If you're interested in making your own DIY cable for your smart shunt connection, you might want to look at this additional video regarding the fact that there's no built-in isolation between the connected devices when you DIY the cable. Just something to keep in mind. ruclips.net/video/5Tzxd2UQoDM/видео.html
Nise video. I wanted away of tracking generator. With the eg4 batteries and eg4 inverters, i never knew how much power is really going in and out .I have it all wired in.I am going to turn it on tonight! Thanks Adam!
I really need to give this a try. I've been hearing a lot about Solar Assistant and seems it would be significantly easier than rolling my own with Grafana as I have been doing. I've been eyeing the Victron Lynx Shunt for a while now as it would easily bolt on to the side of my Victron Power In box; however, I just searched to see if there is a similar USB cable for it and it's over $500 for the VE Can cable! Holy sh. Option 2 has been trying to put the Batrium shunt board into the Lynx box, perhaps that would be more cost-effective.
It would probably be a whole lot simpler than making your own. I don’t know that I’ve heard of anyone incorporating their Lynx shunt into Solar Assistant, especially at that crazy price for the can to usb cable! That’s ridiculous! Not sure I’ve heard of a batrium integration either. I don’t see why though you couldn’t add the Victron shunt (or the batrium) to the power in. Might just need a piece of copper bar stock.
@@AdamDeLayDIY I saw your dropdown menu had a USB CAN option, wondering if a generic USBCAN adapter would work. I have the Batrium shunt connected to the power-in now and it's just ugly for a few reasons (exposed, inadequate spacing between PCB and lug area). Anyway, future upgrade, maybe Spring...
@@LithiumSolar Hmm, I never noticed that before. I’m gonna reach out to Solar-Assistant and see if they’ve ever tested it before. Might be a nice addition since the CAN protocol is fairly standardized. I agree that having the shunt just hanging off the side doesn’t look the best.
@@LithiumSolar I heard back from SolarAssistant and they haven't tested anything like that yet. I saw they have a USB to CAN cable on their site, so I ordered that to do some of my own testing. If you're interested, I can let you know what I find out.
Can you please explain the function on “Maintain battery state of charge” section on the tab to the left of the settings tab in solar assistant. Not sure on the time settings and how to make this work to my benefit. Thanks Joe B
So I have those settings set to change to SUB if my battery drops below 30% SOC at any time. So both SOC values are 30% and the time doesn’t matter. There are other time of use cases where you might want to change to SUB if your SOC is too low early in the morning or even late at night. I think the SA website gives the best example. solar-assistant.io/help/voltronic/power-management
hi, I am buying an indoor wall mounted EG4. I have Schneider Inverter xw6048 with latest firmware. In addition I have insight facility. I am told by Schneider that XW6048 does not have the control board required to allow closed-loop battery comms. Is that true? Any workaround for BMS to communicate with the Inverter? Basically to give status of SOC.
Unfortunately I'm not familiar with the specifics of Schneider inverters. I would ask Schneider what BMS protocols they support. I believe the indoor EG4 wallmount batteries can switch to different inverter protocols to help with battery communication.
Solar charge controller you said you made a cable for that,can I add that to my 6000xp and shunt in solar assist also? I assume it will see power going in, but would be nice if it appears in the right places, if it don’t without it ?
@@mattman6199 so the 6000xp actually communicates wirelessly with SA. ruclips.net/video/94vF8hBBuNE/видео.html The shunt is set up under the “battery communication” section so yes you’ll still see info from both devices in SA.
I am doing two battery banks at 16S. One is 8 Battle Born Batteries wired at 48 V and one is 4 SOK at 48 V. Battleborn calls out for 56.8 for the shunt charge. And SOK calls out for 55.2. I wonder if this will be a problem? A’ll charge controllers parameters are the same.
It depends on what the different manufacturers have their BMS params set to. Seems like you would have to charge up to the SOK max to get the most from both packs.
