How to monitor our Bluetoothed batteries continuously?

[olley]

Is there a way? The only way I can think of is two cheap smart phones mounted in a frame wired to a phone charger, mounted on a wall.

 

[Geistguy]

Not sure of the answer but interested as to why you need to monitor continuously ? Just wondering.

 

[olley]

Can you have to many meters?
It appeals to the geek in me
Mount them above the door, get another and I can monitor the solar charger as well.

 

[Guigsy]

What are you trying to do? Get the state of charge on your batteries remotely?

 

[Lenny HB]

Fit a Victron BMV 712.

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[olley]

Fit a Victron BMV 712.

I can buy three smart phones for that.

 

[stevewagner]

Is there a way? The only way I can think of is two cheap smart phones mounted in a frame wired to a phone charger, mounted on a wall.

You appear to be suffering from battery anxiety and no amount of meters can cure that.

 

[RogerIvy]

If you have a massive Geekattack it’s possible with some BMS (eg JK) to connect the BMS to a Cerbo GX. Then you can geek away to your hearts content

 

[Otter Spotter]

Cheap tablet connected by Bluetooth to a shunt or Victron piece of kit, but, as others have asked ‘why do you need to? ‘

 

[Jev88]

Victron battery monitor. Latest upgrade lets you see battery and view history.

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[olley]

I login on the fogstar app to see how the batteries are doing and I just thought does someone make an android meter?
We have volt/amp meters why not one that runs android?
I can buy brand new smart phones for under £50 on Amazon or less on eBay, a nice wooden frame and mount them on the wall and the jobs a gooden.

 

[Tombola]

Do you mean for when you are away from the van
Raspberry pi with remote log in maybe ?

 

[Diabalo]

Some of us here that have Victron kit use a Raspberry Pi to monitor it remotely.

Thread here. https://www.motorhomefun.co.uk/forum/threads/victron-venus-os-and-a-rasberry.244947/


It's very easy and this vid shows you how.

 

[Guigsy]

I login on the fogstar app to see how the batteries are doing and I just thought does someone make an android meter?
We have volt/amp meters why not one that runs android?
I can buy brand new smart phones for under £50 on Amazon or less on eBay, a nice wooden frame and mount them on the wall and the jobs a gooden.

Ah, you want a continuously on display you can see within the van?

I suspect that if you tried to leave an Android device running 24/7, just displaying the app, it'll be kludgy. You'll probably find things crash or interrupt the app every few hours.

You could buy a cheap shunt from Amazon for about £20 (make sure it's one that measures current both ways). That'll give you approximate values of charge and current, but it'll be close enough.

The most robust solution is probably a Victron setup. But that's not cheap.

The hacker/maker option is some battery BMSs use a Bluetooth protocol that's documented, so you can connect to them with something like a Raspberry Pi or even a microcontroller like an ESP. Add a small screen. Then use someone's code or hack your own to get it to connect and display the data.

 

[Pete D.]

If you have a massive Geekattack it’s possible with some BMS (eg JK) to connect the BMS to a Cerbo GX. Then you can geek away to your hearts content

Are you talking in code? I have no idea what you are saying here.

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[RogerIvy]

Are you talking in code? I have no idea what you are saying here.

A Cerbo GX is a Victron product, essentially it’s a comms and monitoring tool. You can get the Touch screen to go with it to mount in your Motorhome.
You could get a Smartshunt to attach to the Cerbo GX, but there are also some BMS that can connect directly to the Cerbo GX if you buy the right cable/adaptor.
Personally I prefer the Smartshunt. All I really need to know is the SOC and what the current draw is.

 

[Diabalo]

A Cerbo GX is a Victron product, essentially it’s a comms and monitoring tool. You can get the Touch screen to go with it to mount in your Motorhome.
You could get a Smartshunt to attach to the Cerbo GX, but there are also some BMS that can connect directly to the Cerbo GX if you buy the right cable/adaptor.
Personally I prefer the Smartshunt. All I really need to know is the SOC and what the current draw is.

You don't need a Victron Cerbo GX, the Raspberry Pi uses the same Victron Venus OS so it's exactly the same but a lot cheaper.

