[Robot Vacuum on a narrowboat?]

Just now, Alan de Enfield said:

 

Wasn't that what @Tony Brooks suggested right at the start ?

 

It was, though we wanted to get an engineer over to give it a proper check-over anyway rather than just wing it ourselves.

[Barrus Shanks stop solenoid button/switch?]

Hi all, just an update. We has an engineer come and he said the solenoid was toast. He has installed a stop switch away from the engine now and the engine can be stopped remotely. In the future i'd like to have a cover made so the engine is not open but for now this should suffice. Thanks for all the advice. 👍

[Robot Vacuum on a narrowboat?]

Just now, BoatinglifeupNorth said:

I think people will be more interested in your engine stop problem than remote control toys.

 Have you done anything to sort that out yet?

 

Yeah so the solenoid was dead apparently, we've had a pull stop installed and now able to stop the engine remotely. I'll update the main thread now.

[Robot Vacuum on a narrowboat?]

Been using it for almost a month now and it has been doing a charm keeping the boat clean. It is set on a timer each weekday to vacuum the floors and carpet, it also has a schedule to mop each monday and friday. It has created a lidar map of my boat and separated everything into rooms so i can do single room cleans or whatever may be needed at the time. I've been monitoring the battery consumption and have noted it uses very little power from my bank to recharge, a full clean and mop of my boat only uses 10% of the units internal battery and it will be full again and idle within 30 minutes of docking at the end of a clean. I have a 200ah LiFePo4 battery setup and have haven't noticed any significant change to my power levels at all. All in all i'd recommend it for a boat with a reliable power setup and no major obstructions which would stop the vacuum from navigating the boat.

[Robot Vacuum on a narrowboat?]

Just now, Hudds Lad said:

So it requires the owner to sit watching it with a magic wand to fend it off??  

 

The fact it has an app shows it is streets ahead of the model we had which had no connectivity of any sort, just don't trip over it in the night when heading for the loo  

 

Not sure yet haha, got it scheduled for a full clean and mop 2pm every weekday. Will see how it goes, the magic want does help though

[Robot Vacuum on a narrowboat?]

 

Now just to see how the ferrets deal with it...

[Robot Vacuum on a narrowboat?]

So i got one and its doing a good job so far, but it will require a bit of fine tuning to get it perfect. It has mapped out the boat nicely, the pics below are just a sample run of it doing the saloon area. The configuration options are good and with some adjustments it should be a good little boat upgrade hopefully.

[Barrus Shanks stop solenoid button/switch?]

Hi all, sorry for my lack of info in the replies. We've got an engineer coming to have a proper look. A lot of these replies have been a little hard to fully decode and understand so i figured i'd get as much info as possible from this engineer before reporting back with details and hopefully the fix. I hope i'm not coming across as blanking or ghosting, i saw a post on another thread referencing my lack of response.. sorry 😅

[Barrus Shanks stop solenoid button/switch?]

27 minutes ago, jonathanA said:

probably...  but as mentioned there are two fuses involved so worth checking them for being blown or poor connections and maybe bench testing it before shelling out for new one.  I think i would test the voltages at the 4 pole connector, it looked like Red was permanent 12v+ , black neg, grey ignition live and the other was +12V from the starter.  problem might be finding the fuses 🙂 to check

 

Good call, cheers mate i'll do that and report back 👍

[Robot Vacuum on a narrowboat?]

I'm aware of the downfalls of earlier models but i feel they've come a very long way since then. I dont feel like power would be too much of an issue as the space to vacuum isn't exactly huge. My power setup is fairly overkill already so i'm not convinced this unit would significantly effect it. Maybe i should give it a shot with one of these new models and see... 🤷‍♂️

[Barrus Shanks stop solenoid button/switch?]

Apologies for the late reply, so it turns out the stop solenoid already on the engine and it was disconnected from the loom. Previous owner never bothered to mention this... I reconnected it but no luck so i'm guessing it could be a new solenoid required? Either way its a bit late now, but the sooner i fix it the better.

