cheesegas

The Bluetooth is just for configuration, there's no need to use the app once it's all set up. The only other direct competitor on the market, the Wakespeed, is configured by using a piece of extremely old software to send it text commands which is fiddly and very easy to get wrong. I expect the 'next generation' is marketing speak for saying it's easier to configure. Older external controllers like the Sterling and Adverc are designed for lead batteries and lack features like the ability to switch to float voltage, reducing load at low RPM and integrating with a CANbus system like a Victron Cerbo to dynamically reduce charge current to avoid damaging the batteries or management system by charging too quickly.

Yep, let's make this the Zeus thread! Looking forward to hearing your findings on it too. I'm still confused as to why I can't find the IC, although it's almost certainly an off the shelf microcontroller rather than an FPGA. Maybe to make reverse engineering more difficult? As far as I know, only ARM based controllers have built in CAN so maybe they made it discrete to bring down costs. There's no through hole resistors, the only things are the through hole electrolytics. They're part of the MOSFET driver circuit rather than the CAN. Arco do make/distribute/rebadge their own line of alternators too, but oddly I couldn't find any already set up for external regulation like Balmar sell, all internal reg. Maybe the whole idea is to make the Zeus as universal as possible? Even the Iskra external brush packs sold by Beta have both brush wires brought out so it can be set up for either pos or neg regulation. The weatherproofing is important I think as this is an American product, in the land of no narrowboats! The engine bay of a cruiser can be a wet place, engine hatches not sealing fully, splashing from bilge water etc. I intend to fit this under the cruiser stern and unfortunately it'll get wet whenever the boards are lifted after it rains. I'd have expected better for the RJ45, it's a totally non ruggedised connector otherwise; even the manual says to install with the connectors down despite the IP67 rating. Standard non-ruggedised RJ45s don't last long even just in a moist environment. For lithium you definitely need an alternator control chip as it needs to drop the voltage to float once the battery is full - that data needs to come from somewhere and be parsed etc, or you'd end up fitting its own shunt. Which, by the way, is one of the ways you can fit the Arco. Temperature control is also a thing with lithium - the current needs to be reduced if the alternator is getting too hot. Given that engine space temperatures vary a lot depending on the type of boat and time of year, the current can't just be set at a fixed value if you want to get the most out the alternator. And the final thing, which is what the Zeus will solve for me, is that at idle speeds, my 90a alternator and Balmar combo will load the engine so much it pulls the RPMs down so far the engine runs very rough and enters a horrible resonance. This is an issue when trying to pass boats at tickover or when going through locks/mooring. I have a crude workaround in the form of a switch on the dash which shorts the temp sensor which causes the Balmar to halve the field current, I flick it when in locks or mooring up. The Zeus- and many other regulators - allows you to set an RPM curve to reduce the output current at lower revs. The Adverc is a much simpler, much cruder thing designed for lead batteries; all it does is raise the field current every 10 minutes (I think!) with a 50% duty cycle, until the voltage gets to 14.4v. On most narrowboats with modern alternators it's completely useless as the alternator's internal regulator will aim for 14.4v anyway and increasing the field current won't make a difference as the rotor is in saturation. It is however useful if the cable run from alternator to batteries is long/too thin/just crap, as it will eliminate any voltage drop by ensuring the batteries get 14.4v at the terminals.

Seems to be hit and miss. Two marinas on the Thames refused to fill my jerrycan, but in the past I haven't had any canal-based marinas refuse.

