Price Drop on LifePO4 200ah Battery

shade

Well-known member
From the Specifications tab, it doesn't appear to offer a low temp cutoff.

A good deal on a LFP battery that uses an external BMS with temperature management is the 160Ah from Victron.
 
From the Specifications tab, it doesn't appear to offer a low temp cutoff.

A good deal on a LFP battery that uses an external BMS with temperature management is the 160Ah from Victron.

The Victron Batteries are great. Love that they have bluetooth.
 

shade

Well-known member
The Victron Batteries are great. Love that they have bluetooth.
It's pretty neat to be able to check on the battery from inside my house. When I finally have the system installed in my truck, the level of integration offered by Victron should help offset the cost.
 

Photobug

Well-known member
It's pretty neat to be able to check on the battery from inside my house. When I finally have the system installed in my truck, the level of integration offered by Victron should help offset the cost.

Unless the battery has a better Bluetooth range than the Smart Solar, don't plan on communicating with your battery unless you are right next to your vehicle.

I have yet to try an open field test of the Bluetooth communication range on my s
Smart Solar, but when a vehicle or home wall is involved I am finding the range to be 10-15 feet.
 

dreadlocks

Well-known member
I can open up any of my victron stuff via bluetooth from my bedroom window.. it is really nice for keeping an eye on stuff in the winter when trailer is buried in feet of snow..

When its in the driveway I can connect from my office, YMMV but I've got no complaints about range.. pretty typical for Bluetooth stuff.. you wont get hundreds of feet but a few dozen is usually fine.. if you want more range, get one of the big control units and it can do wifi/internet remotely.
 

shade

Well-known member
I can open up any of my victron stuff via bluetooth from my bedroom window.. it is really nice for keeping an eye on stuff in the winter when trailer is buried in feet of snow..

When its in the driveway I can connect from my office, YMMV but I've got no complaints about range.. pretty typical for Bluetooth stuff.. you wont get hundreds of feet but a few dozen is usually fine.. if you want more range, get one of the big control units and it can do wifi/internet remotely.
That's been my experience so far, but I realize the limitations of BT. As long as I can reliably connect while in my truck, that's all that really matters. Atm, the battery in in my basement, and I'm seated within 20' of it, with no connection issues.
 

luthj

Engineer In Residence
There are bluetooth range extenders/repeaters.

Assuming there isn't some noisy equipment saturating the spectrum 30-40ft is doable if you have line of sight free of lots of metal.
 

shade

Well-known member
There are bluetooth range extenders/repeaters.

Assuming there isn't some noisy equipment saturating the spectrum 30-40ft is doable if you have line of sight free of lots of metal.
One of those could be helpful with a trailer installation. I wouldn't be that concerned about normal operation of the system while driving, but if an alarm condition was set, I'd want to know about it.
 

luthj

Engineer In Residence
There are external style antennas which work in the bluetooth frequencies. Depending on the design, it may not be difficult to retrofit a connector to install one. More gain means better range.

Most 2.4ghz wifi antennas would work.
 

hour

Observer
I’ve been floored by the bluetooth range of my stuff recently. Sitting at the bar in the middle of a restaurant, car about 50 feet away between other cars. Stuff in truck bed. Can connect to bmv and smartsolar sitting here, just takes a few seconds sitting on 20%. I think one would have a hell of a time increasing range or repeating with any off the shelf solution.
 

dreadlocks

Well-known member
people forget that bi-directional wireless range is limited to the weakest transceiver in the pair.. if you have a 1W radio on one side, and a 0.25W radio on the other side.. effective range is 0.25W because it dont matter when you can hear it if it cant hear you.

I wonder how many range complaints are due to the crappy phone with a magnetic car mount on the back of em and not the Victron unit.. I noticed when I upgraded my phone last to a Pixel my bluetooth range went up substantially over the previous old dinosaur phone I had.. If your range is terrible, might be time to upgrade that flip phone you got grandpa.
 

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