Victron Bluetooth

Anyone come up with a good Victron Bluetooth signal solution? I have a 38' Class A with all my gear in the center belly storage area. I have installed the Bluetooth Dongle extender to reach closer to the side, but I basically have to be outside next to the storage bays to get a decent connection with my phone. Barely works inside and only a few random locations. Extension cable? Type of connector? TIA

Our class a storage areas are essentially steel boxes. BT doesn't penetrate steel very well.

What happens if you secure the bay door fully open? If you get decent reception then, it's not the BT... it's the faraday cage its in. In that case, you'll need to drill a hole and put the dongle outside the faraday cage.

The BMV-712 battery monitor is popular because the BT is in the display, so the BT is actually inside the living area in a lot of cases.

It works if I’m standing next to it even with the door close, but I’d really like to have it work inside the rig. When I’m driving, I’d like to open the app and see what kind of solar charging we’re getting.

caymaanedge said:

It works if I’m standing next to it even with the door close, but I’d really like to have it work inside the rig. When I’m driving, I’d like to open the app and see what kind of solar charging we’re getting.

Click to expand...

sunshine_eggo said:

Our class a storage areas are essentially steel boxes. BT doesn't penetrate steel very well.

What happens if you secure the bay door fully open? If you get decent reception then, it's not the BT... it's the faraday cage its in. In that case, you'll need to drill a hole and put the dongle outside the faraday cage.\

Click to expand...

This is how I would fix it (if you can find a Raspberry Pi that is):

AmyG said:

This is how I would fix it (if you can find a Raspberry Pi that is):

Click to expand...

Mmmmmm . . . I'm going with a Cerbo GX & a hotspot.

caymaanedge said:

It works if I’m standing next to it even with the door close, but I’d really like to have it work inside the rig. When I’m driving, I’d like to open the app and see what kind of solar charging we’re getting.

Click to expand...

I have the BMV-712 Battery Monitor mounted in my kitchen, and the bluetooth signal works great everywhere inside the coach to connect to that. With the BMV-712, I find I don't need to ever log into the 2 charge controllers in the RV basement, because the BMV gives plenty of info about the current and watts going into and out of the battery bank.

I do also have the RPi3 B+ with Venus OS installed and do use the Victron VRM to remote monitor, so I can log into charge controllers via Venus on the VE.Direct cables, and the BMV-712 over VE.Direct cable, but while I'm inside the motorhome, I just use an iPad over bluetooth to only connect to the BMV-712 and it works great, I don't need to see the charge controllers, since the BMV gives all the data showing battery percent, and amps/watts going in during charging.

AmyG said:

...(if you can find a Raspberry Pi that is):

Click to expand...

I just purchased another RPi3 B+ again the other day so I can put my Solar Assistant SD card install back into my old one, since I had to steal that RPi to build my Venus OS install. Since the Venus doesn't require to transfer a license like the Solar Assistant does, I'm going to put Solar Assistant SD card back into the old RPi, and put the Venus OS SD card into the new RPi, and just re-add that Venus install back with new device ID (MAC address) into VRM...

and:

Both came really fast...


Hey and another great advantage I remembered about installing a BMV-712 into an RV, is if you have more than one Victron MPPT charge controller, in Victron Connect, you can put the BMV and all the chargers into a network group (in my case the network group operates over their bluetooth), and then all the chargers will run in synchronized mode and they all stay on the same charge stage together (so you can always charge at best watts without having one switch to float too soon)...

All the chargers read a single voltage, current, and temperature reading off the BMV so they are not reading them locally off themselves.. One charge controller becomes the master and others are slaves and they stay in sync (amperage can vary charger to charger, depending on solar coming in on each array, but the charging stages remain in lock-step).