So my Zeus arrived a few days ago via a distributor, and whilst it'll be a while until I can hook it up to the alternator, here's a first look. I powered it up on 12v first to make sure it all fires up! As a background, this is now one of three external alternator regulators with system integration on the market, but it's squarely aimed at competing with the Wakespeed especially as the marketing makes a big deal about it coming with the wiring looms! The user interface also promises to be much better as it's purely Bluetooth and an app, rather than Putty or uploading text files like with the Wakespeed. Forum uploader seems to be rotating all the pictures at random no matter what I do to them and their metadata so please try and ignore that... Opening the box, it's packaged very nicely in a large single wall cardboard box - regulator on top in high density foam, looms under it in their own boxes. There's no paper manual in there but there's a QR code which takes you to the manual and the app. The case is a nicely finished extruded aluminium affair, with all connectors on one end cap and the large Bluetooth antenna on the other. The antenna is a standard plastic folding thing with an SMA connector. The Zeus has an IP67 rating, but this SMA connector is only IP67 when mated so you'll need to leave it attached, just in case you're concerned about it getting in the way after configuring it. The antenna is an IP67 version with a silicone ring inside. Connectors on the bottom are mostly good news - the battery harness is a TE Connectivity Ampseal which is internally sealed, and the alternator harness is also a TE Connectivity product. Both are sealed well and are of very high quality. However...the CANbus RJ45 is a Kinsun which, like most connectors of this type, is only IP68 when mated with the appropriate connector. If you plug a standard RJ45 into this, it's prone to let in moisture and corrode itself eventually, I work on LED display modules outdoors and this is common with RJ45s! You need the matching mating part of the connector which is not provided in the box; Kinsun part number 3351L and I could not find a UK stockist for it. Additionally, this type of connector needs to be put on the cable before the RJ45 end is crimped on. Seems like an oversight, making an IP67 rated device but making it difficult to maintain the rating when connected up! It would have been nice to see something like a Neutrik Ethercon here, which is available all around the world, or to simply put in the box the other half of the Kinsun. Internally, all of the connectors are properly sealed including the screwholes, and the RJ45 is internally potted to ensure no water can get through. Both end caps have substantial rubber seals, and the screws go into pre-tapped threads rather than being self tappers. There's also a dab of silicone on the back of the antenna's SMA connector to seal that. Before getting into the electronics side of it and staying with the mechanical/waterproofing theme - the PCB is a heavily made multi layer board with a full groundplane, which is used for a heatsink. Everything is populated on the top, the bottom is bare. However, it does not have a conformal coating which is odd for a product aimed at the marine market. The five electrolytics are good Japanese quality, rated at 105 degrees C and have tall 15mm cans. I would have liked to see a splooge of epoxy under them though, as they're vulnerable to vibration damage, especially as it'll be mounted close to the engine. The only mechanical attachment is via the through-hole solder joints; fine for something like a computer motherboard but not great for this application. Getting onto the electronics, I could not find an FPGA or system-on-chip microcontroller on here at all, which is very very odd! I can only think that it's fully encapsulated under the Bluetooth module, but there are only few traces going to it on the back of the board. It may be a 3 or more layer board though. Going from left to right we have: MCP2510 CANbus controller. This has an SPI interface, so whatever microcontroller is used will likely have SPI natively MCP2551 CAN transceiver. This will sit between the 2510 and the connector to form a complete solution. There is NMEA2k as well as CANBUS but only one transceiver, so there's some duplexing happening here. Fanstel BT840e 2.4ghz Bluetooth module. The antenna is also a Fanstel product designed to work with this module, an ANT060. It's a complete integrated RF solution with SPI and I2C; I expect the microcontroller will use SPI as the I2C pins don't appear to be connected Under the blue/white cable is 4 generic ICs which don't appear to have datasheets, I expect they are analog to digital converters. SUM70040E MOSFET, rated at 120A drain current. Very over-spec'd. Nice! Unsure what the single one is for, the two at the top right will be for controlling the alternator field in positive and negative configuration. MP9486A 1A DC-DC buck converter controller. 4.5v-100v input range and 170uA quiescent current, the Zeus should have a very low standby draw. This is probably used to derive 3.3v or 5v for the internal ICs from the 12v-48v input from the battery. LTC7001 MOSFET driver and two more SUM70040E MOSFETs, purpose mentioned earlier. Overall, I think this is a very well made product with good attention paid to waterproofing, the only exception being the RJ45 port. As of now, it's impossible to get the mating part of the connector in the UK easily, so it will be a weak point. However, due to the well-designed connector, it will not allow moisture into the unit. A conformal coating would have been nice, and I wonder why it was not done. There's a lot of test points on the board so it may be to speed up quality control, as the coating makes it impossible to use the test points unless they're masked. If it's going in the engine bay, I'd treat it as IP62 when mounted with the ports facing down as water will collect in both the RJ45 socket and plug if there's a cable in it. Best to get it high up away from spray, or perhaps make a little shield for the RJ45. Mechanically it's generally good with all the ports fixed to the case rather than just the PCB, but some epoxy goo under the inductor and electrolytics wouldn't go amiss. RJ45 aside, the connectors are very high spec and unlikely to ever cause any trouble, and all the looms are made extremely well. In the box, a laminated paper wiring diagram showing what colour wires go where would have been a good idea as it's difficult to keep on referring to your phone/laptop in the engine bay, but the PDF manual is excellent and has the wiring colours on two pages which is easy to print out as a reference.

Avoid the float type - I'd recommend the Rule ones with an electronic water sensor and no moving parts, not cheap though at around £80. Had mine for the 4 years I've had the boat plus however long it was installed before that...1 year of my ownership I had a leaky stern gland and it's still going strong and the bearings still sound good. The sensor never fails to activate the pump no matter how much crap collects in the bucket under the gland, but I do regularly clean the pump.

