Wakespeed ws500

[Davidgabriel]

Hello. I’ve just installed 300ah lifepo4 battery house bank. I have two alternators. Beta 50hp. One 12v for starter and one 24v iskra mahle for housebank. 
I have a cerbo gx with bmv712 to monitor. With 500w of solar through two Victron mppt controllers. I have a Victron ip43 mains charger. An 800w Victron 24v to 240v inverter.

i modified the brush box on the alternator so i have one wire going to B+ and the other to field on the wakespeed. I think the wakespeed is wired correctly regarding power wires but I might have put the shunt wires the wrong way round. The shunt is fitted at the battery. 
when I switch on and start the engine I get all green lights on the wakespeed. The can connection to the cerbo shows alternator on the gx display with no errors. 
however. The alternator is not charging. I get two dashes on the cerbo alternator screen and all green lights on the wakespeed. The wakespeed says it is preparing to bulk but no charge. 
are there any obvious errors I have made? I soldered the brush box myself. Maybe one wire has come adrift. I’ll have to take the back off the alternator to look. But was just wondering if I had made an obvious error first

thanks

[nicknorman]

Hard to say from afar but I think the Wakespeed can do positive or negative field regulation, ie the other brush connected either to B+ or to ground. Does the configuration match the wiring?

 

Edit, looks like there are 2 different wiring harnesses according to whether the other brush is connected to + or -

 

Oh and have you connected the stator ac tap wire to eg the W connection on the alternator? Without it the Wakespeed won’t realise that the alternator is spinning.

Edited June 6 by nicknorman

[Davidgabriel]

Yeah I bought the N type harness because the alternator is negative. W is connected. It all seems fine. Lights all green etc. but no charge. I suspect it’s my dodgy soldering of the brush box. I’m not at the boat but was just posting to see if anything obvious from what I’ve said. I even bought myself a cheapest Lenovo android tablet to make the programming easier

[PeterF]

WS500 user here, works a treat but it is a complex thing to set up.

 

Is your BMV712 monitoring the battery. Does the battery communicate with the Cerbo, is DVCC controlling. If the BMV712 is monitoring the battery is this receiving this by the WS500 via CAN settings. Is the WS500 shunt wiring connected to a shunt. Do you have a battery temperature sensor or are you getting this from the Cerbo.

 

You will not see any charging information on the Cerbo because to see that you need a dumb shunt on the alternator to report the alternator amps. 

 

You should still see field, rpm, alternator temperature etc by clicking on the alternator box to get to the devices menu. As the alternator box appears you have the CAN cables working. RPM being registered is key. You can also monitor on the app when it is running.

 

You could post the content of the text settings file here, this can be exported from the app and emailed to yourself.

 

There is a good Facebook group WS500 Facebook group

 

Some potential issues have already been listed, here are more,

brushes vs harness polarity

rpm not being registered

not seeing any battery current if relying on the Cerbo

wrong shunt setting

no temperature from the battery

Settings for required readings not matching with installed readings

Feature in wire not set correctly so this is shutting the device down.

 

More info on WS500 set up re shunts and the text settings file and I will have a look.

 

 

[Davidgabriel]

Hello. The bmv monitors the house battery bank. From the battery via a fuse the positive goes to a lynx distributer. The negative goes to bmv shunt then to lynx distributor. The battery is not connected by can but the wakespeed is. The cerbo gives battery temp. Alternator temp is through the wakespeed. The wakespeed shunt wires go to the Victron shunt (I may have these back to front). On the cerbo I get an alternator box on the screen. When pressed this tells me engine speed. Alt speed and battery volts. I downloaded the generic settings for lifepo4 on to the wakespeed. I get the green idle light on. Then the ramp to bulk lights. But that’s it. Definitely not charging. I’m not on the boat til next week. I’ll check my wiring and then report back. Thanks for answering. 

[Davidgabriel]

I’m down my boat this weekend to sort out my new batteries and charging. I said earlier that I had soldered the brush box myself. Just in case anyone, else is doing this. Beta marine in the uk do a pre soldered brush box for mahle alternator which is much better. At least much better than mine. Cost me 30mquid

[Kingdom Isambard Brunel]

Neat.

[nicknorman]

I was going to say kneet, but that might be inappropriate.

[Davidgabriel]

Yeah. Sorry about the bare leg. Trying to get sunshine when I can😀

[nicknorman]

3 minutes ago, Davidgabriel said:

Yeah. Sorry about the bare leg. Trying to get sunshine when I can😀

Seriously, I think one of the issues is the melting point of lead-tin solder, which is about 180C. An alternator can get quite hot in places and obviously one doesn’t want the solder to melt! I noticed that the Iskra regulator chip leads were spot welded, to avoid the risk of melting solder. Lead-free solder has a higher melting point and thus is preferable.

