Victron Smartsolar

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Graham_Wright

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My phone OS is too old to allow a bluetooth connection for programming the controller.

Apparently there is a cable available for only £27.10!

A bit of wire and two plugs? There must be an alternative.

Any suggestions please?
 
I suspect the cable is a little more complicated than that, but I agree it’s overpriced. Could you borrow someone’s newer phone or iPad to set it up? You can also use a laptop with Bluetooth. Once it’s setup correctly it can be left to its own devices.
 
MarkCX said:
I suspect the cable is a little more complicated than that, but I agree it’s overpriced. Could you borrow someone’s newer phone or iPad to set it up? You can also use a laptop with Bluetooth. Once it’s setup correctly it can be left to its own devices.
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It can but all the rich information is invisible as is the ability to tweak the 3 stages for your own wiring losses (if any significant).

How you navigate or get dynamic weather forecasts or work or watch telly without a proper smartphone is beyond my knowledge though.
 
I agree. I’m slightly obsessive with the app for the BMV and SmartSolar. I have the cable connected to a RaspberryPi as a data logger (which also logs NMEA) that is also set to email me if my SOC is getting low so I can lug a generator down or pootle up and down the river to give it a bit of a top-up.
 
MarkCX said:
I agree. I’m slightly obsessive with the app for the BMV and SmartSolar. I have the cable connected to a RaspberryPi as a data logger (which also logs NMEA) that is also set to email me if my SOC is getting low so I can lug a generator down or pootle up and down the river to give it a bit of a top-up.
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Ah - just bought a Pi so I can have fun writing a course computer - but didn’t bring it to the boat as I couldnt get a cheap portable monitor yet.
 
RupertW said:
Ah - just bought a Pi so I can have fun writing a course computer - but didn’t bring it to the boat as I couldnt get a cheap portable monitor yet.
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Openplotter will run a Pi headless out of the box so just need a tablet or laptop, click a couple of buttons to install some apps & signalk will record and graph all your data as well, there's a signalk plugin to convert the victron data to signalk but will only accept serial data. To get into the victron cheaper than the cable a few quids worth of arduino will work though means faffing about making cables, from memory the victron outputs TTL , maybe... can't remember, might be 5v/0v rs232. But works with an arduino. I've had mine sending limited data to a Pi over wifi using an ESP32.
 
RupertW said:
It can but all the rich information is invisible as is the ability to tweak the 3 stages for your own wiring losses (if any significant).

How you navigate or get dynamic weather forecasts or work or watch telly without a proper smartphone is beyond my knowledge though.
Click to expand...

Oh dear! You sound just like a teenager! I have Nasa instrumentation plus Raymarine plotter which does all I need (including tv!). It works mid Atlantic as well!
 
yotter said:
Its also a serial to USB convertor, expensive but good quality.
Angus
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The only thing that looks anything like a connector is a little block with three pins sticking out of it. There is a matching shorting link that I have discovered escapes at the slightest invitation. Is this the connection port? I find the Victron documentation somewhat confusing and no picture of the offered cable show an end on view of the small connector.

This show the little black link at the bottom left corner. SmartSolar MPPT 75/10, 75/15, 100/15 & 100/20 - Victron Energy
and this shows the detail under high quality photos 100 1 20
SmartSolar MPPT 75/10, 75/15, 100/15 & 100/20 - Victron Energy
 
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Graham_Wright said:
Oh dear! You sound just like a teenager! I have Nasa instrumentation plus Raymarine plotter which does all I need (including tv!). It works mid Atlantic as well!
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Exactly - you have specific old style technology instead of a “do anything device”. That’s fine but a bit expensive and dates from the moment you fit it.

Don’t quite understand the “middle of the Atlantic” bit. I can watch hundreds of hours of Netflix and iPlayer downloaded stuff there too but not sure whether your Raymarine has a decent enough sound system to do the same.
 
RupertW said:
Exactly - you have specific old style technology instead of a “do anything device”. That’s fine but a bit expensive and dates from the moment you fit it.

Don’t quite understand the “middle of the Atlantic” bit. I can watch hundreds of hours of Netflix and iPlayer downloaded stuff there too but not sure whether your Raymarine has a decent enough sound system to do the same.
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I like to navigate from the cockpit on a nice big screen in bright sunlight. And you?

I have radar too.

I go sailing to do sailing not watch films (although I do have tv - a proper one!).
 
Graham_Wright said:
I like to navigate from the cockpit on a nice big screen in bright sunlight. And you?

I have radar too.

I go sailing to do sailing not watch films (although I do have tv - a proper one!).
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Gosh - I prefer to leave the nav at the chart table and look out at the world around me.
 
MarkCX said:
I agree. I’m slightly obsessive with the app for the BMV and SmartSolar. I have the cable connected to a RaspberryPi as a data logger (which also logs NMEA) that is also set to email me if my SOC is getting low so I can lug a generator down or pootle up and down the river to give it a bit of a top-up.
Click to expand...

how do you do the data logging and nmea on the pi? Any good links?
 
I have a QuarkElec box that outputs NMEA 0183 and 2000 over WiFi which the Pi connects to. It gets the Victron data direct from the cable.

The actual logging is done with some rough and ready Python code that I cobbled together as an intellectual exercise. It’s embarrassingly inelegant and inefficient but bullet proof. I had to reverse engineer some of the N2k sentences from what little information there is on the internet as it’s proprietary - still some I haven’t fathomed.
I haven’t worked on it for a while. It basically takes a sample of all data every 5 minutes (or however long I set it) and writes it to a database which I can look at remotely. Considering presenting it graphically on a web page, but I’ve been distracted recently.

Other people have probably done a better job and it’s on the internet, but I can’t remember offhand where. It’s been a while since I looked.
 
My Raspberry Pi Zero isn’t really up to running OpenPlotter, but I do have a Raspberry Pi 3 to try it with when I get a chance. The zero consumes very little power so I can run it 24/7. Bigger Pis are not so frugal.

My zero NMEA logger predates me getting my Victron stuff and it only took a day to get it to log battery data too. Otherwise I might have gone for that - much better value than Victron’s own Venus kit.
 
MarkCX said:
My Raspberry Pi Zero isn’t really up to running OpenPlotter, but I do have a Raspberry Pi 3 to try it with when I get a chance. The zero consumes very little power so I can run it 24/7. Bigger Pis are not so frugal.

My zero NMEA logger predates me getting my Victron stuff and it only took a day to get it to log battery data too. Otherwise I might have gone for that - much better value than Victron’s own Venus kit.
Click to expand...
The zero should be fast enough to run signalk, which actually does most of the useful data stuff in openplotter. Though haven't tried it yet.
Signak K » Welcome

Then one way to get data in is through an esp32 over wifi. I'm not really a programmer but this micropython seems stable and just works day in/day out. Then JLCPCB can make board with various sensors for not too much, the INA219 current sensor can piggy back onto an existing shunt to log amps >>
boatybits/boatymonpy

There's a little commented out code near the bottom of boatymon.py which I had working connected to a smartsolar 75/10 serial out sending some data to signalk over wifi. Eventually I'll include all the stuff coming out of the victron when it gets installed for real. The message codes are in notes.py but you probably have all that already.
 
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