Replying to an older post in this thread. This is a great summary. I've just started digging into the Victron control panels and your description seems accurate. I'm prefer the Pico approach in general. But practically speaking, if I were to buy Victron components but use Pico for overall battery monitoring and control, what would I lose on the Victron integration side?
What about using Pico for the day to day manual UI, and then the Victron connect software on a laptop when needed for detailed system configuration of say a 3000VA Multiplus Inverter/Charger? I'd appreciate any additional commentary you could make on a Victron + Pico system.
Oh man, an open ended request for my opinion, you have no idea what you are getting yourself into
Big caveat here is that I have spent time with the Pico, I have not spent time with (an installed) Victron setup.
So the approach and product lines from the two companies are *so* different, you're really comparing that more than you are the UIs & monitor devices. That said, the monitor device is what you interact with on a day to day basis, 99% of the time it's what you'll use and notice. Personally, and I get the feeling you may be like this, it drives me nuts if I don't have "the best" (within reason) for things I really care about, and I know myself well enough to know if I buy something and end up regretting it and wishing I had bought something else, I often will suck it up and upgrade it. So for me, it's cheapest just to get the right thing in the first place. Because I'm a geek and I love metrics and monitoring and UIs, my systems controller/SoC setup was (is) very important for my camper van. It's like the digital hub/interface to #vanlife
(FWIW I geek out on Home Assistant & Z-Wave at home for home automation; this is a related passion). So when I looked into the "ultimate" monitoring system for the camper van, I came up with Victron and Simarine, I didn't see anything else really in that league, with a modern interface.
I bought the Color Control GX (Victron's top monitor at the time) and I *really* wanted to like it, because I have 25 years personal & professional experience with Linux and I'm an absolute Linux geek (but I use Macs for workstations and my home servers), and it is Linux based, and open source. The idea of being able to ssh into my monitoring device is very tempting. But the quality was just not there. Low res, TFT, sluggish, plastic, chunky buttons, poorly thought out UI. They have a new line now (GX) that probably addresses some of this, but it's still the same architecture and approach ultimately. After living with the Pico for over a year, I am very confident I made the right choice. Zero buyers remorse, the longer I've had it, the more that is cemented. And that's not confirmation bias, I have tons of examples where I spent countless hours researching, purchasing and then the opposite happened. Here's what I'd outline, in order of priority, of the differences as I see them. FWIW the Pico has an IPS screen with gorilla glass and capacitive touch in a milled and anodized solid aluminum housing. It's probably the closest to Apple quality/execution that I've seen from anyone other than Apple in electronics, period.
Architecture of the monitoring device & system -> very different approaches. Victron has their own Linux distribution, it seems to run on multi-core ARM CPUs, with gigabytes of RAM. It is a full OS running; the UI is a graphical app on top of it. Simarine instead uses an SoC and writes the code to run directly on it. There is no "OS", they are probably writing C++ to control every aspect of it. It is a far lighter-weight approach. And they have done it very well, I thought, the results were far better (responsiveness, UI design, boot time, etc) than on the Color Control GX. But here is a significant difference - to monitor something like a shunt to calculate SoC, the Pico uses CAN bus to send raw data to the controller, which does the calculations. Victron on the other hand, requires a dedicated SoC controller per shunt/device, which is going to calculate SoC, and then just use the display panel (also communicating via CAN bus I believe - which makes sense; it's a well suited protocol for this situation) to display the data. Advantage of this is that the controller can sleep (which is good as it is going to draw much more power than the Pico). Disadvantage is, it's expensive - you have to buy a BMV for every shunt/battery, and at some point, say 3 BMVs are going to draw more power than 1 Pico. I love Linux, but Simarine I think has a better system architecture for a low power application like camper vans.
Second, Simarine really just makes the controller, shunts, and "sensor inputs". For the sensor inputs, they take standard resistive and
4-20ma current loop sensor inputs. I've never worked with 4-20 loops, but it is a industrial standard for sensors (quite possibly as well in high end yachting, which seems to be Simarines prime market). See the above link for details why, it's kind of interesting. However, all my sensors are resistive/voltage. I run a $35 KUS stainless tank sensor and have a second sitting around that I need to put in one of my grey water tanks. I bought a 5 pack of waterproof NTC 10k resistive temperature sensors for $10 shipped - resistive output. My LPG tank has a resistive sending unit level sensor. If you buy a
ST107 for $100, it can read 4 resistive inputs, 3 voltage inputs and a 2 position relay switch (I think usable with alarms; ie: set a threshold and it will trigger). I got a $75 voltage based 2-axis inclinometer. The $180 SCQ25T has that plus 4 current shunts (25a continuous; 50a peak each, and you can parallel them to combine). So I can measure my subpanel current draw, my charger output, my solar current with one of these. Wait till you price this stuff out in the Victron world... I have a couple
"big" shunts (300a) for $100 that also have 2 voltage inputs. So you can run a bunch of batteries for SoC tracking, and/or a current draw for large and small loads, very inexpensively. In the Victron world, you need a BMV for each shunt, as it then just uses the display as a remote display. You want to add an arbitrary resistive measurement like a tank level sensor or temperature sensor? OK,
$215 is the discount price to add ONE to your Victron setup. So the difference in architecture and Victron vendor lock-in has huge cost and flexibility implications.
The benefit of the Victron approach is that you will be able to buy a Victron charger or inverter, and adjust the settings on the control panel. Personally, there are no settings on our 1000w sine inverter that I care to adjust other than on/off, which can be accomplished with a simple toggle switch or a dedicated remote. We have a remote for our Samlex inverter, but I only use it for on/off. If I cared much about it, I'd put a shunt on it to monitor the current in or out on the Pico, but I really don't. The only thing we use it for is a coffee grinder. Once you have your charger dialed in, I suspect it would be the same - set it and forget it. Victron doesn't make anything like the Kisae, so if you go the Victron route, you wouldn't get that advantage on the most interesting and consequential charger in your system. I wanted to like Victron, they have sharp looking devices (blue is my favorite color); they have a good reputation, they have some cool devices, but I just don't think their approach and lineup is well suited for camper vans.
Simarine is not perfect. When I first got it, the iOS app crashed a bit. That's been fixed. They have been slowly, but steadily improving it, polishing it up, adding functionality. They say they are working on an API but it's not there yet (I can't wait till it is, if it ever arrives). They have added NMEA2000 support (which is a standard for sensors that uses CAN bus as a transport I believe) - this can be used to add things like GPS or other boating sensors. Could be interesting, and probably opens up some opportunities. I bought a Pi and a CAN bus transceiver hat to see if I can reverse engineer some of the Simarine stuff and make some Arduino things. I want to add a GPS / LoRa ESP32 that can tie into the Simarine CAN network so I can have a low cost tracking setup, and add GPS to the Pico (not sure why, it just seems like a cool project). They also have a
line of switches, the app now supports the Pico and switches, and if we are really lucky, we may get a UI update that lets us do switches directly on the Pico. That would be a great step towards more of a "camper automation" type setup. I rolled the dice on this company knowing they could just disappear, but I don't think that is going to be the case. In fact it looks like they are
making a play at the high end RV market, which is kinda exciting.
Rob