Victron and Seelevel Monitor January 18, 2023, 06:27:06 pm Installed the Victron battery and Seelevel tank monitor systems. Great to see real numbers for this valuable information. I mounted the gauges in the area of the OEM solar charge controller. Like Andy, I removed the factory panel and replaced it with 3/4" sanded plywood. Fits right in. jor 4 Likes
Re: Victron and Seelevel Monitor Reply #1 – January 18, 2023, 08:54:46 pm Quote from: jor - January 18, 2023, 06:27:06 pmI removed the factory panel and replaced it with 3/4" sanded plywood. Fits right in. With careful measuring and cutting, the padded end can be retained, most of my customers wanted to keep the Factory look.Let's see if Andy remembers this one.Larry 1 Likes
Re: Victron and Seelevel Monitor Reply #2 – January 18, 2023, 09:27:39 pm Oh, yeah. I loved the idea of that everything-at-a-glance LCD Vena panel. Only trouble was... it didn't work. Unlike SeeLevel II's digital sensors, which send error-corrected digital data to their display panel, the Vena system used analog sensors and transmission. On a cable run of more than a few feet, that meant it was vulnerable to all kinds of influences. Accuracy was terrible, when it worked at all. What a pity! SeeLevel's 3 1/2-digit LED display is primitive by comparison, and requires you to push a button for each individual tank reading, but the readings are accurate!
Re: Victron and Seelevel Monitor Reply #3 – January 19, 2023, 02:40:21 am Quote from: Andy Baird - January 18, 2023, 09:27:39 pmOh, yeah. I loved the idea of that everything-at-a-glance LCD Vena panel. Only trouble was... it didn't work. Unlike SeeLevel II's digital sensors, which send error-corrected digital data to their display panel, the Vena system used analog sensors and transmission. On a cable run of more than a few feet, that meant it was vulnerable to all kinds of influences. Accuracy was terrible, when it worked at all. What a pity! SeeLevel's 3 1/2-digit LED display is primitive by comparison, and requires you to push a button for each individual tank reading, but the readings are accurate!I loved the way the panel looked and displayed all the essential information. It took a day to install the system and then we played with it for another day, never getting it to accurately work. I believe Kate next met up with you and together you tried unsuccessfully to get it to work. Eventually, the company stopped selling it. I think she got her money back. None of us were happy.I like our LD's See Level, it has been very dependable and accurate but so wish they had used the same type of display, "primitive" is a good descriptor.The Verna promised instant information gratification and ended like so many other 'promises' in life.Wonder if Kate still owns her LD?Larry
Re: Victron and Seelevel Monitor Reply #4 – January 19, 2023, 09:09:12 am I am getting ready to change the entire electrical system, 24V battery bank. So I plan on using the Victron and it's Cerbo and want to incorperate tank monitoring.SeeLevel II Tank Monitoring with a Victron Energy Cerbo GX
Re: Victron and Seelevel Monitor Reply #5 – January 19, 2023, 10:13:26 am QuoteSo I plan on using the Victron and it's Cerbo and want to incorperate tank monitoring.Now this sounds like a really great idea. I look forward seeing this. jor
Re: Victron and Seelevel Monitor Reply #6 – January 19, 2023, 11:11:51 am "Kate next met up with you and together you tried unsuccessfully to get it to work."And Vena's tech support freely admitted to me that in some RVs, their system just wouldn't work no matter what you did... so Kate eventually got her money back. They sold the system mostly to OEMs, so I guess once an RV maker had determined that it would work in a given model, they could safely use it in that model.The problem was putting a capacitive sensor at the end of a long wire and expecting to get accurate, consistent readings at the other end. That was never a good idea. You can get away with it with a resistive sensor such as the one in a Lazy Daze's propane tank, because resistance doesn't change if you wave a hand near the wire or turn on a nearby appliance. Capacitance does. Garnet solved this problem with the SeeLevel system by sensing fluid levels capacitively, but then encoding that digitally on the sensor strip before sending it up the line to the readout panel. A robust digital signal--on or off, nothing in between counts--is far less vulnerable to interference, especially if you build in simple error correction (checksums, etc.)A side benefit of digital signaling is that you only need one pair of wires for all three tanks. Each sensor has its own digital address, so they can all share the same wires. With Vena's analog system, you had to run a separate pair of wires from each sensor strip to the readout panel, making installation more of a hassle.If Vena had gone digital, they would have had a killer system. Maybe Garnet had that technology locked down with patents, but it's been almost twenty years, so presumably those would have expired by now. 1 Likes
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Topic: Victron and Seelevel Monitor (Read 195 times)
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