Hello, I have a Smart Battery Sense sensor mounted to my van battery and it works great. I wish to access the data (voltage and temperature) remotely so I’ve purchased and installed a GlobalLink 530. Initially everything was working great, voltage and temperature (via Advanced dashboard) was showing in VRM, but now only voltage is updating (see images). How do I fix? Thank you.
Interesting. I have a GL530 on my standby system in the shed and never really looked at the smart sense data as I also have a smart shunt.
Just checked, and the smart sense temperature updates are really random as per attached. Everything else (multiple MPPTs, Etc) seem to be fine
Smart shunt updates look rock solid over the same time period
Maybe there is a bug?
Edit: Just found this which may help though…
Thank you for your reply. Yea I’ve only gotten one temperature reading in the last 20 hours since installing/setup the GL530, and it was from about 15 minutes after bringing the GL online. I thought maybe it was something where it would only post a datapoint if/when temp. changes, but no as temp. has changed several times over the past 20 hours. Interesting how yours, despite still receiving datapoints, has so many gaps.
Definitely seems like a bug as VRM appears to support temperature monitoring. Probably multiple bugs given the fact that I haven’t gotten any updates since it was setup and, while you’re still receiving updates, it’s very inconsistent (compared to the voltage measurements).
I honestly don’t know why Victron doesn’t just come out with a normal gateway/hub that connects over ethernet or Wi-Fi, as most using these sort of products are likely capable of implementing their own internet solution that would work a lot more reliably than this… Then Victron only needs to worry about the local data gathering and upload VS also having to worry about limitations/issues with their global cellular network provider(s) which I’m certain has given them grief (and may be related to this issue - I’ve heard them having problems with cellular packet sizes and such)
It might be worth considering replacing the smart sense with a smart shunt, using the auxiliary input for a temperature sensor and connecting to the GL530 by ve direct (although Bluetooth will work fine if they are close to each other) This will not only give you voltage and temp monitoring, but also state of charge, time to go etc.
For WiFi connectivity you would need to use a GX device, which I have on my main house system and is far more versatile, but this will not support the smart sense as it doesn’t have ve direct.
Just to add, mine is a GL520 LTE-M device. Notice that yours is a GL530 which I believe is LTE/4G. Can’t imagine that makes a difference to the data collection though.
It’s the starter battery on the van / I don’t really want to mess with the van’s main power wiring.
Looking into it, the smallest solution to replace the SBS and GL, and use my own internet connection, appears to be the Cerbo GX MK2? Which costs just as much as the SBS and GL (probably more) and is twice the size of them. I understand it can do a lot more, but it’s a shame they don’t have something in the middle or even below the GL 520/530 - a GL without cellular that just connects to LAN and/or Wi-Fi - it would be cheaper and better than the GL. Or an upgraded version of the SmartBatterySense that has Wi-Fi capability. Considering they’ve got tiny temperature and humidity monitors that support Wi-Fi and last for years on a set of AA batteries - I don’t get why Victron couldn’t integrated Wi-Fi into the current or a slightly larger SBS.
And RE: GL520 vs 530 - I was very close to buying the 520, but luckily heard about the 530 before doing so and went with that one as it’s supposed to work better in Canada…
Ah ok. I guess monitoring temperature of the lead acid starter battery in a Canadian winter is pretty important!
How about adding a Ruuvitag which will monitor temperature, humidity and air pressure, and is compatible with the Globallink
11. Settings and diagnostics 11. Settings and diagnostics
I have these on my GX system, but haven’t tried it on the Globallink.
The smart battery sense is pretty limited as you have found. It doesn’t really serve any purpose on my current Lithium based set up and is just a hangover from the previous FLA batteries that needed temperature compensation active in the MPPT solar chargers. Was perfect for that using the Victron smart network.
温度.pdf (46.0 KB)
I can confirm what appears to be the same issue on a GlobalLink 520 LTE-M.
My setup uses a SmartBatterySense HQ2347NX92D (v1.15) connected to the GlobalLink 520 via Bluetooth Instant Readout. The current battery temperature is displayed correctly in both VictronConnect and the VRM Device List.
However, I exported approximately 48 hours of VRM data to XLS and found:
- SmartBatterySense voltage: 166 samples, approximately every 15 minutes
- SmartBatterySense temperature: only 3 samples
The three temperature records were approximately 21 °C, 22 °C and 21 °C. The VRM Advanced temperature widget also shows only these three points.
LTE-M is connected normally (about -71 dB), Bluetooth is working, and voltage from the same SmartBatterySense is logged continuously.
This seems to indicate that the live temperature reaches VRM correctly, but the historical SmartBatterySense temperature logging is intermittent.
I can provide the VRM XLS export and screenshots if useful.
Could Victron confirm whether this is a known GlobalLink 520 / VRM issue and whether a firmware or server-side fix is planned?
A few updates since setting up the GL (GlobalLink 530) on the 17th:
-VRM shows voltage data points from SBS (Smart Battery Sense) every 10-20 minutes
-VRM shows temperature datapoints from SBS about every 24 hours (7 datapoints at the time of writing this post)… WTF Victron…
-GL still has flashing yellow light (ever since initial setup), despite it and the SBS being powered up and not moving since GL was setup
-GL (via VictronConnect app) shows “LTE-M” connection (despite this model/version supposedly using standard Cat. 1 instead of M tier for compatibility [the whole reason I went with the 530 over the 520]), and shows nothing (“–”) for ‘mobile signal strength’ and ‘operator’ fields
-No change after power-cycling the GL
-Found discrepancies between the voltage and temperature data points shown in VRM and the SBS’ “Trends” data shown in the VictronConnect app…
I don’t want to understate that last point - the data in VRM doesn’t align with what the SBS reports via VictronConnect app! After discovering the data discrepancy I started evaluating other solutions like Shelly Uni, as what the hell is the point of this solution if I can’t trust the data!?!?!
It’s a real shame as there’s SO MANY APPLICATIONS where one would want to monitor DC voltage and temperature, and the SBS is such an elegant/polished solution, at least from a local (Bluetooth) monitoring perspective. It’s extremely disappointing/frustrating that they’ve severely capped it’s functionality/usefullness (and market potential) by so poorly implementing remote access.