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How to get OrionJr2 CANBUS working with Sol-Ark?

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Anyone have luck getting OrionJr2 BMS talking with Sol-Ark over CANBUS?

It has taken me a year since the cells were delivered for me to get everything together but I am finally in the last stages of building a 32 cell 48V battery and Sol-Ark's website listed the Orion BMS on their site as one they support communication (although they qualified it by saying it was untested).

I bought an OrionJr2 and wired it up and its working great but I would like to get the communication going. I searched Sol-Ark's battery comms document but did not find anything either. It appears there are many options for battery types, 00, 01, 02 etc in the Sol-Ark menu and I haven't a clue where to start on either end of this CANBUS network. Orion JR 2 Control Utility software has pre-made CANBUS profiles you can choose from. I reached out to both Sol-Ark and Ewert Energy and will update this thread.

I am sorry if this has been covered somewhere but I searched for a while before posting.
Appreciate the help and hope this thread may be able to help someone in the same boat someday.
 
Hey Chris how are you im doing a orion Bms jr 2 with the Solark 12k inverter as well we are using 8 tesla model S modules for a diy battery i had a quwstion for u how did u wire up the Orion BMS jr2 to the inverter what signals are u using to trigger contactors and charge thank u any help would be appreciated.
 

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Orion tech support might be willing to work with SolArk to develope the specific words that the CANBUS needs for them to talk. I know Orion has worked with Schneider and various EV chargers. I was not able to get Outback to work on such a project for my Outback Skybox. The contactor works.
 
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Anyone have luck getting OrionJr2 BMS talking with Sol-Ark over CANBUS?

It has taken me a year since the cells were delivered for me to get everything together but I am finally in the last stages of building a 32 cell 48V battery and Sol-Ark's website listed the Orion BMS on their site as one they support communication (although they qualified it by saying it was untested).

I bought an OrionJr2 and wired it up and its working great but I would like to get the communication going. I searched Sol-Ark's battery comms document but did not find anything either. It appears there are many options for battery types, 00, 01, 02 etc in the Sol-Ark menu and I haven't a clue where to start on either end of this CANBUS network. Orion JR 2 Control Utility software has pre-made CANBUS profiles you can choose from. I reached out to both Sol-Ark and Ewert Energy and will update this thread.

I am sorry if this has been covered somewhere but I searched for a while before posting.
Appreciate the help and hope this thread may be able to help someone in the same boat someday.
Did you get you get your Orion Jr 2 to communicate with the Solark ? I am working on a battery and was hoping to use the same setup. Thanks Roger
 
Hi all. I've been working on getting the Orion BMS talking to my solark inverter too. Although Solark claim to support Orion BMS, I haven't been able to see any evidence of it apart from the logo on their website. The BMS has the capacity to accept the canbus info from solark but solark won't release their canbus map so the appropriate addresses can be programmed. I have been in communication with solark and they suggested they may be willing to share it so long as I tell them my inverter serial number so that they could void the warranty. As mine was a new untested system I was unwilling to do that. Good thing too because I did have some issues that required replacement parts.
Now my system is working in open loop mode, but it would be great to get the two systems communicating. If anyone has some inside info on the canbus map it would be greatly appreciated.
 
I am in the same boat. I have had Orions for seven years, first an Orion Jr and now a first generation standard Orion BMS.. A week ago I asked Ewart Energy for some info and have not heard back yet. The specifics were how to configure the drop down to allow Victron communications which is what I understood the Orion needed to output in order for the SolArk to see or understand the CAN messages. The specific drop down is in the Bsttery Profile tab under CAN bus settings. One of the options which @offgrider told me about in a PM was the Victron selection but my Gen 1 BMS does not have that. I don't know if that is a version issue or firmware. My firmware is up to date. @offgrider told me he had it working and did not mention a CAN bus map. Perhaps he can chime in here. From this thread and communication with offgrider, it seems like there are at least four or five of us that would like to implement that communications.
My SolArk install is less than a month old so I do not want to waive my warranty rights either.
Specifically, I do not know enough about CAN communications to even know what I would do with a CAN bus map but the above is all I can offer. I hope this helpful. Overall I am pleased with my Orion and specifically like the SOC estimates which have always been more accurate than my old Outback Skybox or more recently my SolArk.
 
I have a Solark12K and a BMS-2-Jr that I just a few months ago got all set up. I made a post somewhere about it. Since were here in the all-in-one system, it was probably posted in the bms section. Like you I also have a 32-cell 16s2p bank. I have attached the profile that Im using. Please change capacity settings or you will burn your house down. specifically Id caution 2 things:

1) your batteries may have different capacities than mine, so youll want to go adjust for that. I think its actually in 2 differnet places.

2) my SOC% to voltage graph is not quite right. Im not sure actually what to use, I wish I could have something that operates more linearly as far as SOC% to current pull/push since voltage is most definitely NOT linear with this chemistry, but Im just not quite sure which voltage settings to use to correlate to different SOC percentages.

