Awesome! Glad to be able to help! To add more options as well as control the relay from the dashboard, take a look at this video: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/iLybh6mlqaraloU.html

​@@AdamDeLay07that did it! Thank you so much!

That’s awesome that Home Assistant can help with that!

Thanks a lot!

Thanks a lot!

Thanks a lot Joe! Really appreciate it!

Yep, mine has as well. Spent a lot more time on grid than I really want to. I've already gone out once this morning to clear snow off the panels and there's still more coming down. Waiting on an official forecast from my weather guy this afternoon for the storm. Stay safe!

Thanks Pete. Sorry you're having connectivity issues with the Cerbo. I'm using wifi on mine, but the access point is only a few feet away on the other side of the wall.

Thanks! Always nice to have different options!

Thanks for letting me know! Makes perfect sense!

Thanks Bruce! Keep me in the loop with what you find! I would be very interested in that.

​@@AdamDeLay07 Following up on this topic. After researching how the Multiplus Aux2 input works, I found that it is pulled up to a 5V signal through a 10k ohm resister. When the input is open (eg. the Cerbo Aux2 relay contacts are open) the signal is 5V. Of course the signal drops to 0V when the input is shorted (eg. the Cerbo Aux2 relay contacts are closed). This enables/disables the charger as you noted in your video. But in addition, the 'charge current control' assistant also allows you to linearly control the magnitude of the charger current if the signal voltage on the Aux2 input varies between the low and high voltage limits set in the assistant. Thus, by wiring two pins (the center and one of the outside pins) of a three pin 20k ohm potentiometer in parallel with the Aux2 input on the Multiplus (or the Aux2 relay on the Cerbo) and setting the Charger Current Control Assistant parameters to 0A when voltage is lower than 0.50V and maxA when voltage is higher than 3.3V, you can now control the magnitude of the DC charge current using the full range of the 20k ohm pot when the Charger is enabled. And you don't have to upload a new configuration to the Multiplus. It works great!

@@brucebugbee6604 that's really slick Bruce! Great job! So the pot would adjust the charge current based up to what you have set as the charge current in the assistant?

@@AdamDeLay07 Yes the charger current adjusts proportionally based on the Aux2 signal voltage, ranging from 0A at 0.5V up to the charger current setting at 3.3V in my setup. The voltage signal across Aux2 is defined by the following equation when the Cerbo relay contacts are open (charger enabled): Vsignal = 5V x pot kohms setting/(10k ohms + pot kohms setting). When the pot is turned 'up' to 20kohm, I end up with a 3.3 volt signal (5V x 20kohm/30kohm) on Aux2 input. So if I set the charge current to be 50A at a 3.3V threshold in the assistant, I get 50A on the charger when the pot is turned all the way "up" to 20k ohms. When the pot is turned down halfway to 10kohms, the signal voltage on Aux2 drops to ~2.5V (5V x 10kohm/20kohm) and the charger current drops to about 35.7A. When the pot is turned down to 5kohms, the signal voltage drops to ~1.7V (5V x 5kohm/15kohm) and the charger current drops to 20.8A. When the pot is turned down to 2 kohms, the signal voltage is 0.83V and the charger current is about 6.0A. I set my disable charger voltage to be 0.5V so the charger is disabled when I reach about 1 kohm or below on the pot. Of course if the Cerbo relay contacts are closed (charger disabled) the pot setting is irrelevant in that scenario.

@@brucebugbee6604 that’s awesome! Thanks for sharing what you found!

Thanks! That would be the "Relay 2" terminal block on the bottom of the Cerbo.

Thanks. That's not something I'm familiar with. I would recommend asking that question on the Victron Community forum (community.victronenergy.com/index.html). If it's been done, someone's done it on that site.

You'll have to be on grid power in order for the grid charging to work. So if you configured your "Ignore AC Input" by using the Cerbo generator feature, you'll have to "start the generator" to switch to grid and then switch the grid charging relay. If you want to do this on its own, I believe you can set a time based condition in the generator settings on the cerbo for your overnight hours. The only thing that can't be automatic is the relay switch for grid charging. You would have to turn that on manually and then when the "generator" turned on, it would start charging from the grid. If you wanted to have it all be automatic, you might have to look at setting up Node Red for more fine grained control.

I’m not 100% sure if it works on the MultiPlus 1 or not. I know there were some differences between the two models. Provably wouldn’t hurt to test it though. The relay name and the overview options were all a part of the GuiMods changes I did a few weeks ago. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/iLybh6mlqaraloU.html As far as the wiring goes, there’s not much to it. I just took a Cat5 wire and connected it to the terminal blocks on the Cerbo and MP like I showed in the video.

Ohh you have done a video on raspberry pi. Just watching it.

