the last edit for today, InvertersRUs lost a customer rather than gain a lightly used CCGX for their B-stock inventory, and didn’t want to offer a discount on a Cerbo to make a customer happy.

I’ll try another store. That or I’ll consider the system complete and be done with it.

At least 1 CAN termination is required to make the battery communications work at all. What type of battery / BMS do you have?

For controller comparison capabilities see:

The can termination is simply a 120 ohm resistor between the CAN-H and CAN-L wires.

It is a SOK SK24V150PH with the 8-pin threaded connector to RJ45 on the Victron GX. The GX has one of their RJ45 terminators but the battery has an open 8-pin port.

Some points:

  1. I have dealt with InvertersRUs but as my stuff just worked, I didn’t have a problem with them.

  2. While the CCGX is limited and therefore not recommended, it can absolutely run any modern system. It mostly depends on what else is connected. However, its processor is rather small and it can run firmware only to 3.55.

  3. You can get some terminators from an official Victron agent or from Amazon. Some equipment needs no terminators. I can’t speak for SOK.

  4. It seems your CCGX is broken. Have you tried official Victron support?

  5. You can claim warranty from Victron. If InvertersRUs isn’t helping, Victron suggests other means.

There should have been some terminators in the box with the CCGX.

There were no terminators in the pack. I have spoken with SOK; they had supply issues in some early batches and batteries were sent without them. I have gotten a replacement from SOK after some emails, but I’m still salty with Inverters-R-Us, I won’t be back there which sucks for me because they had the most convenient webstore. I’m having difficulty with an Orion-Tr charger too and I don’t even want to call them for support because I know they will give me a line of bullmess to shift blame or point the finger at me for not doing something right. The charger won’t activate if it’s chilly weather. Internet searches suggest it is a firmware issue. I honestly don’t even want to deal with the retailer to get it fixed, which I’m sure is their goal.

Can cables are usually ok with just 1 terminator for relatively short distances (~1m), and if your equipment has only one CAN terminal, then it may be internally terminated. or there may be a pin to connect to add the termination. The termination is simply 120 ohm resistor across the CAN-H to CAN-L wires. CAN won’t work without any termination. This can be checked with a multimeter with the equipment powered down.