BMS
Above an impression of the finished PCB design for the main controller module. About half the board is taken by the ESP32 module with POE Ethernet port; the other half has two relays and an optocoupler to interface with the Remote Battery Switch, another relay to interface with the active
BMS
I finished the design for the controller board. It uses the Waveshare ESP32-S3-ETH module with the POE power over ethernet module. This module has an Ethernet port that will be available on the outside for connecting it to our network switch. The POE converts to 5V power and
BMS
My reason to use the ATtiny85V microcontroller is that it has a power-down sleep mode where it consumes as little as 1 µA, which equals zero for any practical purposes. The reason for consuming anything at all is that we can wake it up by changing the state of
BMS
Last year I designed BMS v2 and built a prototype that worked great. I continued to design the circuit boards, finished that and then never actually ordered them… because I didn’t like the large size and mass of cabling. What I liked about the design is that it uses
Network
We have now been using Wireguard VPN’s between our Spectrum Cable Internet in Florida and our KPN Internet service in the Netherlands for a couple of weeks so I think we can come to some conclusions. We use these in several ways, let’s start with the simple ones:
Electrical
I previously called these gadgets a scam or at least a barely allowed trick and I did receive some feedback on that, asking if a company like Victron really is selling a scam product so let me put this into context with this post: I call these gadgets scams or
Electrical
You can buy a LIM for $1000-$2000, which is a great deal for a hospital operating room but a bit stiff for a sailboat where nobody dies when AC power is disrupted. A couple remarks before diving in: the diagram above is conceptual, not an actual schematic, which requires
Electrical
In part one we arrived at the input bus where incoming AC power, if any, is present. This incoming power is used to charge the batteries and/or to feed the distribution panels for use throughout the boat. Multiplus inverter/chargers I recommend two identical units that are special-ordered
Electrical
For these posts I am using a diagram that closely follows our actual installation aboard Jedi. In this post I discuss the input side: the shore power and generator inputs, the transfer switch, the input bus and the P conductor busbar. I present a detailed description of an installation that
Electrical
Now that we have solar arrays, lithium batteries and good electronics to run everything, it is time to upgrade the AC part of our systems to a safer and better setup. This better system is insulated floating power distribution, like used in hospitals, war ships and commercial ships and other
Passage
We are aboard the Nieuw Statendam, a Holland America Line Pinnacle Class ship, traveling from Florida to Rotterdam. This ship has Starlink and we have the entry level wifi package that allows email en web browsing. So that’s great to try everything we set up on our MacMini back
Network
Cloud data became popular with the introduction of Dropbox and today we have iCloud, Google Drive, OneDrive etc. that are all massively popular. While everyone accepts their small print conditions without even reading them, we know from sources like Snowden that governments do mass data surveillance including hacking and threatening