@@AdamDeLayDIY I don’t see why it would make a difference says the settings are on the shunt? All the charge controllers have the same settings for both batteries. My biggest problem seems to be getting a on/off battery switch that won’t blow! I’ve had three of them I’ve had to replace, as they only go up to 48 V 🖖
@@simon359 the shunt just tracks state of charge. The charge controller is what determines what you charge your batteries up to voltage wise. You would have to set your charge controller to the SOK value, otherwise you’re just gonna get a high voltage disconnect on the SOK if you try and charge to the battle born value. Yeah, it’s hard to find the right type of switch that goes above 48 V. I ended up putting in a few DC breakers that are rated for a much higher voltage.
@@AdamDeLayDIY The charge controllers were set right. Absorption 54.4 and float 58.4. But there’s still the manufactures charge of the batteries with a shunt, mine has a different one for each bank. Specifically, only on the shunt is first how many amp hours of the battery banks and then what the actual charge of the battery would be. As far as the DC breaker goes, I don’t know if too many breakers that can take a 1/0 gauge wire? 🖖😜
You connect each battery bank to the pi. What happens if one bank hits the set max volatage, will the others continue to charge their set volateg? or will they all stop charging when one of the banks hits the set voltage?
thanks for swift reply. another question please. If there is no direct communication between inverter and batteries, then what defines the min and max voltages to instruct the battery to stop/start charging/discharging? Is it the inverter settings or is it settings inside the BMS? or inside SA settings?@@AdamDeLayDIY
@@giollaliddy5817 Not a problem. If there's no communication between your inverters and batteries, you will set charging values in your solar charge controller (or inverter if you have an all-in-one inverter) for your bulk charge voltage. That controls when the charging stops. The BMS for your battery will have its own maximum charge voltage settings (hopefully) which prevent your battery from being over-charged. The BMS is a "safety net" and shouldn't be relied on to stop your charging.
can you set different charge currents for solar and utility? So for example the solar you want to charge at 100a, but if using utility it instead only charges at say 60a? EDIT: I found you can
@@AdamDeLayDIY Thank you for the reply. I understand it measures current in and out. I'm installing this shunt now, and my bank is setting at about 50% SOC based on voltage, but how does it know the starting point? Thanks again for your videos.
@@Ian-ws8kp If you've programmed the smart shunt based on your battery bank, you can either manually set the SOC in the Smart Shunt app or you can charge up your battery bank to 100% and let the shunt reset itself.
Off the top of my head, I believe it shows everything but "time remaining". I've asked SA about that but there's no timeframe on adding it. You can see in the video the dashboard will show a % gained or lost/hr based on whether or not your charging or discharging though, so that gives you a little idea of power flow. A lot of that detail can be found by clicking on the Battery button on the dashboard.
Can this also be used to track solar input and generator input? Assuming you put the shunt in the right place of course. I mean can it be set up in the software that way. Because I have old school charge controller and inverter.
Depending on the voltage, the smart shunt would be able to track Solar because it’s DC power, but it would just show as power going into the battery as a whole, not specifically PV power. Solar assistant has to be designed for the specific Solar charge controller for it to recognize incoming power as PV power. As far as a generator power, it couldn’t detect the AC power, but if you used a DC charger for your batteries, it would be able to see that incoming power into your battery bank. Hope that actually helps…
@@AdamDeLayDIY Thanks, it does help. With the PV, why does it depend on the voltage? I don't see anything in the Amazon link that says it has a voltage limit. Maybe it's easier to ask, how can I get the most use out of SA with Lifepower 4 batteries, an Outback inverter, and a Midnite solar charge controller?
@@MyBacktrail The voltage range of the smart shunt is 6.5-70vdc. With that setup, the only direct integration to SA (to my knowledge) is the batteries. So you would be able to connect the batteries to SA and monitor the DC flow of power. Wouldn't give you 100% window into your environment, but it would give you an idea of what's going on as well as the SOC of your system. Adding a smart shunt into the mix would do the exact same thing as the batteries, except the smart shunt would be able to better track the SOC across multiple battery packs. The downside to using the smart shunt vs the direct battery connections is that you lose some of the fine detailed info that the LifePower batteries provide to SA. Unfortunately you're only allowed to have 1 type of battery connected to SA at a time.
Ooohhh…good question. I’ve used both. Honesty, both have a lot of good but differing features. I really like the VRM and wish we could incorporate some of the features from there into SA. Unfortunately since the VRM is Victron hardware only, I was kinda forced to find an alternative. I would say SA fit at least 90% of my wants.