[Robot Vacuum on a narrowboat?]

Title says it all, I'm wondering how well a robot vacuum would work on a narrowboat. They seem to charge themselves and are pretty sophisticated nowadays. I'm tempted to drop some cash on one to see if it can add some more laziness to my life. Does anyone have one of these and could give some thoughts?

 

Cheers!

[Barrus Shanks stop solenoid button/switch?]

9 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

 

I don't understand because I can see one red wire, one yellow and possibly one blue on your photo. This assumes the cables on the plug connect to the stop solenoid, and it is not just a random connector that was hanging about.

 

We need to know how many wires go into the solenoid unless you have the wiring diagram.  The wire colours may also be usefull.

 

Ah apolgoies, these wires to go into the solenoid, they go into a single conduit and then into the back of the black box to the right of the picture, which is the solenoid body.

I believe the wires are yellow, red, green and black. I'd need to go back to her boat to make 100% sure, but looks to be so from the image.

[Barrus Shanks stop solenoid button/switch?]

12 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

Hope your girlfriend is ok.

 

How many cables go into the plug? It looks as if it may have just two connectors, and if so once you know if it is energise to stop as most canal boat electric stops) or energise to run we/you can work out what switch to use. Energise to stop, I would sue a push button and energise to run I would take a feed from the ignition on position on the ignition switch.

 

If four cables then it may be a two stage solenoid so is more complicated.

 

I'm totally unsure how many cables go into the plug, the plug is all i have to go on. The solenoid itself is this one: https://shireshop.co.uk/en-GB/catalog/all/part/3rAF-yy0D-czYG/shire-shanks-catalogue-dash-panels-electrical-stop-solenoid-4l22bz-13300

I'm almost certain that energising the solenoid will cause it to stop, as it is currently open and it it contracted it would mechanically pull the stop lever on the engine, which until now has been turned manually by hand.

8 minutes ago, BEngo said:

First step: Attach a piece of string or stranded electrical cable  to the stop  lever.  Route it so it can safely be pulled to stop the engine.  You may need to add a return spring if the route is particularly convoluted.

 

Is there a wiring diagram in  the owners manual? That may help with what the solenoid wires ( should) do.

 

N

 

 

 

Cheers, I'll do this as a temporary measure until i sort out something permanent. Also there is no wiring diagram or owners manual. 👍

[Barrus Shanks stop solenoid button/switch?]

Hi all, my girlfriend has a barrus shanks engine on her narrowboat, but the only way to turn it off if by leaning over the running engine and turning a lever using her hand. I felt this was extremely dangerous and it turns out I was right, as she has had quite a serious accident when the fanbelt caught on her and caused her a serious injury. I want to sort out a way to stop the engine in a safe manner, I've been looking at the engine and have found a stop solenoid attached to the lever which is terminated at a 4-pin plug. Does anyone know if it is possible to get a button or switch for this plug which i can route to a safe location? I've tried looking around google but haven't come up with anything.

 

Thanks for any and all advice!

 

[Replacing current inverter and charger with Victron Multiplus]

11 minutes ago, nicknorman said:

I suppose it could be. Do you have an LA in parallel? If not then a HVD is obviously going to remove any sort of battery connection to the Combi. I don’t have a Victron, but I know my Mastervolt is a bit funny if I remove the DC power with shore power connected, sometimes it carries on working, sometimes not.

 

Anyway it will certainly be a good idea to have the HVD set higher than the Combi charge voltage.

 

Cheers, i have no LA in parallel so i'll have to see if the settings changes to the BMS and what few settings i have access to on the victron without a windows pc. Will report back with the details but hopefully all good.

