Victron Energy BMV-712 Smart Battery Monitor (Grey)

Using this to monitor an off-grid home solar electric system. Very Accurate, adjustable, easy to install and use. Love the phone app. But the blue backlight makes the display a bit tough to read at times. Really wish they offered it with an easier to read green or amber backlit display, preferably user selected. Id give it 10 stars if it worked with WiFi, but Bluetooth is better than nothing. It WILL also hold last known depth of discharge information even after being powered down. This is a user defined setting. I strongly recommend this battery monitor for anyone living off grid or RV camping. The information provided is indispensable. I’m constantly playing with the phone app checking out how much power is coming out of my panels and how much power we are using. It’s fully adjustable and can be calibrated if needed for ultimate accuracy. If this description fits your needs Buy it!

Important to note that all negatives must go to a negative buss bar that is connected to the shunt. Finally got the alternator also routed through the neg buss bar and now reading all input and output in the house batteries

Normal volt meters are not very useful in a camper because you have to disconnect the battery to and let it rest for an hour or so to get an accurate volt reading to see how much the battery is discharged. Not very practical. This product is an amp meter and actually measures how much energy is going in and out of the battery. After setting it up you tell it how many aH you batteries hold and once they are charged it will then measure how much energy leaves and comes back in to the battery. While it gives you the numbers a simple percentage display shows you much of what you need to know. Its also accurate enough that you can turn things on and off and see how many amps they pull which can help to troubleshoot issues or just giving you a good idea how much that light or furnace actually uses from your batteries. Installation is fairly easy. The shunt needs to go near your batteries and goes between the negative terminal on the battery and all negative cables from the camper. Everything has to run through the shunt to get an accurate reading. There is also a small red cable to run from the shunt to the positive terminal of the battery. The small meter gets installed inside somewhere and there is a small phone type cable which runs from the shunt to the meter. The shunt is the only negative thing of the whole kit. There are some electronics on it so it needs to stay try. For most campers the batteries are outside in a battery box which may not be 100% water proof. I made it work but Id like to see a version of the shunt which is more waterproof itself. Also the shunt is rated for 500 amps so the terminals on it are huge. My battery cables were not as big so I had to open them up a bit to fit on the shunt terminals. I dont need anywhere near 500a so it would have been nice to have a smaller shunt with battery sized terminals. Just noting this for other customers but still love the product. There is also the Bluetooth app which works extremely well to give you much more control and details on whats happening with your electrical system. If you always camp plugged in to shore power this might not be worth it but if you dry camp this is a must have. Highly recommend this product.

The Victron Battery Monitor is very easy to install and works the first time. In that regard, it is just like the 12 VDC to 24 VDC charger I bought from Victron. The Bluetooth conductivity of both units work flawlessly with their phone app. As for the Battery Monitor, you can see charge and discharge currents, State of Charge, voltage, (and voltage of a second battery such as an engine start battery) plus graph the history of charge and discharge sequences such as run time vs off time of refrigerators. You will need to know, or figure out through observation, what the actual Amp Hour capacity of your battery bank is and then enter that into the setup in order to see an accurate State of Charge but this is easy to do. I just ordered a second unit today to be able to monitor a second House bank on my boat. Very pleased.

As the solar setup recharges, the % SOC doesn’t show that. Battery voltage shows that I’m chargrged, % doesn’t. Today I’m at 14.4 volts, but % shows 52%. Must be how it’s set up…

