VE CAN NMEA Network Power Requirements

Q&A and troubleshooting
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1

What and when are the requirements of the VE CAN network to be powered?

For instance, if building a traditional NMEA backbone, with terminators at each end, 2 x NMEA devices (that do not require power on the network, and only have CAN low and high cores connected internally) on drop cables, 2 x Victron MPPTs connected to the NMEA backbone each via VE CAN to NMEA cables, a Cerbo, and a Lynx BMS, again each connected to the backbone via VE CAN to NMEA cable. Do the VE CAN devices of the Lynx and MPPTs require the network to be powered? Assume if they do, then 24v is ok for the network power? Cerbo obviously does not require power, but can power the network if required.

2

@mister_nui The VE CAN network can operate as a VE CAN network or it can be configured to be compatible on a NMEA2000 network. They are similar but not the same.

The NMEA2000 network requires 9-16V DC and is powered by a power injector to power the buss. The VE CAN network does not need any power injector and does not power devices over the buss. They are powered locally and simply use the VE CAN network to transport the differential data between devices.

If the VE CAN is configured as NMEA2000 compatible it simply sits on a drop cable on that network.

I hope this helps.