Hi,
Newcomer here, in the Victron world now. The product range was too good and with the open nature of the software on the products, I made the switch from all of my old favourites.
I am building an entire new system with 2 X Multiplus II 5000/48 in parallel, integrating with my existing Fronius Solar, and new 48V Lithium batteries. Included is Victron Energy Meter to monitor for grid feed and redirect energy to the batteries.
Initially though, I unboxed the Cerbo GX and Energy Meter to get these online. Connected them with VE.can.
Now, from all the videos I watched on YouTube, I was expecting a very simple setup process. Boy I was I wrong, and very frustrated for some time.
Firstly, no matter what I did, Victron Connect would just not connect Bluetooth to the Cerbo GX. I’m using a brand new Pixel phone. Tried the pin code on the side of the Cerbo, tried 000000. Always the same result, 1% then 20% then sometimes 95% then back to 1% and maybe 20% before failing. Bluetooth light on the Cerbo stayed on, indicating connected, but phone definately not showing connected and Victron Connect unable to connect to Cerbo. I’ve never had an issue connecting Bluetooth to any device, but the Cerbo, complete and utter failure.
So, I moved onto WiFi. Connecting to the Cerbo GX internal WiFi AP was also a complete fail for a while, because my Android phone would just disconnect and go back to my home WiFi since it couldn’t detect internet access on the Cerbo WIFi (obviously). In the past I’ve been able to select an option to stay connected regardless, but for some reason my phone wasn’t giving me this option. Until I removed all my other WiFi networks and then added just the Cerbo WiFi. Was a bit angry by this point, but I was connected.
Ok, next step, into Victron Connect and now I can finally use the remote console.
Now to try to connect the Cerbo to my home WiFi. Should have been easy, but it would also just refuse to connect. I’d seen this kind of bad behaviour before when some cheap devices don’t like an SSID on both 2.4ghz and 5ghz radios on WiFi. So I manually setup a 2.4ghz only SSID on my Ubiquiti network, and sure enough, the Cerbo was happy to connect to this. Was very surprised that a Victron device was affected by this.
Now next step was to see if the Energy Meter was talking to the Cerbo. So into the remote console, and into Energy Meters. Nothing. Hmm ok, into Services, VE.can, Devices, and yes I can see it there. Confusing. Nothing showing up anywhere else.
Started with Firmware update on the Cerbo. And this seemed to help a lot with it finding devices. As after this I could see my Victron Energy Meter and it found my Fronius inverter. Cool. But when I went into “Energy Meters” in remote console there was a message basically explaining that this is not where Energy Meters go. Hmmmm. Ooookkkaaayyy. So the Victron Energy Meter is an Energy Meter but not actually an Energy Meter. Got it. Still learning this new blue world. It was showing on the main page so that was enough for me.
Next was to try and configure the Victron Energy Meter as single phase (it defaults to 3 phase). Could not find that anywhere. A google search and then I find that two way communication to VRM portal needs to be manually turned on. Security thing possibly? Anyway not a big deal, got it on and then after restarting the Victron Connect app I could access the sub devices on the Cerbo and configure them.
So, what I thought should have been a 10 minute exercise based on the great things I’ve heard/watched/read about Victron equipment turned out to be a 2 hour ordeal that kept me up later than I’d hoped.
In hindsight I should probably have just connected everything to a network switch on my LAN and things might have come together a bit quicker.
Here’s hoping for better experiences with the Multiplus II units, the Smartshunts and the Smartsolar MPPT.