SmartShunt by Victron

[oilybilge]

Has anyone bought one of these? I'm very tempted, but there are mutterings on Amazon about the weak bluetooth signal. Even Victron in their official blurb admit it's not as good as it might be, since the bluetooth transmitter sits right next to a great bit piece of brass.

The alternative is to buy something like the BMV-712 which has a remote display with bluetooth. But I like the neatness of the smartshunt, and I'm not looking to connect from twenty feet away. Has anyone here tried it?

 

[j24jam]

I have a Victron SS and have no issues with bluetooth signal. (It easily connect from 20ft in my experience)

 

[SimonD]

I considered the Smart Shunt but put off by reports of poor connection. So, I've just fitted a BMV-712 and it works fine. Actually, a really useful bit of kit.

 

[[2574]]

I have a Victron SS and have no issues with bluetooth signal. (It easily connect from 20ft in my experience)

Me too, no problems with Bluetooth signal.

 

[Daverw]

Had one fitted for 3 years, never a problem with signal, can read it from pontoon about 30ft away. Same with charger and solar stuff as well. I’m not sure some of the connection issues are actually issues with phones, I had a mate who was always complaining, when looked further he always had his phone in a hard case that when taken out of it the problem went away.

 

[PaulRainbow]

Works fine for me and all others i've fitted.

 

[lustyd]

It's not a problem for one off readings to go near to it and then look at your phone - you are after all on a boat which isn't that big. I really doubt the connection is that bad though, and some people probably have them sandwiched between batteries and engines which will block the signal. After the initial excitement you're unlikely to do this often though so even if it's poor signal it wouldn't cause huge issues. Where these really shine is with connection to other stuff like a Cerbo (or the Raspberry Pi version of it which is cheap). This also allows connection to an MFD which is also useful for easy visibility. For this you'd probably use the VE Direct anyway.
Highly recommend all the Victron kit I have, their products, support, availability, documentation and training are all excellent. They cost a little more but I've yet to see any of their kit break or have an issue.

 

[oilybilge]

That sounds fairly conclusive. SmartShunt added to the shopping list. Thanks chaps

 

[Koeketiene]

Fitted a SmartShunt last year -as well as SmartSolar.
Never had a problem connecting.
The boat on the next mooring has a SmartShunt as well.
Sitting on my boat, my phone picks up a signal (2 bars) from his and he's easily 30m away.

 

[bergie]

We have two SmartShunts on our boat: one monitoring the house bank, and second configured to the new "DC meter" mode measuring alternator output. We'll likely add a third one to instrument the wind gen we're planning to add this season.

The Bluetooth connection definitely seems weaker than with our other Victron gear. Sometimes VictronConnect fails to connect to one of them when you start it, but then usually the second attempt succeeds.

In our use case that's not a big deal as it is all connected to a Cerbo GX, and hence we usually look at the data using Victron VRM or our local Grafana instance instead of VictronConnect.