Community Forums

harbortime · 10-06-2017, 01:36 PM

I would like to install a BMK in my (future) 2018 Tiffin Phaeton IH but it has the new main Spyder control panel. It doesn't have a typical Magnum control panel (Like an ARC50) for controlling the inverter and auto gen start et.

I contacted Spyder and they have no user interface for the BMK parameters in their system.

I could try hooking it up and plugging it into the magnum inverter and then pluggin in my ARC remote but who knows what that will do to the current spyder system.

Its sad that most people have no idea how wonderful a BMK is. Once you use one, you'll never go back.

You can't actually know how much battery charge is in the bank by only looking at voltage. Same goes for charging. With a BMK you can monitor the exact among of energy that has been used or placed back into the batteries. You see a percentage of the battery status (like 85%). Its also used in conjunction with charging the batteries and with the auto gen start. It doesn't waste any gas or unnecessary time running the generator.

Kiawah · 10-06-2017, 03:33 PM

Yep, I understand and was worrying about that same thing if I ever decide to upgrade.

It's not just knowing how much energy is in the house batteries, it's triggering the AGS off of SOC which is also lost. Have to go back to triggering off voltage.

I would doubt you'd be able to plug the ARC50 onto the network bus, as you'd have two different brains (Spyder and ARC50) trying to set parameters in the inverter.

harbortime · 10-06-2017, 06:42 PM

Here is the response from Spyder.

Sad for me.

I won't give up though. I'll find a way.

"We followed up with Magnum and yes it would be possible to buy and install the Magnum BMK into your Magnum inverter/charger. It does not connect into the RV-C network but instead into the Magnum network which will then all communicate through the Magnum RV-C bridge. This module will improve the accuracy of the reported DC voltage and current shown in the inverter charger section. It also gives the possibility to show the current battery State of Charge but at this point our system has no option to display this additional information. Please let me know if you have any other questions regarding this."