Keel cooled lifeboats often become raw water cooled once they're brought on the canals...the cooler is external, usually a grid of pipes located under the engine. Seen a couple where the pipes have been damaged from underwater obstructions and the owner is none the wiser as the engine still happily pumps around the canal water. They only realise when it's time to drain the coolant and the boat almost sinks! Or the engine overheats due to crap getting stuck in the pump.

Interesting, I didn't know that, I'll have a read. Weirdly, some petrol engines have gone the opposite way with direct injection like a diesel - they don't have a butterfly valve which reduces energy lost in pumping against the closed valve at partial throttle opening.

Also worth noting that because of this, there's a lot more carbon monoxide in petrol exhaust compared to diesels - at low throttle/low load, I seem to remember reading it's something like 50-100% more. All the more reason to run a petrol genny off the boat and downwind!

VenusOS on Pi works very well but isn't very cost effective if you have a lot of MPPTs. £50 for a Pi, £10 for a case, £10 for a 5v regulator, £60 for two ve.direct to USB (one for the MPPT, one for the battery gauge), £60 for a ve.bus to USB and you're already almost at the cost of a Cerbo GX! There are cheaper DIY options for ve.direct cables but they lack the galvanic isolation of the Victron ones. You also get two inputs and two outputs of GPIO with the Cerbo which is really handy! It is however a good cheap way to get rudimentary remote monitoring with just a single ve.direct cable for the battery gauge.

When I did my lithium install I was concerned about alternator temperature so I installed a sensor with a bit of NodeRed code to manage the temps. However, in reality, it wasn't an issue at all - the air coming in to my cruiser stern narrowboat in winter is pretty cold, and winter is when the alternator will be working hard as there's not much solar. I have two vents in the stern, about 8" by 12" and the batteries' temperature sensor reports temps in the high 30s when the engine is working hard. I was considering putting a fan by one of the vents to pull air through the engine bay as the batteries will appreciate it However, for most of the year (and especially the warmer months!) there's so much solar that if I go for a 7am morning cruise, I don't want to waste diesel throwing 60a into the batteries as the solar will fill it by lunchtime anyway. For that reason, I'm finding I can switch the alternator off around April and then end up turning it on in late Oct. The starter battery is charged by a DC-DC from the leisure, which is activated when the engine is running, shore power is connected or if it hasn't been activated for 14 days which is rare! I can however see the need for alternator cooling on boats which don't have much solar, or use so much power that the panels can't keep up in summer. I've ordered a Zeus and should have it in the next few days, but won't have the time to fit it for a while. Currently I have a modified Balmar ARS5 on alternator duty which is a bit bodgy!

This would make it possible to severely damage the battery by trying to start the engine when the battery is discharged and the BMS is about to do a discharge disconnect. It’s also the most likely time that someone’s going to start the engine - leisure battery low, need to run engine to charge batteries. The timer would work for a lead battery but not lithium, and it would still be a bad solution. Say you’ve worked out that you need to put in 100ah with your 100a alternator, which works out to 1hr. Then, you go inside, switch the inverter on, charge your laptop and put on the washing machine…this all takes say 20ah so you end up with only 80ah in the battery. And if you were to start the engine in summer at 3pm to cruise, you’d need to check that the alternator is off or else you’d be holding the lithium battery at full charge which isn’t good for it. A better solution which is what myself and a couple others do on here is to use the relay output on a Victron BMV to disable the alternator at 100%. This is better but not great - without a float voltage, if you were to draw high power with the batteries full and alt off, it goes into a loop of short charge, short discharge and repeat.

The issue with a lithium starter battery is that most BMSs are rated for 100-200 amps, whereas the starter motor can draw 300+ amps. You'd need either a contactor based BMS, or massive FETs to pass the current. It's fairly common in the cafe racer motorcycle scene as their starter motors draw a lot less current. Most alternators we see on boats at the moment are based on car designs, which have no need to adapt to lithium batteries - it's only marine-specific models like Balmars etc which have lithium compatible regulators, and those are expensive external ones. You'd usually see Balmars on dual engined cruisers with a big house battery bank. I think the market is very small for an alternator with an internal lithium regulator so it'll be many years before one comes out. There are however some large non-automotive alternators aimed at the modified car market with massive audio systems - they're built very well to withstand heavy loads at a low engine speed so it would be good to see them adapted for marine use. Some even have remote rectifiers and regulators to keep the heat in the case down. Again though, not cheap as the market is pretty small!