 

[AdrianChen]

You don't need a Victron Cerbo GX, the Raspberry Pi uses the same Victron Venus OS so it's exactly the same but a lot cheaper.

 

[RogerIvy]

You don't need a Victron Cerbo GX, the Raspberry Pi uses the same Victron Venus OS so it's exactly the same but a lot cheaper.

Agreed. There are some disadvantages that we won’t go into now.

 

[berni109]

Can I ask - why bother?
If u use your van regularly u will know more or less how the batteries are performing if u just look at them once per day. Once you can predicted the outcome of a quick check u probably don't need to look more than once a week at most.

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[RogerIvy]

Can I ask - why bother?
If u use your van regularly u will know more or less how the batteries are performing if u just look at them once per day. Once you can predicted the outcome of a quick check u probably don't need to look more than once a week at most.

We have a coffee machine, air fryer, rice cooker, toaster and mini oven. We also charge a MacBook Pro frequently.
All these devices use loads of power - so I check quite frequently.
If all you’re doing is running lights and heating with a bit of mobile charging then agree - once a day is fine.

 

[berni109]

On an average day using all that lot don't your batteries bottom out at roughly the same figure. Ok some days a bit more some a bit less but do u ever get to the point where u need to switch some things off?

 

[olley]

Some of you are mixing need and want, I don't need to do this but I want/fancy to do it.
That's not to say I will do it.

I just sat on the couch and logged in to the Fogstar app and thought is there another way to do this?
Using old/cheap smart phones seems the simplest way.
I am not that keen to do it that I will start digging into coding raspberry pi's.
Got at least two old smart phones at home, so I will just leave them running the app and see what happens.

 

[Pete D.]

A Cerbo GX is a Victron product, essentially it’s a comms and monitoring tool. You can get the Touch screen to go with it to mount in your Motorhome.
You could get a Smartshunt to attach to the Cerbo GX, but there are also some BMS that can connect directly to the Cerbo GX if you buy the right cable/adaptor.
Personally I prefer the Smartshunt. All I really need to know is the SOC and what the current draw is.

Thanks for that I have the Smartshunt but didn't/don't understand the terms BMS and SOC.

 

[Diabalo]

Some of you are mixing need and want, I don't need to do this but I want/fancy to do it.
That's not to say I will do it.

I just sat on the couch and logged in to the Fogstar app and thought is there another way to do this?
Using old/cheap smart phones seems the simplest way.
I am not that keen to do it that I will start digging into coding raspberry pi's.
Got at least two old smart phones at home, so I will just leave them running the app and see what happens.

No coding needed just copy the Venus OS image onto a micro SD card from Victron's site insert card into RPI and boot it, job done.

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[olley]

Job done? Not without a screen and I have two batteries, I prefer kiss.

 

[headlight]

Victron Smart Shunt is only about £125 ?

 

[Diabalo]

Job done? Not without a screen and I have two batteries, I prefer kiss.

You don't need a screen just the Victron connect phone App

 

[Ditcha]

I just checked from my arm chair

Or using a victron widget on my phone

 

[the1andonly]

Need versus want, i remember that.
Initialy when i moved over to lithium i needed to know because id had so much trouble previously.
I Set up a bmv712 and monitored SOC and voltages with bt a nd used bt to monitor my battery bms every now and again. All i need to do to answer swmbos question " can i use the washing machine, or can we watch the telly for 2 hours".
BUT I wanted to see what I could achieve, spend money on a Pi and other bits and little thinking and achieve an aĺl singing dancing wow factor display or do it Frank Sinatras way. I did it my way , with little money as i allready had most bits, an Arduino mega and a 20x4 lcd display. Mostly i spent time on learning and writing a specific program to read the bmv712 and other sensors and could look at 7 day trend soc at 3am and now, all sorts of things, to be able to answers swbos questions. After xxxx months of using it an the answer was always yes, i didnt even notice when the display died. When a question comes the answers always yes. Even when i started charging 2 e- bike batteries the answers still always YES.
So rather than a need or want, by over / correctly specifying turn it into i dont need to know