Hello Adam, I just returned my smart shunt before hooking it up. I have the same inverters and solar assistant. I was thinking, but not sure that the smart shunt was more informational for the SA UI and would not effect the amount of charge as that would be controlled by the inverter or bms. Any thoughts on this? Love your vids.
Appreciate that! You’re correct that the smart shunt is informational only, but it’s the most accurate information that I have seen. The only thing the smart shunt does is track the amp hours that flow through it. If you have a single battery, you may be able to rely on the information from the BMS. But once you start having multiple battery banks, it becomes very difficult to track an accurate state of charge.
Each one has its place. The VRM is only for Victron gear while Solar-Assistant fills a gap for a lot of hardware that really has poor software. Ultimately it will depend on what kind of inverter system you end up going with. Since Solar-Assistant doesn’t support any Victron equipment (outside of the Smart Shunt), if you have a Victron inverter or charge controller, the VRM only makes sense. I will say this, if I didn’t currently have a Victron system, I would have to have a system that’s compatible with Solar Assistant.
![BLACK BAG - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters March 14](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Du0Xp8WX_7I/mqdefault.jpg)
If you're interested in making your own DIY cable for your smart shunt connection, you might want to look at this additional video regarding the fact that there's no built-in isolation between the connected devices when you DIY the cable. Just something to keep in mind. ruclips.net/video/5Tzxd2UQoDM/видео.html
@@AdamDeLayDIY thanks.. I got one real one to start …
I have the same setup but with the Growatt all in one unit. Using a cheap Chinese "WonVon" shunt for now, but going to hook up the victron next week.
Nise video. I wanted away of tracking generator. With the eg4 batteries and eg4 inverters, i never knew how much power is really going in and out .I have it all wired in.I am going to turn it on tonight! Thanks Adam!
Good luck!
I really need to give this a try. I've been hearing a lot about Solar Assistant and seems it would be significantly easier than rolling my own with Grafana as I have been doing. I've been eyeing the Victron Lynx Shunt for a while now as it would easily bolt on to the side of my Victron Power In box; however, I just searched to see if there is a similar USB cable for it and it's over $500 for the VE Can cable! Holy sh. Option 2 has been trying to put the Batrium shunt board into the Lynx box, perhaps that would be more cost-effective.
It would probably be a whole lot simpler than making your own. I don’t know that I’ve heard of anyone incorporating their Lynx shunt into Solar Assistant, especially at that crazy price for the can to usb cable! That’s ridiculous! Not sure I’ve heard of a batrium integration either.
I don’t see why though you couldn’t add the Victron shunt (or the batrium) to the power in. Might just need a piece of copper bar stock.
@@AdamDeLayDIY I saw your dropdown menu had a USB CAN option, wondering if a generic USBCAN adapter would work. I have the Batrium shunt connected to the power-in now and it's just ugly for a few reasons (exposed, inadequate spacing between PCB and lug area). Anyway, future upgrade, maybe Spring...
@@LithiumSolar Hmm, I never noticed that before. I’m gonna reach out to Solar-Assistant and see if they’ve ever tested it before. Might be a nice addition since the CAN protocol is fairly standardized.
I agree that having the shunt just hanging off the side doesn’t look the best.
@@LithiumSolar I heard back from SolarAssistant and they haven't tested anything like that yet. I saw they have a USB to CAN cable on their site, so I ordered that to do some of my own testing. If you're interested, I can let you know what I find out.
Awesome. Definitely doesn’t look too complicated. The Victron and SolarAssistant seem worth it.
Nice and simple, especially if you just buy the cable and get the pre-loaded pi with Solar Assistant.
Thanks so much for this!!!!!!! This is exactly what I was looking for!!!
Your very welcome!
Hopefully they get the victron MPPT add on done by the end of the year
That would be nice. I know I asked about that at the end of last year.
Can you please explain the function on “Maintain battery state of charge” section on the tab to the left of the settings tab in solar assistant. Not sure on the time settings and how to make this work to my benefit. Thanks Joe B
So I have those settings set to change to SUB if my battery drops below 30% SOC at any time. So both SOC values are 30% and the time doesn’t matter.