It's a good bit of kit but for battery current sensing it needs to be integrated into a Mastervolt system - Mastershunt, battery gauge etc, and you also need a Masterbus to USB box to program it. Being American these systems aren't as common in the UK, and unlike Victron the whole thing is a closed system; Victron have a very actively encouraged DIY community, most of their protocols are covered by publicly accessible whitepapers and they support 3rd party integration. I do like the decentralised system approach of Mastervolt though; rather than relying on a central computer like a Victron GX device, all components of the system share data over a common CANbus backbone. Realistically it'll be a good few weeks before I get round to fitting it but I'll post a detailed review up here when I do! And yep, the interface is much much better than Wakespeed. I find it easier to use Putty rather than the app, and that's saying something. Technical Marine Services - the price is around £200 under what a WS500 costs with the loom.

They exist already, there's just not much market for them so they're expensive. It's called an alternator regulator and there's not many models to choose from, Arco Zeus, Wakespeed WS500, Mastervolt Alpha, Balmar 618. The decent ones keep an eye on the alternator temperature and RPM, and vary the field current to keep the alternator at a safe temperature and to alter the output voltage by dropping to float etc. Advanced ones like the Wakespeed communicate with a CANbus system and will reduce charging current if something happens like one of three battery BMses goes offline, to avoid exceeding the max charge current of the batteries.

Compare that to a certain marina on the GU where I left my boat for a couple months while I was away for work...not connected to shore power all the time, mind!

Some of you may be aware of this already, but in the big lithium/high power alternator market for charging lithiums, there was really only one choice of regulator, a Wakespeed WS500. Very capable unit with lots of features and excellent Victron integration...but it's expensive at almost £1k including the harness sold separately, and setting it up is painful as anything advanced needs you to Putty into it and send text strings to set parameters! There is an app which generates a text file to send to it, but I've had trouble with it accepting all parameters. Balmar's lithium offerings are all a bit crap as they can only take in battery current data from their own SG200 monitor, and without it, the unit relies on how much field current % is needed to hold the voltage constant to make a stab at the state of charge. Just ordered an Arco Zeus (https://arcomarine.com/products/arco-zeus-high-energy-alternator-regulator) to replace my modified and long suffering Balmar. The interface is via Bluetooth so much easier to set up than both a Balmar or Wakespeed. It's driving a single 200a alternator on a polyvee but with a small engine, so when in gear at idle it needs the field to be brought right down to avoid the engine idling too slow. I have an automatic 'generator' mode in my setup which brings the engine up to 1300rpm and enables full power on the Balmar until the battery is 98% full for maximum charge speed, and if I do something like switch on the washing machine it will bring the engine up to speed again. It's written in NodeRed so hopefully the new regulator will be able to integrate with that too...and yep, there's hard safety interlocks, if the gearbox is knocked into gear whilst in generator mode it will immediately disengage and the revs will drop! The aux GPIO inputs are useful too - at the moment, I have a software switch to disable the alternator in summer as I don't want to waste diesel throwing in 180 amps at 7am when I'm cruising but the solar will fill the batteries by lunchtime anyway... Be nice to have a hardware switch on the engine control panel instead. The Arco can take data from either a 3rd party generic shunt, or from a Cerbo GX via CANbus which is what I'll be doing. Victron have just added it to their official compatibility page too, the list seems to be growing quickly. It would be interesting to see what NodeRed plugins are available for it too. (yep, I know some people will just say it's cheaper to bodge it with a long hot wire but this isn't the market they're aiming at - it's large alternators, big lithium banks with multiple BMSs on CANbus and networked systems with lots of different charge sources)

Just because it's not useful to you doesn't mean it's silly. And also, with Victron inverter/chargers, it's disabled from the factory so it doesn't cause any issues at all unless someone goes meddling in things they don't know about. I've used this feature on a few installs, mainly with bigger boats where the user doesn't want to be going up and down ladders to get to a remote panel to switch the inverter on. Quite useful, and it can be easily enabled and disabled in software. Cheapo inverters may have this feature permanently enabled though, or need a jumper inside physically moving to disable it.

Routers designed for mobile use like Proroute and Teletonikas are a bit more expensive but they have wide range DC inputs, often 9v-30v meaning they can be powered straight from 12v. High end ones even have built in GPS receivers so all you need is a £10 GPS antenna and you've got a built in boat tracker. I have a Teletonika RUTX12 on my boat with two SIMs and two 4G antennas. It balances the load across the two modems, and if one connection is too slow to respond, it'll funnel it all towards the better one automatically. Works great for most of the south east, I get 10-100mbps depending on location. Three and EE SIMs at the moment but around the Stort, O2 seems to be a better option so I might swap the Three one out.

