Victron energy Blue Power BMV-602 User manual

BMV-602 PC monitor manual
1 Contents of the CD
 1 x BMV-602 communications cable.
 1 x Installation CD
2 System Requirements
2.1 Hardware requirements
 A BMV-602 with software ersion 2.03 or higher.
 A spare RS-232 COM port. If there are no a ailable RS-232 COM ports, a USB to
serial con erter may be used. These can be purchased from Victron Energy (part
number ASS030200000). Please note that Victron Energy cannot guarantee
compatibility with other models of USB to serial con erter.
2.2 Software requirements
 Microsoft Windows XP or Vista.
 Microsoft .NET framework V3.5. Most computers should already ha e the latest
.Net framework installed. Howe er, the installer can be found on this CD (“\Third
party\dotNetFx35Setup.exe”), or downloaded from www.microsoft.com.
3 Installation
1.1 Hardware installation
For details of the installation and use of the
BMV-602 refer to the BMV-602 manual. Once
the BMV-602 has been installed, and is
working correctly, connect the serial cable as
shown in the diagram.
Pin 1 on the BMV-602 is the pin closest to the
edge of the housing. Pin 1 on the cable is
indicated by an arrow on the connector.
Connect the other end of the cable to a COM port on your
PC. Make a note of the port number to which the cable
has been connected. This will be required later.
1.2 Software installation
1. Insert the installation CD into your CD dri e. The installer should start automatically.
2. Follow the prompts to install the software.

Using the software
To launch the software, click on the start menu, then “All
Programs”, then BMV-602 Battery Monitor.
When the application starts, you will be asked to specify the
COM port to which the BMV-602 is connected. Select the
correct port from the list, then click “OK”.
A screen will now be displayed that shows
all of the statistics reported by the BMV-
602. For more information on these
statistics, refer to the BMV-602 manual.
4.1 Logging
The data recei ed can be sa ed to a file
which can be imported into other
applications, such as Microsoft Excel, for further processing.
1. Select “Sa e to CSV” from the “File” menu.
2. Select the desired logging inter al, and choose a location for the file.
3. Select the maximum size for the log file.
4. Click “OK”.
If an option other than “De ice space limited” was selected, then logging will automatically
stop once the log file reaches the specified size. If “De ice space limited” was selected, or
you wish to stop logging before the specified size is reached, do the following:
1. Select “Sa e to CSV” from the “File” menu.
2. Un-check the box labelled “Logging enabled”.
3. Click “OK”.
Warning: It is not ad isable to select “De ice space limited” when sa ing to the same
dri e that holds the computer's operating system. If the log file is allowed to consume all
free space on the system dri e, the operating system may become unstable. With the
logging inter al set to continuous, the log file will grow by approximately 58 MB/week.
Appendix 2 File format
The data sa ed using the “Sa e to CSV” option is sa ed using the CSV (Comma
Separated Values) file format which is supported by many applications, such as Microsoft
Excel, and Open Office.org Calc.

The data is arranged in a table format. Each line in the file represents a row in the table.
Columns are separated by a separator character.
1
Appendix 3 Troubleshooting
Problem:
The installer does not start when the CD is inserted.
Suggested solution:
1. Open “My Computer” and right-click on the CD/DVD dri e.
2. Select “Open”
3. Double-click on “Setup.exe”
Problem:
The application will not install, or the application installs, but will not run.
Suggested solution:
The BMV-602 Battery Monitor application requires the Microsoft .Net framework. Make
sure you ha e this installed. The installer for ersion 3.5 can be found on this CD “\Third
party\dotNetFx35setup.exe”, or the latest ersion can be downloaded from
www.microsoft.com.
Problem:
The COM port selection dialogue does not list any COM ports.
Suggested solution:
You are probably using a USB-to-serial con erter, but ha e not installed the dri ers. Install
the dri ers that came with the USB-to-serial con erter, making sure to reboot the computer
if prompted.
Problem:
The connection status reads “DISCONNECTED”, and no alues are updated.
1 The actual character used as the separator depends on your regional settings. Refer to Appendix 4 for
more information.

Suggested solutions:
 Check that the BMV-602 is connected to the PC, and has power.
 Make sure that the correct COM port has been selected. You can change the
selected COM port by selecting “Change COM port” from the “Tools” menu.
 If you are using a USB-to-serial con erter, make sure that the dri ers are correctly
installed; otherwise the correct COM port will not be listed.
Appendix Regional settings
The way that information is displayed on the screen, and sa ed to file depends on the
regional settings of your computer. Usually, this is not important. Howe er if you send a log
file to somebody who uses a computer with different regional settings, it may not display
correctly when they open it.
Appendix 5 Creating a VI graph in Microsoft Excel
Once a log file has been created, there are many things for which it can be used. A
common use for this type of data is to plot a graph of the battery oltage and current o er
time. This tutorial describes how to create such a graph using the Microsoft Excel
spreadsheet software.
The following instructions are for Microsoft Excel 2003, and may need to be adapted for
other ersions of Excel.
1. Create a log file using the procedure
described abo e.
2. Open Microsoft Excel.
3. Click on the “File” menu, then select
“Open...”.
4. In the “Files of type” box, select “Text
Files”.
5. Browse to the log file created in step 1.
6. Select the file and click “Open”.
7. Highlight the timestamp column, by
clicking on the column heading.
8. From the “Format” menu, select
“Cells...”.
9. In the “Category” list, select “Time”, and then click “OK”.
10. Whilst holding the control key, click on the column headings for the main battery
oltage (column B), and main battery current (column D).
11. From the “Insert” menu, select “Chart...”.
12. On the “Custom Types” tab, select “Smooth Lines” from “Chart type” list.

13. Click “Next”.
14. Click “Next” again.
15. Click “Next” one more time.
16. Select “As new sheet”.
17. Replace the text “Chart1”, with “VI
graph”.
18. Click “Finish”
You now ha e a chart of the oltage and
current readings for the main battery.
Howe er, with the default formatting, it will
probably be difficult to read, so some
additional steps are required.
If the log file contains a lot of samples, the x-axis alues will be too close together.
1. Right-click on the text, and select “Format axis...”.
2. Click on the “Scale” tab.
3. Enter a larger alue in the “Number of categories between tick-mark labels” box.
The required alue depends on the number of samples captured. The more
samples, the higher this alue needs to be.
4. Click “OK”.
By default, the oltage and current cur es will be plotted using the same y-axis scale.
Howe er, the measured alues will lie in different ranges, so this is not practical.
1. Right-click on the current cur e, and select “Format data series...”.
2. Click on the “Axis” tab.
3. Select “Secondary axis”.
4. Click “OK”.
5. This causes some of the formatting
options to be lost, so right-click on the
current cur e, and select “Format data
series...” again.
6. Click on the “Patterns” tab.
7. In the “Line” area, select “Smoothed
line”.
8. In the “Marker” area, select “None”.
9. Click “OK”.