There are other time of use cases where you might want to change to SUB if your SOC is too low early in the morning or even late at night. I think the SA website gives the best example. solar-assistant.io/help/voltronic/power-management
hi, I am buying an indoor wall mounted EG4. I have Schneider Inverter xw6048 with latest firmware. In addition I have insight facility. I am told by Schneider that XW6048 does not have the control board required to allow closed-loop battery comms. Is that true? Any workaround for BMS to communicate with the Inverter? Basically to give status of SOC.
Unfortunately I'm not familiar with the specifics of Schneider inverters.
I would ask Schneider what BMS protocols they support. I believe the indoor EG4 wallmount batteries can switch to different inverter protocols to help with battery communication.
Solar charge controller you said you made a cable for that,can I add that to my 6000xp and shunt in solar assist also? I assume it will see power going in, but would be nice if it appears in the right places, if it don’t without it ?
@@mattman6199 so the 6000xp actually communicates wirelessly with SA.
ruclips.net/video/94vF8hBBuNE/видео.html
The shunt is set up under the “battery communication” section so yes you’ll still see info from both devices in SA.
@@AdamDeLayDIY sorry I worded that question poorly… can you also connect a charge controller to SA using cable (is there any benifits if you can?)
@@mattman6199 unfortunately at this time you cannot connect a separate charge controller to SA.
I am doing two battery banks at 16S. One is 8 Battle Born Batteries wired at 48 V and one is 4 SOK at 48 V.
Battleborn calls out for 56.8 for the shunt charge. And SOK calls out for 55.2. I wonder if this will be a problem?
A’ll charge controllers parameters are the same.
It depends on what the different manufacturers have their BMS params set to. Seems like you would have to charge up to the SOK max to get the most from both packs.
@@AdamDeLayDIY
I don’t see why it would make a difference says the settings are on the shunt? All the charge controllers have the same settings for both batteries.
My biggest problem seems to be getting a on/off battery switch that won’t blow! I’ve had three of them I’ve had to replace, as they only go up to 48 V 🖖
@@simon359 the shunt just tracks state of charge. The charge controller is what determines what you charge your batteries up to voltage wise. You would have to set your charge controller to the SOK value, otherwise you’re just gonna get a high voltage disconnect on the SOK if you try and charge to the battle born value.
Yeah, it’s hard to find the right type of switch that goes above 48 V. I ended up putting in a few DC breakers that are rated for a much higher voltage.
@@AdamDeLayDIY
The charge controllers were set right. Absorption 54.4 and float 58.4. But there’s still the manufactures charge of the batteries with a shunt, mine has a different one for each bank. Specifically, only on the shunt is first how many amp hours of the battery banks and then what the actual charge of the battery would be.
As far as the DC breaker goes, I don’t know if too many breakers that can take a 1/0 gauge wire? 🖖😜
You connect each battery bank to the pi. What happens if one bank hits the set max volatage, will the others continue to charge their set volateg? or will they all stop charging when one of the banks hits the set voltage?
They each work independently of each other, so if one disconnects, the remaining pack keeps charging.
thanks for swift reply. another question please. If there is no direct communication between inverter and batteries, then what defines the min and max voltages to instruct the battery to stop/start charging/discharging? Is it the inverter settings or is it settings inside the BMS? or inside SA settings?@@AdamDeLayDIY
@@giollaliddy5817 Not a problem.
If there's no communication between your inverters and batteries, you will set charging values in your solar charge controller (or inverter if you have an all-in-one inverter) for your bulk charge voltage. That controls when the charging stops. The BMS for your battery will have its own maximum charge voltage settings (hopefully) which prevent your battery from being over-charged. The BMS is a "safety net" and shouldn't be relied on to stop your charging.
can you set different charge currents for solar and utility? So for example the solar you want to charge at 100a, but if using utility it instead only charges at say 60a? EDIT: I found you can
@@giollaliddy5817 If you're talking about the EG4 6500s, then yes you can.
Nice video... Keep them coming!!!!
Thanks, mate, it helps!
Thanks! Glad it helps!