I didnt have to map any CAN id numbers, neither on the solark nor on the bms2jr. just selected VICTRON inverter in the bms and set to 500 for speed (I think, check to see what the profile has)

Also, I cant seem to keep from getting overvolt past 3.65 when charging and the batteries finally get 100% capacity. And then contactor cuts off. Not sure what do do other than set the CANBUS max charge volts to lower than I have it now (I think its 3.6, again check the actual profile)
 

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Also, I cant seem to keep from getting overvolt past 3.65 when charging and the batteries finally get 100% capacity. And then contactor cuts off.
My solution to that is to reduce my charging voltage. I only charge to 3.4-3.45 volts per cell which is a pack voltage of 54.4V to 55.2V. At that voltage i figure I am at 95% of SOC or above depending on how long my Constant Voltage stage is.
 
On a hunch, I looked at my old Orion jr program and it has an option for Victron inverters, It is at least six or seven years old and seems to have a problem with more than 3 CANBUS messages so I may be upgrading to an Orion Jr2 for a lot of reasons. Orion support has been helpful.
In any event I have listed my Gen 1 Orion BMS on the diyelectriccar forum marketplace. It is much more complicated than I need. That became obvious as soon as I hooked up the Jr again. I thought I could use the features but they just get in the way of a simple installation.
 
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My solution to that is to reduce my charging voltage. I only charge to 3.4-3.45 volts per cell which is a pack voltage of 54.4V to 55.2V. At that voltage i figure I am at 95% of SOC or above depending on how long my Constant Voltage stage is.
@offgrider , did that help? Also are you using a multi purpose output to trigger the contactor or is it triggered by a CAN message?
The multi purpose outputs can be configured for low or high voltage triggers. I have not played with those settings but if I understand how they work, they can be set to different values than the other limits in the BMS under the cell settings.
 
If anyone has some inside info on the canbus map it would be greatly appreciated.
I found what I think is a CANBUS map on the Orion site. I also looked in the BMS program and saw some CAN message details but it is all greek to me. As mentioned above, my very old Orion Jr can't process more than three CAN messages and will not accept the Victron output. I am working with Orion tech support to get me a workaround so I can see the Orion and SolArk communications, If satisfactory, I will probably upgrade to the Jr2 which has more CAN capability
The file is called OBD PIDs list and I don't know if it is what you are looking for but some of the descriptions resemble information that I want to use.
 
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@offgrider , my other question is whether you used a termination resistor between your BMS Jr2 and the SolArk. I know the Orion Jr has one on it and my Wifi Connector has one so I did not need it there.
Orion support did manually modify my profile so now I can check the Victron output on the BMS. I also need to make sure I have a good electrical connection because those wires on the RJ45 plug are pretty small.
 
I didnt do one on the solark
@offgrider , my other question is whether you used a termination resistor between your BMS Jr2 and the SolArk. I know the Orion Jr has one on it and my Wifi Connector has one so I did not need it there.
Orion support did manually modify my profile so now I can check the Victron output on the BMS. I also need to make sure I have a good electrical connection because those wires on the RJ45 plug are pretty small.
I didnt add one one the solark, just connected them directly
 
Okay, I tried it and it doesn't work with my old Orion but I get error messages that tells me my seven year old BMS Jr is not up to the task. I located a Jr 2 and when that arrives I will give it a try.
 
While this is still fresh in everyone's minds can someone document in detail how they got it to work with the Sol-Ark?
In a few months people will find this thread and it would be nice if it had more details.
 
I posed a good bit more detail here
That is a good explanation of setting up the Orion with a contactor. I think what @robby was referring to was the CAN communications., Since I just went through that I will take a stab at a simple description..

The first step on the SolArk is making up a CAN communication cable. Any RJ 45 cable will do. Pin 4 is CAN Hi and Pin 5 is CAN Lo. This cable is connected to the CAN cable coming out of the Orion Jr2. ( Red is CAN Hi and Black is CAN Lo) No resister is needed. In the case of the SolArk 12k this is plugged into the RJ45 port labeled Battery CAN Bus. Details for other models can be found in the SolArk document titled "Battery Integration Guide". The battery communication needs to be set up on the SolArk by checking the Box "BMS Lithium Battery under Battery Setup. Make sure the address is 00. Once you are done you should see a new selection on the SolArk main screen. It won't be populated yet until the next step.
The next step is setting up CAN communications on the Orion. This is done on the Battery Profile page. Click on the CANBUS Settings tab and at the bottom of the page is a window in which you need to scroll down to "AC Inverter". Clip to drop down choices and click on Victron Inverter. After doing this be sure to upload the profile to the BMS from the programming interface,
Once you are done you should be able to see the BMS values in the new tab you added above in the SolArk. I just set mine up and have not reviewed all the values on the attached.
PXL_20230111_215131544.MOTION-01.COVER.jpg
For example, I am not sure why Charge current limit: 0A and Nominal_Cap: OAh. Battery charge voltage: 56.0 V , comes from a BMS setting and I will be watching how this relates to lower settings I have set on the SolArk.
EDIT: I checked the BMS and one of my cells had tripped the BMS so the BMS must have lowered the Charge limit. Now, later the battery is discharging, that cell is back under the limit and the Charge current limit is back to normal_
I see no correlation to the Ahr Capacity set in the Orion (800 Ah) and the above Nomical_Cap:0Ah. The Alarm digits do not correlate to anything I see on the Orion.
 
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