New to lithium.

[Lenny HB]

If you are happy with a phone app, and don't want the hassle of wiring a display, then a SmartShunt is the same shunt electronics, without any display at all (just a phone app via Bluetooth). However I get the impression that's the last thing the OP wants.

Apart from no programable relay on the Smart Shunt, also the the BMV 700 has a relay but only basic programing for an alarm.
The BM712 is fully programable you can set with percentage of charge which is why I fitted one.

 

[Hoovie]

Apart from no programable relay on the Smart Shunt, also the the BMV 700 has a relay but only basic programing for an alarm.
The BM712 is fully programable you can set with percentage of charge which is why I fitted one.

you have mentioned a couple of key differences between the different Victron monitors, but there is one other useful that I think is worth mentioning ...
The original monitors when disconnected from power would restart with either the SOC value self-resetting to 100%, or lose the SOC value entirely. Victron added a much-awaited option where the monitor would remember the SOC at the time of disconnection and that would be the SOC when reconnected. However, this feature was ONLY available on the bluetooth enabled Monitors (so the BMV-712 and the SmartShunt). The BMV-700 is still limited to an SOC forget or reset to 100%.

I think this is because the internal logic to do this is within the Bluetooth part of the device (which is why adding a VE.Direct Bluetooth Dongle will not add this feature).


Ref the comment "the BMV 700 has a relay but only basic programing for an alarm. The BM712 is fully programable you can set with percentage of charge which is why I fitted one"
Are you sure about that? Far as I recall using them, the BMV-700 relay can be turned on and off based on SOC value and also Voltage values. I can't test this on my own setups as my BMV Relays are now being controller externally by the Cerbo, but this is a screenshot of a Demo BMV-700 from the VictronConnect App

The BMV-712 Relay is for sure more handy as it has an NO and NC input to go with the COM (although the use of the 'Invert relay' toggle makes that less critical) and as it has an 2nd input for a Starter Battery, the relay can also be programmed to activate on Voltage criteria for the Starter battery as well.

 

[Lenny HB]

Are you sure about that? Far as I recall using them, the BMV-700 relay can be turned on and off based on SOC value and also Voltage values. I can't test this on my own setups as my BMV Relays are now being controller externally by the Cerbo, but this is a screenshot of a Demo BMV-700 from the VictronConnect App

I had a BMV700 in the last van, I had a play with it and could only set voltages to switch the relay, not much use with Lithium, otherwise I would have removed it when I traded the van.

 

[Hoovie]

I had a BMV700 in the last van, I had a play with it and could only set voltages to switch the relay, not much use with Lithium, otherwise I would have removed it when I traded the van.

Very strange. I have a pair of BMV-700s in the Motorhome. Tricky to test these due to the way they are setup (one controls an EHU Plugged-In Buzzer, the other is not monitoring a Battery so will have no SOC values to test against) but I am 99.9% sure I have used them with SOC values in setups.
I quite like using the BMV relays controlled by the Cerbo via the Node-Red system though. I have the relay on one BMV-712 switching the power to my Fridge Circuit based on the temperature of a Temp Sensor into the Cerbo.

Using the Node-Red adds loads of possibilities to relay programming. There was a thread (maybe this one?) that talked about using a relay to turn a fridge on and off depending on battery SOC and I mentioned about doing the same for a Water Heater? I have one of the Cerbo Relays set to turn on and off the feed to the Truma Water Heater depending on a whole bunch of related stuff... So if the SOC is good enough, the AC power from the Multiplus is connected to the Truma; but if the Microwave or Air Fryer is on, that Truma Power is cut (reason there being the 850W the water heater could draw PLUS the Fryer or Microwave would overload the Inverter, so I prevent that possibility by disabling the Water Heater); and finally, if the EHU is present, the wattage draw and battery SOC get ignored and the Truma gets AC power regardless.
Not sure if you have looked into Node-Red but it can be pretty handy

 

[Lenny HB]

Not sure if you have looked into Node-Red but it can be pretty handy

Had enough hassle just with standard Venus OS for now, maybe later I'll get another Pi to play with.

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}