How do you know when the battery is at 100% soc? Is it initially based on voltage ?
The Victron Smart Shunt is programmed with the total battery capacity. It then tracks each amp hour as it flows in and out of the battery.
@@AdamDeLayDIY Thank you for the reply. I understand it measures current in and out. I'm installing this shunt now, and my bank is setting at about 50% SOC based on voltage, but how does it know the starting point? Thanks again for your videos.
@@Ian-ws8kp If you've programmed the smart shunt based on your battery bank, you can either manually set the SOC in the Smart Shunt app or you can charge up your battery bank to 100% and let the shunt reset itself.
Besides % Do you get all the information on solar assistant as you do on the Victron app voltage,current,power,consumed ah, and time remaining
Off the top of my head, I believe it shows everything but "time remaining". I've asked SA about that but there's no timeframe on adding it. You can see in the video the dashboard will show a % gained or lost/hr based on whether or not your charging or discharging though, so that gives you a little idea of power flow.
A lot of that detail can be found by clicking on the Battery button on the dashboard.
Thanks for your quick reply !!!
Can this also be used to track solar input and generator input? Assuming you put the shunt in the right place of course. I mean can it be set up in the software that way. Because I have old school charge controller and inverter.
Depending on the voltage, the smart shunt would be able to track Solar because it’s DC power, but it would just show as power going into the battery as a whole, not specifically PV power. Solar assistant has to be designed for the specific Solar charge controller for it to recognize incoming power as PV power.
As far as a generator power, it couldn’t detect the AC power, but if you used a DC charger for your batteries, it would be able to see that incoming power into your battery bank.
Hope that actually helps…
@@AdamDeLayDIY Thanks, it does help. With the PV, why does it depend on the voltage? I don't see anything in the Amazon link that says it has a voltage limit.
Maybe it's easier to ask, how can I get the most use out of SA with Lifepower 4 batteries, an Outback inverter, and a Midnite solar charge controller?
@@MyBacktrail The voltage range of the smart shunt is 6.5-70vdc.
With that setup, the only direct integration to SA (to my knowledge) is the batteries. So you would be able to connect the batteries to SA and monitor the DC flow of power. Wouldn't give you 100% window into your environment, but it would give you an idea of what's going on as well as the SOC of your system.
Adding a smart shunt into the mix would do the exact same thing as the batteries, except the smart shunt would be able to better track the SOC across multiple battery packs. The downside to using the smart shunt vs the direct battery connections is that you lose some of the fine detailed info that the LifePower batteries provide to SA. Unfortunately you're only allowed to have 1 type of battery connected to SA at a time.
I would like to ask which solar monitoring system are better, Venus OS or Solar assistant? Thank you for answer.
Ooohhh…good question. I’ve used both. Honesty, both have a lot of good but differing features. I really like the VRM and wish we could incorporate some of the features from there into SA. Unfortunately since the VRM is Victron hardware only, I was kinda forced to find an alternative. I would say SA fit at least 90% of my wants.
Hello Adam, I just returned my smart shunt before hooking it up. I have the same inverters and solar assistant. I was thinking, but not sure that the smart shunt was more informational for the SA UI and would not effect the amount of charge as that would be controlled by the inverter or bms. Any thoughts on this? Love your vids.
Appreciate that!
You’re correct that the smart shunt is informational only, but it’s the most accurate information that I have seen. The only thing the smart shunt does is track the amp hours that flow through it. If you have a single battery, you may be able to rely on the information from the BMS. But once you start having multiple battery banks, it becomes very difficult to track an accurate state of charge.
Do you prefer the victron software over solar assistant?
Each one has its place. The VRM is only for Victron gear while Solar-Assistant fills a gap for a lot of hardware that really has poor software. Ultimately it will depend on what kind of inverter system you end up going with. Since Solar-Assistant doesn’t support any Victron equipment (outside of the Smart Shunt), if you have a Victron inverter or charge controller, the VRM only makes sense.
I will say this, if I didn’t currently have a Victron system, I would have to have a system that’s compatible with Solar Assistant.
Very cool video thank you.
Nice! I would have bought the cable. I’m lazy. Lol.
Haha. There’s a fine between being lazy and being cheap…