SOLAR Panel 285W

[wildebus]

I would go for a target price for the bluetooth stuff of £75. if he can match or beat that, that is a decent deal If you haven't used the Controller yet, could he maybe swap it for the Smart Solar for less than the price of the Dongle? That would be a good solution as you will have Bluetooth AND you will still have the VE.Direct port for future use as well.


The Raspberry Pi option is more of a 'hobby' type thing if you like playing with numbers.
If you wanted the 'full monty' of being able to use the Pi to show you the Battery State of Charge, the Solar Output and the connection between the two, you would be having to spend well in excess of £200 for a complete setup (inc a Victron BMV), but you would end up with a great information system.
Maybe something to have a look at at a later date? if you got the bluetooth gear and then decided to change later on, you would be able to resell the dongle and smartsense and get probably most of your money back again.

 

[RAW]

Not asked him about swapping the Victron - Maybe an idea
I have used Raspberry Pi's in the past, for mining Bitcoin LOL - not the best, for serving files and other Network related things. Even built a raspberry pi wordpress webserver once that was dragging a facebook feed back from a FB Page I manage. (slow load time !)

Is there good info on Raspberry Pi and Solar controllers, I have a spare Pi but not a Model 3, 2B i think

TIA

 

[RAW]

Doing some more research on Solar I have registered an Account on Victron Energy and they have some really useful resources. I was also reading this blog post which might interest some folk as I have been chatting with @wildebus about the Possibility of bringing a Raspberry Pi into the Mix
https://www.victronenergy.com/blog/2018/04/11/homemade-pi-open-source-raspberry-flavour/

 

[wildebus]

Doing some more research on Solar I have registered an Account on Victron Energy and they have some really useful resources. I was also reading this blog post which might interest some folk as I have been chatting with @wildebus about the Possibility of bringing a Raspberry Pi into the Mix
https://www.victronenergy.com/blog/2018/04/11/homemade-pi-open-source-raspberry-flavour/

I'll be having a read of that. Izak Burger's original post (that Phil pointed me at a couple of years ago) got me going down the Pi Path, but one aspect that is missing from the monitoring on the Venus setup is info on the 'Split-Charge' power input. It looks like the fella in the above link may have added that in?

 

[RAW]

I was looking at the content and read about the Buck Boost DC/DC converter, which seems to be a more complicated Split Charge type of device with more configurability. PDF is here

It looks like with the Van they have

They have managed to create a lot of off-grid time in their configuration.
I am wondering how much I will get, the Solar panel I have at 285W is pretty high output really for a single battery of 160AH so I am wondering still about bringing another 160AH LEOCH into the Mix, though they are quite costly. Obviously with what I have been reading on the Lead Acid battery AGM types I would need to put two batteries in at the beginning rather than realising it might be a good idea further down the line. It's all quite a teep learning curve. Are the folk that have the Van in the picture on this site, does anyone know ?