Leaderboard

Spike, the zamp controller monitors your voltage and amps, but the voltage spikes when the solar is charging your batteries, a separate monitor uses a shunt to divert the current to a separate monitor and it can more accurately track the amps being used and replaced, without a separate monitor, that's why I have to wait until early morning to check the voltage level of my batteries when they are at rest. The trimetric monitor that GeO has is highly recommended, that's the one I was looking at, but I haven't pulled the trigger yet. The amp hour function is how I track the amps being replaced by the solar, if the blue light is displayed on your controller, your panels are charging your batteries, if the green lights are on but the blue light is out your batteries are fully charged and the controller is in "float mode", that's the maintenance stage you ideally want to reach every day. When the sun goes down,and your controller shuts off for the night, if you go to the amp hour function it tells you how many amps the solar has replaced. After a while you can get a pretty good guess on your power usage, a monitor eliminates the guessing. I believe with the agm batteries we have 400 amp hours available, as long as you stay under 200 amps usage that's 50%. When we boondock I try to be conservative with the water and power usage, we generally average between 50 & 75 amp hours a day, with that amount of use our batteries are usually fully recharged by early afternoon and the limiting factor on our stay is water. Batteries are really fickle, I've read that with proper care they should last anywhere between 4 to 7 years, but nothings written in stone, take your vehicles batteries for example, I've had them go as long as 10 years and as short as 1, who knows? Steve

And at Overland's suggestion I cancelled the order of the BMV-700 and ordered the BMV-712 instead.

I doubt that's true, but even if it were, the BMV 700 draws 4mA, which is only 35 Ah/year. The 100-hr rate capacity of a Trojan T-105 is 230 Ah, so it would take over 13 years to completely drain your batteries at that rate. Hopefully, you'll recharge at least once in that time frame. If you get the Victron, then I'd definitely get the newer 712 with built in bluetooth. I have the 700 in my trailer and the 712 for the house battery in the truck and when I get a chance, I'm going to swap them. The reason is that if you later go with a Victron solar charge controller, it will want to use the same port that the bluetooth dongle uses, meaning you will no longer have bluetooth. I got mine from Inverter Supply and highly recommend them. That may be who's selling on Amazon since their prices are identical.

Oh and backcountrysolar is out of stock at the moment. I ordered from Amazon and included the bluetooth dongle for $193.

A Battery Monitor solution (one of many anyway) I consumed all the feedback above, concluded I need a battery monitor for insight into our battery use that I desire and then set out scouring the web for options. Chris's post (technomadia) from 2008, provided some excellent insight and jumping off point for products to find current versions of and consider. I concluded I need a standalone monitor, not an add on to an existing system. In all of the above research I narrowed my choices down to two: the trimetric touted above and the Victron BMV-700 (plus the bluetooth dongle). Being of a mind to always learn from other people's experiences first, I asked Zamp for their recommendation as well. They came back today with ... Good morning Mark, Thank you for your inquiry. We recommend the product from our premier retailer. https://backcountrysolar.com/collections/batteries-and-accessories/products/victron-bmv-700-lifepo4-battery-monitor To purchase, please contact our premier online retailers: Joe with Back Country Solar https://backcountrysolar.com/ 970-245-8046 Thank you, Being a bit of smartphone geek I'll be going with the BMV-700 with the bluetooth interface.

I’ve been very happy with the Xantrex LinkPro in past RVs. I’ve purchased another one to put in my E2 this winter. https://www.hodgesmarine.com/Xantrex-Linkpro-Battery-Monitor-p/xan84-2031-00.htm I agree with geO that Oliver should offer a battery monitor as an option. It takes the guess work out of knowing your battery state. For camping off the grid it is my first upgrade. — Randy

I'm happy with the Tri-Metric and think Oliver should offer a monitoring system as a upgrade.

Hi everyone, Introducing Dave, Debbie and Mikayla from Bellingham, MA. Our Ollie will be going into production in a few days. We are scheduled to pick it up in April 2019. I have been enjoying the forum, looking forward to contributing and getting excited about our new camper. Does anyone know if there is an existing thread on Step by step DIY Solar add-on? I added my own system in my recently sold Casita and wanted to do the same in the Ollie. I asked about Solar ready and was informed that all the wiring already will be in place for any options including Solar, just wasn't exactly sure what that means. So far most of our buying anxiety has come from trying to decide on the color option combinations. A thread devoted to owners posting their color combinations would be awesome for Ollie shoppers. I managed to find quite a few pictures of different combination looking through the threads but having them consolidated would be very helpful. Thanks, David

We needed a place for our collections of road and nature guide books. We did something similar in our Casita. In our LE2, we used adhesive Velcro to attach a shelf in the rear of the dinette, under the table. We used 2 sizes of refrigerator boxes, also secured with adhesive Velcro. One holds trade sized paperbacks, the other accommodates larger formats and the various handouts one gets from campgrounds. It’s road-tested, and very secure, and doesn’t get in the way of our legs Dave and Ruth Hull 316