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One very important detail here is that your negative bus needs to be on the "load" side of your shunt, not the battery side. All negatives, including chassis grounds, charge source negatives, etc. etc. need to run to the "load" side of the shunt so that the BMV can see what's going on.
So: both negative cables (but nothing else) from your battery run directly to the "battery" side of the shunt; then connect your negative bus to the "load" side of the shunt and connect all other negatives to the bus.
@Justin Cook I am confused in that the diagram provided by Victron specifically indicates that all negatives should be combined via exactly equal length cables to a shared bus, To be clear, there are no loads suggested to be connected to the bus. It goes batteries ->bus -> shunt -> a load bus at the wiring panel. Are you suggesting that the chargers should be connected after the shunt?
Secondly, the diagram shows the B1 cable connected to the positive battery bus (and thus to the batteries' POS connections) - also directly as shown in Victron's diagram. I'd be very grateful if you could help me understand where I am misunderstanding...
Also, if you use the temperature sensor for the BMV 712, the wires from the temperature sensor completely replace the single power wire for the shunt, so the wire you have currently marked "to B1" goes away; the temperature sensor connects to your positive battery terminal, not the negative, and you connect the red wire from the temperature sensor to B1 on the shunt and the black wire goes to B2. Please do not connect the temperature sensor the way you currently have it drawn; as it's currently shown it will fry your PCB and likely the temp sensor as well.
Possibly I am mistaken, but the picture shows the negative busbar connecting 2 battery negatives, the solar charger and the AC charge controller.
It appears that the monitor shunt is between the negative busbar and the load. As such, it will be monitoring the load drain but not the charging from the charge sources, unless the neg lines from the charge sources are connected to the shunt load side.
If you had a second neg black busbar wired to the load side of the shunt and moved the neg loads and charging sources to that shunt it would be more obvious that the single battery monitor is intended to monitor both charging & drain activities.
Thanks @Justin Cook!
Here is what I believe to be the correct revised diagram. If you would confirm I'd be very grateful. I'd also appreciate advice on the wire size I should use to connect the Neg terminals on batteries 1 and 3 to B2... It looks like the connections won't take much more than #18 - maybe less? That's all it takes?
Weird... I swear I answered this before now but my replies have vanished... so, er, yes... as long as you're doing midpoint voltage reading, this is correct. I'm a little thrown off by the "Victron Temp wires" label, because if you're using the Victron temp sensor this is not the correct way to wire it.
If you're measuring midpoint voltage, then yes, this will work, and yes, #18 will do you fine. I recommend ferrule terminations at the shunt side, or at least dipping your ends in solder, to help you push the wires into the little spring clips without getting runaway strands.
If you're going to use a temp sensor, this wiring changes... confirm that you're abandoning the temp sensor?
Additional resources still need to be added for this topic
Victron BMV battery monitors product page
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