As a huge Victron fan, I've been waiting for a third party battery to be able to communicate with the Venus OS (the OS on the Venus GX and the Cerbo GX as well as the Colour Control GX).
Victron's batteries are not well stocked in Canada and typically require an external BMS. Battleborns while nice have zero communication features built in which rules them out as well. Renogy was one of the few that was easily available, had good reviews and had an external RS485 communication bus. I've had one of their 100AH for a while hoping I'd get around to writing a driver for the Venus OS.
Thankfully no need! I discovered a great project on GitHub where Louis Van Der Wait wrote a driver to communicate with multiple batteries which used a serial communication protocol, including Renogy.
https://github.com/Louisvdw/dbus-serialbattery
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I purchased the Renogy OEM USB RS485 adapter (normally used to update firmware on the batteries):
https://ca.renogy.com/rs485-to-usb-serial-cable/
think
Then installed the driver from Louis on my Venus GX (I also unplugged the Renogy remote display as I suspect it will conflict having two master devices on the bus). It took a few moments but then under devices it appeared:
As you can see pulling the battery info directly from the battery BMS results in a different reading than the SmartShunt since that device is calculating how much the battery should have in it by monitoring the current draw. Also does not require any re-sync etc, the battery BMS keeps track of all this.
Since we can now talk directly to the BMS we can set alarms based on individual cell voltage, internal temperature etc.
Here is some of the other information you can gather:
I'll post the remaining screens in another post.
While not fully ready for primetime it's very close. I'll work with Louis to try to iron out some of the minor issues and report back. The other benefit of this is you can re-purpose your SmartShunt now as a DC Energy meter to measure other items in the coach (or house).
See release notes for Venus OS 2.80~29:
Now I just wish Battleborn had a method to communicate with their BMS since there are so many of them out there in the RV world.
Cheers
Tim
Victron's batteries are not well stocked in Canada and typically require an external BMS. Battleborns while nice have zero communication features built in which rules them out as well. Renogy was one of the few that was easily available, had good reviews and had an external RS485 communication bus. I've had one of their 100AH for a while hoping I'd get around to writing a driver for the Venus OS.
Thankfully no need! I discovered a great project on GitHub where Louis Van Der Wait wrote a driver to communicate with multiple batteries which used a serial communication protocol, including Renogy.
https://github.com/Louisvdw/dbus-serialbattery
---
I purchased the Renogy OEM USB RS485 adapter (normally used to update firmware on the batteries):
https://ca.renogy.com/rs485-to-usb-serial-cable/
think
Then installed the driver from Louis on my Venus GX (I also unplugged the Renogy remote display as I suspect it will conflict having two master devices on the bus). It took a few moments but then under devices it appeared:
As you can see pulling the battery info directly from the battery BMS results in a different reading than the SmartShunt since that device is calculating how much the battery should have in it by monitoring the current draw. Also does not require any re-sync etc, the battery BMS keeps track of all this.
Since we can now talk directly to the BMS we can set alarms based on individual cell voltage, internal temperature etc.
Here is some of the other information you can gather:
I'll post the remaining screens in another post.
While not fully ready for primetime it's very close. I'll work with Louis to try to iron out some of the minor issues and report back. The other benefit of this is you can re-purpose your SmartShunt now as a DC Energy meter to measure other items in the coach (or house).
See release notes for Venus OS 2.80~29:
- Support SmartShunt DC Energy meters configured as "DC System". Two things happen when one or more SmartShunts are configured as such: (1) the power shown in the DC system box is the sum of powers reported by all SmartShunts configured as such. Allowing multiple meters is done to accommodate for example a catamaran, then you can measure the DC Systems on Port side and on Starboard side. Use the Custom name setting to give each of the meters configured as DC System their own name. (2) the DC System Current is being compensated for when setting DVCC charge current limits to Multis, Quattros and Solar Chargers. Which in more detail mains that for example when a load of 50A is being measured, and CCL by the battery is 25A, the limit given to the Multis & Solar Chargers is 75A.
And the notes: (A) instead of a SmartShunt, also a BMV-712 can be used. (
Setting it to be a DC System is done in the settings of the BMV/SmartShunt itself.
Now I just wish Battleborn had a method to communicate with their BMS since there are so many of them out there in the RV world.
Cheers
Tim
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