[Davidgabriel]

I’m actually really pleased with this pre made brush box. Makes the whole thing more “factory”. Beta uk don’t advertise this conversion. I saw it on their USA site and then asked if uk did it. I dare say if you’re any good at soldering it can be done cheaper. But I would be embarrassed to show my efforts 

[PeterF]

As far as I knew Mahle had stopped selling the dumb brush holder, perhaps Beta bought up lots of them. Pre Covid you could buy a new regulator on ebsy relatively cheaply and cut off the regulator. That option no longer appears available. Soldering hidden under woven glass sleeving. Used lead free solder per Nick's advice.

 

[Davidgabriel]

Looks a darn site neater than my lame efforts. 👍

[Davidgabriel]

Ok. So an update. Fitted the new brush box and it is charging beautifully. Only issue is. The wakespeed box on the cerbo shows no data. And I have a negative Dc load of 80 amps when in fact I’m putting charge in. Also the rpm sensor on the cerbo is 10000 too fast. At least it’s all charging though

Edited yesterday at 20:52 by Davidgabriel
Spelling

[PeterF]

OK excellent news. Regarding your points

 

1. Cerbo GX data. Earlier you said you had an alternator box, so comms were good, presume this remains the same but you have no current measurement data. To get the alternator current you need a shunt to measure the alternator current, bit your description did not include one. You need another dumb shunt to measure the alternator current and connect the WS500 shunt wires to this and swap the shunt setting from battery to alternator. Then you need to tell the WS500 to use the SmartShunt. The setting "Alternative CAN / BMS protocol" must be set to Victron SmartShunt.

 

2. You have a negative DC load which is a charging current. Because the Cerbo can not see the alternator current it assigns any unmeasured charge current to the generic DC system. This is normal behaviour. Unless you have a shunt to measure the alternator current this is how it will work.

 

3. Increase the WS500 setting "number of alternator poles" and/or pulley diameters until the readings match. You can divide the indicated rpm by the actual rpm to give you the factor for correcting the number of poles or pulley diameters.

When fitted with an alternator shunt you will see

 

[Davidgabriel]

That’s really helpful. Thank you. I do have a Victron smart shunt bmv712 fitted at the battery. Which is where I put the grey and purple wires. Shall I get another shunt and put it on the alternator?

some great stuff here. Thanks again. 

[PeterF]

if you would like to know what the alternator is doing then yes you can fit one. You only need a dumb shunt, I purchased Victron part number SHU500050100 link below.

 

 

Victron dumb shunt SHU500050100

 

If you can fit it in the negative that is great as it does not need insulating and the sense wires do not need fusing, I managed on my set up. If it has to go into the positive then it needs to go into an insulated box or cover and the sense wires need 1A fuses. Then the changes to the settings covered above will be needed. I ran for a while with AGM non managed batteries with the WS500 picking up the battery current from my BMV702 via the Cerbo using the Victron SmartShunt in the CAN protocol mentioned above.

 

Now I have swapped to BMS managed Victron batteries I still get the battery current via the Cerbo from the BMS, it works just as well as directly measuring the current so no problem losing that input and having the shunt at alternator.

 

One advantage if you have the alternator shunt is that you can set the alternator max current, say you have a 100A alternator and find the current gets limited to 70A by the temperature control, then you can set the max current at 65A and it will control to this. I have my Iskra 175A unit set to max 120A in the WS500 settings. You can then also use DVCC if you wish but I am not 100% sure if it would do anything with non managed batteries.

 

Here is my wiring diagram with alternator shunt in the negative, both alternators 12V, you will need to work yours out.

 

 

[Davidgabriel]

That looks good. I’ve ordered a victron smart shunt. I’ll fit that on the negative. My Wakespeed just doesn’t seem to recognise the shunt on the bmv. Tried all the things you said. It’s not the end of the world. It’s all charging nicely. Wish I’d took some pictures of the cerbo in action. Oh well. Once again. Thanks for your help

[PeterF]

Beware, if you have purchased a SmartShunt for the alternator then you do not want to connect this to the Cerbo because then you will have the alternator current measured twice, once by the SmartShunt and once by the WS500 connected to the SmartShunt. This will cause all sorts of problems with the Cerbo. That is why I linked specifically to the dumb shunt.

[Davidgabriel]

Aah. Bugger. Ok. I’ll think again😀

[Davidgabriel]

Ok. So I have also bought the shunt in your post. Next weekend when the weather is going to be glorious. I’ll be hunched in the engine compartment sweating my you know what’s off. Although to be fair I have mostly enjoyed this process. I do love the fact I can switch stuff on with impunity and not worry about the batteries.