My previous battery monitor decided to quit so I took the chance and purchased the BMV-712 even though it was a bit more expensive. Im so glad I did! This unit behaves wonderfully, just like the description. I currently have it on a 5kVA solar system with a 600Ah - 48v battery bank. I also purchased the optional temperature sensor: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B076MVPSMQ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I use the smartphone app literally 20+ times a day to check on the SOC of my battery bank, temperature, etc.. Aside from all the wonderfulness there are a couple quirks that you might like to know about before you purchase this. - One - the unit connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth. I have been impressed with the range, but the connecting time can be longer than I would expect. It takes on average 10-15 seconds to fully connect to the device. The closer you are to it the faster it connects. If Im standing right next to it, 5 seconds, but if Im next to it, Ill just look at the unit itself. Also, is has to reconnect if your screen shuts off. I have my screen-off timer at 30s, so sometimes that can be annoying. - Two* - the panel unit has +/- realtime power that can be displayed, but this is missing in the app, you can see realtime voltage and current, but it doesnt do the math for you in the app. *update* This was feature was added in a recent update of the app, so now it shows instantaneous power as well. - Three - The unit has a bunch of historical data you can view, but in my opinion it doesnt keep track of cycles properly. According to the current firmware version the battery needs to drop below 65% before a cycle has been counted. For example, on average our batteries discharge to about 80% remaining capacity everyday. Somedays more, some less. Ive had this installed for over a month and it currently shows 3 total charge cycles. - Four - It can only connect to one bluetooth device at a time, but even if the phone/tablet/computer is not actively displaying anything (screen off, etc.) it is still somehow connected and prevents another device from seeing it. This drove me crazy for a hour one day when I thought its bluetooth had quit working. Turns out my computer was still connected because I had the app open even after the computers display was sleeping. I even powered off the BMV-712 and it still was locked to my computer when it restarted. I had to quit the app on my computer before it would show on my phone. But whats weird is it would still need to reconnect and go through its procedure when waking up your computer/phone, etc. As I understand it, the programmers are working on a revision of the current firmware that will add in/fix some of these issues. The tech support is great, I inquired about the charge cycle issue and they replied within 10min. Very impressed. All in all, I still rate it 5 stars because it has a lot of very useful features and it just works. Easy setup/install. As long as you are aware/okay with the minor quirks, I think youll love this little meter.

Update: It was my cable. Replaced it with a 50’ standard 6 conductor (6p6c) telephone line < https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0002J1QVG?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title > and its been perfect for a few weeks now. I have had this installed for two years. From time to time I will notice it showing vastly incorrect and impossible readings. I have two volt and two ammeters installed side by side so its easy to see when this is happening - but very hard to tell overall if it has been performing correctly when it comes to the state of the charge on my batteries. For example, I woke up this morning and the BMV showed +13 Amps of charging (but it was still dark out!) and SOC of -10Ah, while my other meter showed -3 Amp draw on the batts. I know my boat uses 50Ah each night - so waking up to -5Ah SOC is impossible unless gremlins were running my engine at night! I tapped the BMV-712 and it immediately showed -3 Amps also. The voltage was showing 12.1v, but after tapping it showed 12.5v which matched my other voltmeter. TLDR: This morning BMV-712 showed 98% charged, 12.1v, and 13A charge rate. All three being vastly incorrect readings. Tapping the display made it jump to 98%/12.5v/-3A which coincided with my other meters (not the 98% - I only have SOC on the BMV-712).