Just in case anyone else is looking for the answer to this: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/otxlpdSix6qqfGQ.html

I very rarely use the grid charging option, but I believe it does throttle down charging if output power gets too high. Someone else might be able to comment more.

I believe that when you use ESS, there’s a grid set-point option. A positive number will draw from the grid and a negative number will push back to the grid. www.victronenergy.com/live/ess:ess_mode_2_and_3

I use Home assistant and have it connected to my Victron setup and at 90% battery it will turn on some loads that are nice to have but not needed, and at 97% I start turning on dump loads. Right now in winter in Wisconsin those are a heat pump at 90% and at 97% some heaters. On the opposite end to preserve power I have it switch things off starting at 30%.

Unfortunately in the US since the inverters aren't UL listed, they cannot be configured for selling back to the grid.

By default, when in passthrough mode, the inverter also charges from the grid. Now you can disable this in VE Config, but then you would have to re-enable if you had to charge from the grid for whatever reason. So even when my system switches over to grid (using the generator setup from the last video), I don't want to charge from the grid. I want to primarily charge from solar only. Like the generator setup, this gives me the ability to use the Cerbo (or the VRM) to enable or disable charging from the grid.

@@AdamDeLay07 I think I'm following. I have an 50 amp RV with a MP-II x120. I'm trying to do somewhat the same. Run loads and charge from solar and only use grid when the loads are high or the SOC is low. I'm not sure what value it would be for me to separate out the charger function when the mains / generator connect. In my case (say after many crappy days of no sun) I'm going to want the batteries charged from AC. It looks like the Aux 1 / Generator function would be all I need. Are you using the Aux 1 setup primarily for running high loads and using the Aux 2 for finer control of grid battery charging?

@@williamsmith648 Pretty much. Aux 1 is being used for low SOC switching back to grid as well as high loads. The generator function of the cerbo lets me really dial in those numbers without having to constantly make changes using VE Config. Aux2 is very rarely used. My charger is set to 0a in VE Config, so the only way I can enable charging is using the Aux2 relay. I might use it a few times during the winter if I go weeks at a time without a full charge, just to let the batteries refill, but most of the time that relay will be turned off.

The biggest reason was that Current Connected sent me the Victron inverters for some long-term testing. If you go back through my videos, you'll see I did end up having a lot of issues with the 6500s. Unfortunately, the biggest issue I had was with the lack of communication from support though.

@@AdamDeLay07 I have been watching your videos for quite a while, and I did see some of the difficulties you were having, I was kinda surprised seeing your 6500's replaced with Victron. I have a couple of 6500's but I am only using one of them so far mounted on a hand truck for a temporary power source which so far works well, but I am always apprehensive especially after seeing problems others have experienced. Thank You for all the great information you have passed along, I very much enjoy your videos.

@@LincolnSP150 Glad to be able to help out. When people ask if they'll have problems with the 6500s, from what I've seen it always ends up being the flip of a coin. Some have no issues at all and others have a lot of issues. Some issues are self-inflicted due to improper installation/understanding but not all of them. For a hand-truck installation, I doubt you would see a lot of the issues people experienced because you're only using it as temporary power. Good luck and have fun!

I updated it a little while ago

@@AdamDeLay07 that shows how much I pay attention. 🙄

@@GavinStoneDIY🤣🤣🤣

If the RPi is used for Venus OS, where there are no relays like on Cerbo, it is possible to connect a PCB board with one or more relays to the RPi and install it in the Venus OS, where it is then used just like the relays from Cerbo. I've seen videos of how to add PCB relay boards to the RPi Venus OS.

Actually yes. I've done this before on my old 12v system. I purchased a relay board and wired it to two of the GIPO pins. Let me do some digging and see if I can find the details again.

Ok, so here's what I found. The VenusOS install has 1 "relay" enabled by default (I found this out because I had to wipe my own Raspberry Pi and start over). You can add others if you want by installing the RpiGpioSetup from KWindrem. So the "relay" option for the raspberry pi basically just turns a pin on or off on the gpio header. You actually need to add your own relay to control whatever you want to switch. Years ago I wanted to be able to turn my giandel inverter on/off through the VRM. So I bought one of these relays (www.adafruit.com/product/2895) and wired it to the GPIO pins on the pi. I'm sure there's other options out there, but these were cheap. You only have to solder 3 pins (3v, gnd and signal). I then purchased these breadboard wires (amzn.to/3M1OC4D) to connect the pi to the featherwing. I used 3 female to female wires. My raspberry pi is a 2B (so you might have to double check your specific pi gpio pinout) 3v on featherwing -> GPIO header 17 Gnd on featherwing -> GPIO header 39 Signal on featherwing -> GPIO header 40 Then all you have to do is set the Relay to "Manual" in the Remote Console and you should be good to go. I'll see if I can throw together a quick video to better show what I'm talking about.

Thanks for the comment. Really helps out the KZfaq algorithm.