Posted by Peter Kennedy on 12/20/2022 to
System Integration
Victron VE Smart Networking allows certain Victron devices to communicate with each other over Bluetooth to co-ordinate charging and share voltage and temperature information. It is fully described in the manual VE Smart Networking and what follows is just a summary.
Its easiest to explain with an example as shown in the screenshot below:
In this example we are looking at a screen from the Victron Connect app showing the networking screen of the MPPT charge controller. We can see that there are three devices in the network, the MPPT itself, a BMV 712 battery monitor, and a VE Bus Bluetooth Dongle which has a temp sensor connected. The MPPT is getting voltage and current data from the BMV which allows it to have a more accurate measure of the delivered voltage to the battery, and at the same time it is getting temperature information from the temp sensor attached to the VE Bus Bluetooth Dongle. This information allows the MPPT to optimize the charge parameters which will improve charging efficiency and prolong battery life. If there were multiple MPPT's in this scenario they would be able to co-ordinate their charging between them to optimize the delivered charge.
There is a limited range of Victron devices that support Bluetooth Networking and the intention is to add more in the future. Full details are in the instruction manual.
The maximum number of devices allowed in a single network is ten.