Couple of WS500 questions


  • Hi there, Installing my WS500 and a few questions:  
    • firstly, while configuring the unit while it\'s not plugged into anything but the USB cable, it works fine for around 30 secs to a minute then it flashes red, restarts and putty disconnects. Is this normal? My gut feeling is that it may due to not getting enough voltage through the USB port and it\'ll work fine once it\'s hooked up to the ignition power.
    • I bought a shunt with the unit, but I already have a \'system shunt\' on my system negative. Would I be able to install this new shunt in the positive feed from the alt or should I just take the shunt wires from the WS500 to the \'system shunt\' and not use the new shunt
    • Am I able to extend the wires on the harness? They are not long enough to reach both my battery bank and the alt and the same time, so I will have to put it closer to one or the other. I imagine the voltage sensing wires are pretty susceptible to resistance (ie wire length)
    • Last question and following on from above - I have a REC BMS and cerbo device - do I need to plug in all the battery voltage sensing/current sensing etc, as it should be able to get these from CANBUS?
    Thanks for any help!


  • When there is no battery voltage they do a reset every 30 seconds or so.  If you need it to stay on you can put 12V across the battery +- wires or put it into \"Config\" mode with a command.  You\'ll have to look it up on the WS500 config manual from the Wakespeed site. I would install the new shunt at the + wire coming out of your alternator so that you can track both your battery and alt. currents separately You can just use a good heatshrink buttsplice and extend your alt. wires.  Try to keep your shunt wire as short as possible and away from other power wires as you are only measuring millivolts on this sensor input. You can share the shunt info over the CANBus but we do not recommend doing PID loop control over a network if possible.  And remember, your WS500 has a cross-wired RS485 so you can not just plug it into your Cerbo or REC BMS without a crossover cable as you will put line voltage on your Cerbo/REC comms wires.  Same goes with the end of line terminator.  WS500 requires a special one.

  • Thanks Rick, somehow missed the mention of the configuration mode. I have the crossover cable and the terminators and will install the new shunt to just measure the alt current!

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