I’ve always loved my Victron setup and have recommended the brand to many of my RVing friends as being dead simple but incredibly reliable and configurable. After the install of my 3000VA 120x2 MP2, I don’t know how I feel anymore. Call this a rant, or maybe lodging a complaint. I just feel like someone at Victron needs to know if they don’t already as these are all design choices that add no cost to the unit itself.
- DC Connections: one of the positive DC terminals cannot be connecting without twisting the wire and/or flexing the header for the multipurpose jacks above it. The lugs are physically too close - I felt like I was going to damage the multipurpose headers by bending them and you have to bend them since the cables have to fit through a closed oval. Which brings me to my next complaint…
- Connection Inlets: why in the world are these not open on the top? It is MUCH easier to simply lay a cable into the unit and on top of the corresponding lug than to feed a 2/0 AWG wire through the inlet and then bend it mercilessly with plyers until the lug lines up with the eye. It isn’t water tight so not sure the reason for this design decision. Getting rid of the cable inlet would make measuring cables far more accurate and cut the installation time at least in half.
- AC-In Connection Inlets: per the manual, the minimum wire gauge to be used is 6AWG and there are 4 conductors to connect. The inlets aren’t big enough for a single 6/4 AC wire so you have to move over to the next inlet which doesn’t line up with the connector. This makes no sense. All they need to do is change the inlet to be “U-shaped” as opposed to a closed circle so that, again, cables could simply be laid in instead of fed through the inlets which don’t line up with the connectors. This would save a tremendous amount of time.
- AC Spring-loaded Connectors: these are the absolute worst. Every AC connection I’ve ever made has used screw terminals to insure a quality connection. I don’t know why I assumed this would be the case here. The fact that you are already wrestling with 6AWG cable trying to feed connectors that aren’t in-line with their corresponding inlets makes it hard enough - now you have a screwdriver jammed into a slot just in front of the hole you are trying to feed the thick wire into without it becoming frayed. This just seems like an obviously terrible design decision that could easily and cheaply be changed.
- Configuration: I purchased the $70 USB cable to connect my GX device (Raspberry PI) to the VE.Bus port. Unfortunately, I stupidly assumed I would be able to use my Victron Connect App through the GX device to setup the MP2 which, of course, you cannot. So I went to my backup plan - an admittedly old Macbook Pro running MacOS 10.13 High Sierra. This is the latest OS that the machine will run. I tried downloading and running VEConfigure through Wine but received the message that VEConfigure is not supported on “my version of Windows”. So I go back and dig around on the Victron site and find a depcecated version of Victron Connect. It installs fine but unfortunately for me, I updated the MP2 firmware using VRM and this firmware is not backwards compatible with the older VC app. Do I need to go buy a PC to configure this thing??
- Battery Connection: the unit should be able to pass AC power without a battery installed. This would make sense because if you are, for instance, replacing a lead-acid battery, you would want to be able to power the rest of the RV while you are completing the DC wiring on the new battery bank. I had reached a stopping point and had completed the AC wiring but not yet finished the battery hookups. Unfortunately, the unit wouldn’t function without a battery being installed so I quickly wired one up so the rest of the RV could function (refrigerator was my main concern). If I need to replace or otherwise disconnect the batteries, does this mean I’m without power?
Rant over.