This afternoon after another meeting I finally installed the MultiControl replacement in the van. It sits above the fridge next to the main switchboard. I have fans for air circulation around the fridge walls and this will also let the air flow over all the components installed in the space above the fridge.
Below to the right, visible only as a white surface, is the 8 port router to connect some of the components to the LAN. On the left below the 5V power supply for the router one can see the UDOO Linux main processor, which is connected to the touch screen on the other side of the wall. The main box for the MultiControl sits further back in that cavity and behind it is the power point for the fridge, powered by the small inverter.
The terminal strip below breaks out all the trigger lines for the latching relays in the main switch board. They are all 12V and will be connected to an Arduino. The 240V sub circuits will be switched this way.
Below is the rear view of the control panel. When I took the photo I didn’t realise I missed the top part of the panel. Will do another one eventually. The 12V connections at the moment (cable at the top right) are temporary. The Next step will be to install the fuse panels for the supply lines.
Below one can see the control panel from the front now with the little touch screen for the MultiControl at the top left. The CCGX is pretty bright in the picture and the display is not legible.
This is a close up picture of the CCGX. At the moment I let the batteries run down a fair bit before I recharge them. I do not want to cycle them all the time, this was one reason for the MultiControl replacement because I need to run the inverter without the charger. The inverter has to be switched on to get AC in even with a cable connected. I understand why they did that, but it is still inconvenient. Maybe eventually I put a bypass switch in the front to supply AC without the Multiplus. I had originally planned it and I even have the rotating switch, but did not put it in yet.
At the moment the battery is down by 520 something Ah, which is roughly 79% full as one can see above.
This is the draw with the router on, the MultiControl box and the CCGX screen on. The router is quite power hungry and draws close to 450 mA.
CCGX screen off and 100mA less draw. The router has to run to connect the central system to the CAN bus and to the Wifi points. When the external Wifi is on I expect a draw of around 3.5A. We will see step by step how it turns out.
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