Off grid Alta charging with Pelican case Lithium build

[Barry Burton]

I finally finished my own 8kWh lithium bank with a 3.2kW inverter to charge my Alta Redshift EX. It’s clean, quiet and fits in a Pelican case. I’m still dialing in the charge curve. Anyone here using CAN bus monitoring to track pack performance during discharge?

 

[cederstrom2026]

Nice setup! I’ve used CAN bus monitoring with a Victron BMS and it helps track voltage sag and current draw during discharge, but you’ll need a compatible interface to read Alta’s data stream. Are you using the OEM charger or something custom with your inverter?

 

[Barry Burton]

Nice setup! I’ve used CAN bus monitoring with a Victron BMS and it helps track voltage sag and current draw during discharge, but you’ll need a compatible interface to read Alta’s data stream. Are you using the OEM charger or something custom with your inverter?

The OEM charger is running off the inverter for now. Finding a compatible interface to read the Alta's data is my current challenge. What hardware did you use for your Victron setup?

 

[Smokezero]

Sorry for coming in a bit late, I did some research and I hope this information is useful. For Victron systems, a CANable USB-CAN interface is often the go-to choice, and the frames are decoded using a custom DBC file. If there’s no documentation for Alta’s CAN, then using a generic CAN interface for sniffing and logging the data stream seems like the way to go for reverse-engineering.