I found the installation to be straightforward and the measurements (Current draw, Battery Voltage) to be reliable/accurate. The reason for my 3-stars is that I bought the -712 module based on the explicit claim that the user can use their VictronConnect APP to view and *manage the data* captured by this meter. I had no trouble downloading and installing the app on my phone, and it connected to the BMV-712 easily, just by following the instructions. HOWEVER, I find the APP to be incredibly poor quality for my installation/use-case, in that it does NOT allow the user to MANAGE the data as is claimed: While using the app, it completely breaks its connection with the meter-- thereby wiping away ALL of the data it has collected to that point-- any time the phone goes into screen-saver mode OR if the user (gasp!) switches to another app. (Can you imagine if ANY other modern app did that? Shutting-down COMPLETELY....any time the phone screen-saves or you go to take a phone call or maybe a look at the e-mail that just came in, or whatever! Youd never get anything done!). I e-mailed with TWO Amazon-hosted sellers of this item for help. Its a known problem, and the net answer I got is this : There is unfortunately no way around this, no. VCs [the APPs] access to the Bluetooth module of your phone is only granted when the app is on top and the screen is live. Im told that its designed that way to prevent its interfering with other apps that might be using the phones Bluetooth features. Well, my phone is nothing fancy or cutting-edge; its a 2-1/2 year old LG G7 ThinQ Android, and yet it has NO TROUBLE AT ALL running 2 or 3 different apps (Spotify + GoogleMaps + Phone calls) simultaneously through my Bluetooth module. Any smartphone built since, say, 2015, does NOT need Victrons level of protection from the VictronConnect app. This degree of cluelessness/(disregard?) as to the real-world use of their product is Shocking! In addition, when looking at the TRENDS tab: the Percent State-of-Charge (SOC%) goes immediately to 100% any time theres charging power applied to the battery (i.e. while its charging-up). For example, I recently used an external smart-charger with the APP showing the battery had an 89% SOC. Having it go instantly to 100%-- when clearly thats NOT Reality: it takes TIME for the SOC to actually re-fill back to 100-- makes that measure totally unusable and even misleading to the user! (Thats akin to going to fill your gas tank-- from Empty-- and having the gas-gauge jump to FULL the instant you start pumping!) It should instead show the SOC% steadily climbing-back to 100 over the course of the charge cycle. Its really too bad: an otherwise SOLID Battery-Management system BUT matched with a Bluetooth app with a poor, C- design in some key critical areas.

I installed this shunt in my RV to monitor my SOC without having to look at the attached display (mounted at the foot of my bed which is mostly covered when the slide is in). It works great and I was really pleased with all the information I now had access to. Then I exceeded my inverter and it went into shutdown mode, requiring a power cycle. This resets the SOC to 100% regardless of the batteries voltage. When it first happened I was actually intentionally trying to run the batteries to 0 to check my banks actual total ah. Charged is 29.2v, when the inverter shutdown it was at 26v. I then had to power cycle... When I checked after it was then saying I suddenly had 100% but still at 26v. I can still just rely on the voltage but it would be nice if the unit could keep the % accurate after losing power (for less than a second). Another thought after using this for the last 2 weeks is that unless you wont always have a phone handy (or need the extra relay/sensor capabilities of this monitor) I would suggest getting the Bluetooth only shunt. Based on the reviews Victron must have made substantial improvements to the app. I found it works flawlessly with a very good range (greater than 35 ft). I will agree with a few of the other reviewers though, the farther away the slower the unit connects. Update The app now lets got choose what % you want the device to keep after a power loss. I now set it to the last known, instead of 100% and this works much better for my purposes as its almost always me exceeding the inverter and just needs a reset. Updated to 5 stars!

Newly installed: It’s clear that someone at this company understands human centered design because there is a lot of thought that has gone into just about every aspect of this device. The shunt was easy to install, and has very clear markings on which side to connect. I was able to put it into a large battery box (see photo). The voltage tap they provide has an actual Ferule crimped on it for inserting into the spring connector on the shunt. This is a detail I have only seen on professional factory equipment for handling vibration connections. It’s exactly the right way to do it. Bravo for this. The display module itself is pretty tight and well designed. The buttons are intuitive and function as you would think they do. My only complaint is that trying to create readable text from 7 segment elements is hard to read. It took me a while to figure out what was being displayed. It would be better with a dot matrix style display. But I get it, cost and all that. The app almost makes up for this, except for the purist in me that doesn’t want a phone when I’m camping. The app is really where this device shines. As a hater of Bluetooth, I was surprised how easy the initial connection was. It basically just connected and worked. The app is quite frankly great in its simplicity. I am particularly fond of how clear and concise the presented information is. It definitely passes the 5 second test for human dashboard consumption. Marvelous. Also, I can actually connect to the device from my house, if I need too. Which is just amazing. Other items of note. The included square bezel is great. The quality of the cabling is good. There is a connector on the back for adding their other display. This company released the protocol documentation as well which is a huge plus. I’ll update the review when I use it more, but this thing is a solid 5 stars for me. SUPER happy to see a well thought out, and well executed device like this. As an embedded software engineer myself this sets the bar for me. Totally worth it.