Renogy RS-485 communications interface...in detail
- Thread starter Cbull
- Start date
I have the Renogy DCC50S with the BT-2 bluetooth monitor and the RMS-DCDC monitoring screen and I'm trying to get the 2 monitoring units to work with the DCDC charger.
I don't need the BT to work while I'm driving but would like to use the monitoring screen so my idea was to use a 4PDT relay to switch the screen in with ignition and have the BT unit working through the NC contacts when engine is shut off.
I'm only using contacts 1-4 as shown in the PDF as I assumed the Canbus contacts could be ignored but it doesn't work.
I notice the the RJ45 pin numbering on the image in the PDF seems to be reversed i.e. numbering from 8 to 1 from the left. Do the numbers & allocations in the list actually correspond to the numbers shown on the plug?
Thanks for any enlightenment or guidance!
I don't need the BT to work while I'm driving but would like to use the monitoring screen so my idea was to use a 4PDT relay to switch the screen in with ignition and have the BT unit working through the NC contacts when engine is shut off.
I'm only using contacts 1-4 as shown in the PDF as I assumed the Canbus contacts could be ignored but it doesn't work.
I notice the the RJ45 pin numbering on the image in the PDF seems to be reversed i.e. numbering from 8 to 1 from the left. Do the numbers & allocations in the list actually correspond to the numbers shown on the plug?
Thanks for any enlightenment or guidance!
Just answering my own question, I found that pins 5 to 8 work correctly. The PDF is showing non-standard RJ45 pin numbering.
So I now have the RMS-DCDC screen showing while ignition is on and the BT-2 working when I shut down.
Sorry to revive an ooooold thread. Wondering what cable you guys might recommend for this today? I cannot buy the Renogy official cable.
Looking at Renogy Document for the cable - https://www.renogy.com/content/RSCB1.8M24/SCB-Manual.pdf
It references using the "FT232RL" chip.
Would something like this work: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07N1LZSBN/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A1SRKLXY0XF9L5&psc=1
Its suppose to be the same chip. Just no guess on the pin out. I am trying to wrap my brain around it.
I want the cable to do a couple things.
- I have a few of these batteries and they are on a few different firmware versions. I am hoping to update them all to the same.
- I have seen the dbus-serialbattery project ( https://louisvdw.github.io/dbus-serialbattery/ ) that I should be able to add the BMS directly to my Cerbo (Raspberry Pi).
Any advice is appreciated.
Looking at Renogy Document for the cable - https://www.renogy.com/content/RSCB1.8M24/SCB-Manual.pdf
It references using the "FT232RL" chip.
Would something like this work: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07N1LZSBN/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A1SRKLXY0XF9L5&psc=1
Its suppose to be the same chip. Just no guess on the pin out. I am trying to wrap my brain around it.
I want the cable to do a couple things.
- I have a few of these batteries and they are on a few different firmware versions. I am hoping to update them all to the same.
- I have seen the dbus-serialbattery project ( https://louisvdw.github.io/dbus-serialbattery/ ) that I should be able to add the BMS directly to my Cerbo (Raspberry Pi).
Any advice is appreciated.
Last edited:
Hello,
did you manage to connect Renogy LiFePo4 to Venus Pi? I want to by 3 of these batteries but I didn't find any info about connecting more than one battery to Victron Venus.
Thanks
I paused the project for other higher priority stuff for me... In the end I can use the renogy bluetooth for what I need. Saying that I would like to get it working. It looks like though all I need is to install the dbus software and a renogy official cable for programming an updating the batteries. I could not find one to order though so I have to make my own and could not find any good info short of guessing a little.
Would love to hear what you come up with.
Hey there. I'm going to give this a shot with a Cerbo and see what happens. I'm going to use a generic RS485 to USB interface since it appears the Renogy model is no longer available. I think the problem I am likely to run into is that each battery will somehow need to be assigned an individual address/drop number. It appears that this uses modbus protocol, and I would expect that each battery would be factory assigned the same address. If I want to connect to multiple batteries with the same connection (in my case 4), then I would need to figure this out. A workaround would be to put an RS485 to USB on each battery and run them to the Cerbo individually, but that seems like a messy set-up when you can daisy chain the batteries together and use a single connection.
EDIT:
Looking at your Amazon link, it appears the adapter you were looking at is RS232, not RS485. Same language, different protocol. RS232 doesn't allow for multiple devices where RS485 does. The Renogy batteries are RS485 devices.
Matthew Marks
New Member
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2022
- Messages
- 2
Waking up an old thread again... I have a Renogy battery and was wondering if anyone had made progress? With regards to the device address,
the linked document doesn't appear to state anywhere what defaults might be, but for "PDU"s you can apparently read and change it with the register at 0x1A. I'm waiting for an RS485 interface but presumably I can then poll all device addresses to find out what address my battery has, and then scan register addresses to find undocumented ones, and if the contents of one is the same as the device address it's a good indication that it might be.
the linked document doesn't appear to state anywhere what defaults might be, but for "PDU"s you can apparently read and change it with the register at 0x1A. I'm waiting for an RS485 interface but presumably I can then poll all device addresses to find out what address my battery has, and then scan register addresses to find undocumented ones, and if the contents of one is the same as the device address it's a good indication that it might be.
Hey Matthew
I'm going to take a shot at this in the next few days with a Cerbo GX.
I've got 4 Renogy Smart Lithium batteries and hope to connect them on one connection. I've got them daisy chained together with short RJ45 cables and used the Renogy battery monitor to auto-address them with sequential addresses (1-4). It appears that the default address is always 1 until you hook the data ports together. I didn't test this extensively, but the battery monitor clearly shows 4 separate batteries and 4 separate addresses. The protocol appears to be modbus, so it is likely you could connect directly to the batteries with a modbus master program such as QModMaster (free) and readdress them in that fashion if you didn't have a battery monitor. I'm using this USB to 485 adapter (currently out of stock but other variations of the same brand available. I've used this brand of adapter with countless devices and it works great. It uses a standard off-the-shelf FTDI chip so it should be automatically recognizable to the Cerbo.
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gnappi
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2021
- Messages
- 42
Regarding the Renogy connectivity issue... I found a few things which likely caused it and how to correct it.
#1. I shortened the BT-1 cable and installed the controller inside the cabinet directly over the 60A CC.
#2 The Renogy "app" was replaced with the SRNE app (AFAIK SRNE makes the CC for Renogy) which has had no connection issues BEFORE I installed the JDY board in #3 below.
#3, I have a JDY-33-SPP bluetooth 4 channel relay controller in the same cabinet as the BT-1 and once in a while it causes the SRNE app to fail to connect. To fix this I either break the JDY connection or power off the JDY controller. But that can be a pain getting into the cabinet so since I'm only using two of the four JDY relays I'm going to try self enabling the JDY with the NC connection and use itself to break its' own input power. Theoretically it "should" solve this BT-1 issue completely.
#1. I shortened the BT-1 cable and installed the controller inside the cabinet directly over the 60A CC.
#2 The Renogy "app" was replaced with the SRNE app (AFAIK SRNE makes the CC for Renogy) which has had no connection issues BEFORE I installed the JDY board in #3 below.
#3, I have a JDY-33-SPP bluetooth 4 channel relay controller in the same cabinet as the BT-1 and once in a while it causes the SRNE app to fail to connect. To fix this I either break the JDY connection or power off the JDY controller. But that can be a pain getting into the cabinet so since I'm only using two of the four JDY relays I'm going to try self enabling the JDY with the NC connection and use itself to break its' own input power. Theoretically it "should" solve this BT-1 issue completely.