[Replacing current inverter and charger with Victron Multiplus]

1 hour ago, nicknorman said:

If the Combi is switching to inverter mode, it is likely to be because the Combi doesn’t like the incoming mains. Possibly when the generator is unloaded by the charge finishing, the regulation is a bit lax and the voltage gets too high, or the waveform is a bit nasty. Pretty sure there is a setting or two to make the Victron more tolerant of ugly waveforms and to widen the acceptable voltage range.

 

“Weak AC” is the setting to try, and it looks like you can increase the maximum input voltage.

 

Weak AC is currently enabled, it could be the waveform... Do you think it unlikely that its the BMS causing an issue?

[Replacing current inverter and charger with Victron Multiplus]

 

I've just changed my HVD on my bms to 14.4v and the absorb/float values on my multiplus to 14.1/13.5v. Hopefully if it was a case of the BMS doing a HVD then this might solve it...?

[Replacing current inverter and charger with Victron Multiplus]

I was under the impression that the charger would charge my lifepo4 battery to full and then passthrough the generator power to my loads until I turn the generator off. I'm seeing a weird thing happen where when the battery reaches full, it seems to revert back to inverting, then after a few seconds when the voltage has dropped it cycles back into charging again, this cycle seems to continue. Could this be because of my victron settings? I have a gut feeling it might be.

[Replacing current inverter and charger with Victron Multiplus]

Just rewired the engine bay to follow @nicknorman's instructions. All works well and have the added bonus of it automatically switching over to charge when i turn the genny on. Very chuffed

[Replacing Markon SL105 AVR with SX460]

Just an update:

Since installing the SX-460 as stated through this thread. I've managed to swap out my cheapo battery charger and inverter for a new victron multiplus that I bought a year ago but was unable to use with the generator and unable to return I am now able to charge at 70a with no problem instead of the original maximum of 17a i was getting previously, what a difference! On top of that the washing machine that came with the boat also now works happily with the new cleaner voltage and frequency, I've just finished my first load of washing not in a laundrette and hung it to dry in front of the rayburn. I started this over a year ago and it has actually spanned a few threads here over that time. I've finally been able to tick this off my list and I couldn't be happier.

 

EDIT: Gettin all bloody emotional up in here haha 😅

[Replacing current inverter and charger with Victron Multiplus]

Cheers, that makes much more sense now. I'll start prepping for the rewire job. Very chuffed i finally have a working charger after a year of generator prep and research. Feels damn good.

[Replacing current inverter and charger with Victron Multiplus]

I did a charging test with the temp setup and had no luck charging, but after going into the victron connect app and changing a few settings I have it up and running. I was careful with the setup and no issues occured, now i'm going to rewire everything to fit Nicks description. I am curious just for the theory of it though, what would go wrong with the victron charging off its own output? I would have just assumed it would lose power over time due to all the innefficiency. Curious as to what would happen and why.

[Replacing current inverter and charger with Victron Multiplus]

4 minutes ago, IanD said:

I thought the reason you had problems was generator overvoltage due to failed AVR, which is now fixed?

 

Yup, i covered all the details in my SX-460 thread in this section, but basically i was able to remove all the old gubbins like the choke and rectifier and old broken AVR, and successfully run the generator at 50hz 230v cleanly using an SX-460 and passing the exciter voltage through the brushes.

 

EDIT: I would definitely like to test that the victron works though, as i haven't been able to yet. Once confirming that then i'm happy to rip the engine bay apart to install properly. Just been bitten once already and was very gutted when i had to put it all back the way it was haha

[Replacing current inverter and charger with Victron Multiplus]

8 minutes ago, nicknorman said:

Yes!

 

As i've had trouble getting this victron working with my diesel generator in the past, i believe it should work now but i really want to test that it can actually charge from the generator with the new AVR installed. If the utmost care was taken as a test run before implementing your solution, would you allow a test run using the temp setup (with selector switch set to generator) for charging only, to ensure it can charge before i tear apart my rcd and selector switch for the permanent install?