Victron BMV 712 bluetooth shunt display screen ?

[headlight]

I have a BMV 712 bluetooth shunt that displays readings on an app on my phone.
If I wanted to add a wall mounted display is it the BMV 700 I need (single leisure battery set up) ?
If so the ads I have seen for the BMV 700 show it comes with a shunt, I already have a shunt so can you buy the BMV 700 without a shunt as I assume I don't need one.

 

[Lenny HB]

I think you have a Smart Shunt both the BMV 700 & BMV 712 come with the display. You can't buy a display seperatly.

The main difference between the 700 & 712 is the 712 has Bluetooth, it can monitor the voltage of a second battery & rather than just an alarm relay its fully programmable.

 

[headlight]

I think you have a Smart Shunt both the BMV 700 & BMV 712 come with the display. You can't buy a display seperatly.

The main difference between the 700 & 712 is the 712 has Bluetooth, it can monitor the voltage of a second battery & rather than just an alarm relay its fully programmable.

I have the 712 Smart Shunt that shows readings on an app on my phone, no display.
My question is can I connect a 700 wall mounted display to my 712 shunt using the data cable and power lead that comes with it or would I need to fit the 700 shunt as well ?

 

[Lenny HB]

As far as I'm away there only 3 Victron shunts, the Smart Shunt, BMV 700 & BMV712. Both BMV's come with the display.

Sounds like you have a BMV 712 but the display has not been fitted you may be able to buy it as a spare.

RogerIvy may be able to help.

 

[headlight]

As far as I'm away there only 3 Victron shunts, the Smart Shunt, BMV 700 & BMV712. Both BMV's come with the display.

Sounds like you have a BMV 712 but the display has not been fitted you may be able to buy it as a spare.

RogerIvy may be able to help.

Sorry Lenny my mistake I have the Smart shunt not the 712.

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[Lenny HB]

Fairly certain you can't add a display to that.
If you did have a display I think you would be disappointed. I have a BMV 700 I gave up with the display and bought a Bluetooth dongle for it. The display is small and not very user friendly.
I will be getting a BMV 712 for the new van but only because I will need the programmable relay function, probably won't fit the display.

 

[St3v3]

Have you got an old phone? Use that

 

[headlight]

Fairly certain you can't add a display to that.
If you did have a display I think you would be disappointed. I have a BMV 700 I gave up with the display and bought a Bluetooth dongle for it. The display is small and not very user friendly.
I will be getting a BMV 712 for the new van but only because I will need the programmable relay function, probably won't fit the display.

Thanks for that Lenny, I thought that that might be the case.
Really I just wanted a SOC display, mainly so the other half could know SOC when I'm not at the van.
When I had lead acid leisure batteries, even though I had the Smart Shunt, I had wired in a cheap volt meter so you could see battery status at a glance without having to open an app.
Obviously voltage is pretty useless to determine a lithium battery's state so was just wondering if there was a wall display I could add.

 

[Kannon Fodda]

I believe you can connect a Victron led display thingy to it, a GX connection device. Intended to do a lot more than just monitor the state of charge. Probably costly.

I dunno but will the smartshunt allow more than one bluetooth device, even if only one connection atca time? Would allow you to at least use different smartphones. It after all can sync with other Victron stuff over bluetooth like the mppt smart solar controllers so two smartphones may be possible.

 

[the1andonly]

The only method i can think of is to sell the smart shunt and buy a bmv712

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[headlight]

The only method i can think of is to sell the smart shunt and buy a bmv712

If that is the case I'll stick with the smart shunt and app.

 

[Pausim]

Fairly certain you can't add a display to that.
If you did have a display I think you would be disappointed. I have a BMV 700 I gave up with the display and bought a Bluetooth dongle for it. The display is small and not very user friendly.
I will be getting a BMV 712 for the new van but only because I will need the programmable relay function, probably won't fit the display.

I have done exactly the same, added the bluetooth dongle to my BMV 700. I consider the display a waste of space and have hidden it in the battery locker out of the way.

 

[Lenny HB]

I have done exactly the same, added the bluetooth dongle to my BMV 700. I consider the display a waste of space and have hidden it in the battery locker out of the way.

It would be great if they did a Smart Shunt with a programable relay, that would be far more useful than a display.

 

[RogerIvy]

If you don’t want to spend a lot of money you could consider a used Raspberry Pi with small touchscreen (set up with Venus as a Cerbo GX), connect that to your smartshunt. nigelivy did that in his motorhome as a proof of concept and it works a treat. The nice thing is you can also connect your MPPT.

 

[RogerIvy]

As far as I'm away there only 3 Victron shunts, the Smart Shunt, BMV 700 & BMV712. Both BMV's come with the display.

Sounds like you have a BMV 712 but the display has not been fitted you may be able to buy it as a spare.

RogerIvy may be able to help.

You also have the Lynx kit but that’s a whole different kettle of fish.

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[the1andonly]

Does the smartshunt have a VE connection if so it is also possible to use an arduino mega and a simple LCD display. I have done this with the bmv712.

 

[Lenny HB]

If you don’t want to spend a lot of money you could consider a used Raspberry Pi with small touchscreen (set up with Venus as a Cerbo GX), connect that to your smartshunt. nigelivy did that in his motorhome as a proof of concept and it works a treat. The nice thing is you can also connect your MPPT.

I've been playing around with a Raspberry and linked it to my BMV 700 did have me tearing my hair out a bit. I find as I get older remembering the syntx for when you need command line instruction is a nightmare but an achievement once it's up and running.

 

[Raul]

If you don’t want to spend a lot of money you could consider a used Raspberry Pi with small touchscreen (set up with Venus as a Cerbo GX), connect that to your smartshunt. nigelivy did that in his motorhome as a proof of concept and it works a treat. The nice thing is you can also connect your MPPT.

Raspberry pi user to, in the van we use a Pi 3B+ and a 7” touch screen display. All loaded with Venus OS and GUI mods.
I got mine from Pi shop, occasionally they pop up on eBay.

 

[autorouter]

If you don’t want to spend a lot of money you could consider a used Raspberry Pi with small touchscreen (set up with Venus as a Cerbo GX), connect that to your smartshunt. @nigelivy did that in his motorhome as a proof of concept and it works a treat. The nice thing is you can also connect your MPPT.

A bit more explanation for the OP. Victron do some dedicated controllers such as the Ekrano GX, ColourControl GX, Cerbo GX and Venus GX. The first two have a built-in display, the second two can work without a display but you can add a small display if you want. They connect to Victron equipment by various methods, both wired and wireless. They will monitor the state of the various Victron devices, and can run programs to control them if you want.

They are super-reliable and quite expensive, so if you don't want all the functionality there are less expensive options. The Victron controllers are basically dedicated stand-alone computers, running a custom version of Linux called Venus OS. Victron have released free versions of the Venus OS to run on various other micros like the Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone. So a Raspberry Pi with a small 4 inch display will look very like a Victron controller, and do much the same job, at a better price point.

Obviously it requires a quite a bit of assembly and setting up - no problem if you are an inveterate tinkerer but certainly not plug-and-play.

Once you have one of these controllers - either Victron branded or homebrew - it will connect to all your Victron stuff, including inverters, chargers and solar controllers, as well as shunts, and can get them all playing together nicely, with a display showing everything that's happening. It can also communicate with a phone app. And even send monitoring data to your own Victron account in the cloud, so you can monitor everything remotely.

 

[bigtwin]

Really I just wanted a SOC display, mainly so the other half could know SOC when I'm not at the van.

Does your wife not have a smart phone?

It sounds like the simple solution is just to download the Victron App onto a second phone for your wife.

Ian