In theory yes, but most marinas have severely undersized cabling leading to excessive voltage drop, especially if you're at the end of a pontoon. Usually made worse by a 20m shore power lead made from crap 1.5mm blue arctic... You may only get about 3000w before the the breaker trips. The last time I stayed in a marina I routinely saw 200v AC on the input of my Multiplus when charging batteries, pulling only 1500w from the shore. It would have definitely been lower if more boats on the pontoon were inhabited and I was trying to pull more! And yep, I agree, a 3000w appliance on a 16a shore power connection is a bad idea, you'd need to be careful not to run it with the immersion or anything else even slightly high power switched on. Some of the hot taps I've seen have a small holding tank under the counter which is kept warm all the time, controlled by a thermostat - if this tap is similar, you wouldn't even know when it's pulling 3kw!

Usually the problem is that the gas water heater can't put enough heat into the water in winter as the supply water is a lot colder. They have a fixed temperature rise so if you increase the flow rate, you just end up with a higher pressure but colder shower! Sounds like you had a different problem though. Also worth noting there are currently no room sealed propane instant water heaters on the market which can run off 12v - every single one will need an inverter. As the electricity runs the control board, ignition and flue fan it can't be easily converted. If you have a Rinnai etc, it's best to get it serviced or repaired rather than replace!

Weird outlook sometimes on this forum. I live on a boat because I like having a boat and being on the water, and can't afford both a boat and a house. I'm freelance so my work sites change daily, sometimes working from home so my cruising pattern is with this in mind - sometimes I'm in one spot for two weeks, sometimes a couple of days. In summer I spend a month or two on the Thames. When I first bought the boat I got a spot in a marina as that was what everyone was bleating on about and hated it - it was like being double moored permanently, and lots of gossip around the place by people with not much else better to do with their lives. All the disadvantages and none of the advantages of living on a boat! Lasted three months there and now I CC, much better - change of scenery, I don't have boats on both sides, I can actually see the water and countryside... There is definitely a problem with inconsiderate people hovering eternally around a popular spot which is not good as it doesn't give others a chance to moor there - and they can be people of any income level. People who live in a house and want to have a boat but don't want to pay for a mooring so they shuffle it around their area, big £200k widebeams who don't want to boat, they just want a cheap luxury flat in the middle of town, small 18' cruisers with on engine that's one step above homelessness.

I have the same machine and it doesn't have a cold wash setting. I've got a thermostatic mixer valve set to about 40C feeding the machine from my Rinnai, which works fine for a 30C wash setting but the element does still come on for precisely 2 seconds. If your inverter can't handle it, you can unplug it inside which doesn't seem to affect its brain. In summer I have the machine heat the water with its element as there's plenty of solar, so I have a manual bypass valve on the mixer to fill from cold. You can just switch the Rinnai off but the machine fills slowly as the thermostatic valve tries to get all the water from the Rinnai, which restricts the flow noticeably compared to the cold supply.

Used to have a full size bike which worked ok locked to the stern rail of my cruiser stern, but going through locks it would get in the way so I'd have to put it inside or on the roof which was a pain. It eventually got nicked so I bought a Dahon folder as I quite liked the ability to take it on buses...but it was crap and kept unfolding itself and couldn't stand up on its own folded. Then bought a Tern which was a bit better but it was awkward to fold. And finally bought a used Brompton for £400 and it's really worlds apart. Liftable with one hand, can be pushed one handed ahead of you folded in busy train stations, doesn't unfold when you don't want it to etc etc. Don't waste your money on anything else! It lives inside - I wouldn't fancy trying to get a full size bike in and out of the boat daily though.

With a proper LFP install and an external alternator regulator, there's actually less worry from a user perspective about controlling it as the regulator takes care of everything. With a Wakespeed, you can program in an RPM/output power curve so it tapers down the field current as RPMs drop so it doesn't cause the engine to idle too slow and run rough. There's also a temperature sensor which allows for maximum charging current as long as the stator is below a certain temp - once it approaches the threshold, the current is gradually reduced until it finds a medium.

Interestingly, it's actually 55v with reference to earth - the yellow site transformers have a 55-0-55v tapping on the secondary winding. 0v is connected to the same earth as the supply, 55v to the output 'live' and 55v to the output 'neutral'. That means if you're standing on the ground and touch one of the wires, you'll only get a 55v shock.