Smoke alarm with dry contact or 12v relay? To shut down battery bank.

[Supervstech]

I am not so sure about that. I have a variety of CO and other detectors. Only the ones that say they detect gas do.

uhm, but one thing, don't mount on of those near a bathroom. We had an "incident" at christmas one year where a family member was in the bathroom and doing stinky things... the methane or whatever set the gas detector off and we had to unplug it and remove the battery to silence it.

My personal CO detector alerts me whenever the cat farts on me...

 

[robbob2112]

My personal CO detector alerts me whenever the cat farts on me...

LOL

But does that cause all the battery banks to disconnect?

 

[Supervstech]

LOL

But does that cause all the battery banks to disconnect?

Ha, no, but it shure gets me off thw couch, or causes me to push the cat off...

 

[hwy17]

I had wondered if a heat detector would go off quicker than a smoke detector.

The more I think about it the more I realize the Orion temp sensor I already have inside the battery case is probably already the best solution. Would a battery venting usually involve hitting 140f air temp inside the case? I would think so, but I don't know.

 

[Ampster]

The more I think about it the more I realize the Orion temp sensor I already have inside the battery case is probably already the best solution.

The difference with heat detetors is that they open or close based on some threshold and do not need any sofware logic. I am not clear what kind of alarm or contact closure the Orion BMS has with respect to an over temperature situation and if there is a setting for temperature.

 

[hwy17]

The difference with heat detetors is that they open or close based on some threshold and do not need any sofware logic. I am not clear what kind of alarm or contact closure the Orion BMS has with respect to an over temperature situation and if there is a setting for temperature.

Good point that's not a critical fault in Orion. So two mechanisms: Either by configuring MPE to High Temperature Output and setting up the relay logic to use that. Or by configuring the CCL/DCL to go to 0 at an appropriate rate above a certain temperature so that any detected current would exceed the limit and set of the charge or discharge enable signal. And then it wouldn't open all contactors that way, but it would open both charge and discharge in mine. But yeah, there are still a few layers of stacked logic and assumptions. Not quite as good as a dedicated external device.

 

[Ampster]

............Not quite as good as a dedicated external device.

Yes, but the one thing that is happening with that plan is the inverter would shut down or the contactor would open and that would provide some mitigation. In my mind that is a good first line of defense and the simple heat detector would be an alarm which would tell you that the mitigation did not stop the heat rise.

 

[Texas-Mark]

If the wife was cooking on the stove late one winter evening and the alarm goes off and cuts off battery power, do you stumble around in the dark?

FWIW, for a while I worked at a company that did fire suppression systems for large server rooms. The systems were always wired up so that it took 2 detectors going into alarm before it would do a power shutdown or release the extinguishing agent. Always scary going to a call where one was already in alarm and hoping a second one would not trip before disarming the power shutdown and halon release system.

 

[robbob2112]

Good point that's not a critical fault in Orion. So two mechanisms: Either by configuring MPE to High Temperature Output and setting up the relay logic to use that. Or by configuring the CCL/DCL to go to 0 at an appropriate rate above a certain temperature so that any detected current would exceed the limit and set of the charge or discharge enable signal. And then it wouldn't open all contactors that way, but it would open both charge and discharge in mine. But yeah, there are still a few layers of stacked logic and assumptions. Not quite as good as a dedicated external device.

It would be trivial to setup a RPi with any number of temp sensors connected via 1-wire and then have it close 1 or more relays connected to contactors. The RPi would only need to be within 100ft of the room, so it could be inside the room or just outside. With 1-wire the probes each have their own ID so you could program it to only cut power if both for a particular device were over temp. They are wired in series and I always used cat-5 for the job. Technically 1-wire is actually a signal and a ground so two wires.

The more probes the slower you have to strobe them but up to a couple hundred can be checked per second.

Connect the RPi to it's own battery supply and wifi to it can alert you if something trips and/or turn on a siren and a red police light