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diy solar

FS: homemade VE.direct to USB cable

Delta-9

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Sep 3, 2020
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I had some spare parts from my own DIY effort, so figured I would do the work and help someone else with a cheaper Victron cable option. If there are a few people interested in this or if you want more than one, I have more of the 4pin side and could make a few more, just need to get more of the USB side.

Cable measures just over 3ft in length.
Used extra shrink tubing on this one to make it look better. The ones I kept don't look this nice.

Tested this cable with my Victron SmartShunt to my Raspberry Pi 3B+ and it worked like a charm.

Full disclosure on the solder job inside the cable, wires are soldered as follows:

white -> black
black -> white
green -> yellow
red is not connected

$15 shipped
 

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Sold this cable, but I'm making more. Mods can mark this as sold.

Anyone who finds this thread later please message as I might have more.
 
Hey there,
I have a potentially stupid question that you may know the answer to. What would the best way to connect a home made battery system and bms with temp shut down to a cerbo gx, or a ve.bus?
 
Hey there,
I have a potentially stupid question that you may know the answer to. What would the best way to connect a home made battery system and bms with temp shut down to a cerbo gx, or a ve.bus?
I don't have an answer for you (i'm not sure that their is an easy way), but I am curious what sort of functionality you are looking for, what is your goal/purpose? I can think of many reasons why this would be cool and worthwhile, knowing what your goal is might help others give useful feedback.
 
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Well, I’m renovating a 30ft 78 Argosy. I have decided on mostly Victron equipment ( I’ll attach a couple of plans a whipped up)

The problem is with the lifepo4 batteries. I want to do this once, and am planning on overkill AH. I'd like 600 or 800. I would also like to put solar to charge it but I'm hoping that I can fit somewhere around 12 to 1500 watts of flexible panels (to maintain the airstream aesthetic) on the roof in series-parallel to avoid some shading issues. I just can’t justify spending 8000 on batteries so I’ve been looking at building my own. I am an electrician but these DC systems just are not my wheelhouse as I usually work on large equipment in the oil and gas industry.

I reached out to the victron community but they were less than please i was bucking the trends and hoping to use non victron batteries. A few people on the Victron forum suggested putting in a battery protect and ve.bus with cyrix li to protect the batteries but I’m now starting to think that wont be necessary if I use a bms with some aux contacts, I could just use a regular 250 amp relay to disconnect the batteries and load.

At the end of the day, i do not want to overlook anything and safe system so i am open to all suggestions.
 

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Sorry, didn't see your post for awhile. I don't use anything like that in my Raspberry Pi / Victron setup, but I did take a look in my device's settings for something that might work for you and I came across "Modbus TCP devices" and I found this page: https://www.victronenergy.com/live/ccgx:modbustcp_faq

You probably have seen that, but figured I would mention it
 
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