Just a comment on Magnum. When I did my research, and went with a full Magnum system to replace my OEM unit - I felt they were the most reasonable 'total series of components' and a company with a good reputation. (I did consider piecing together components from Outback, Morningstar, BlueSky, Bogart, etc. - but they would have been a series of different component suppliers. And I wanted 'The Buck Stops with one supplier, to avoid pointing fingers.) The only non integrated component is the Solar Controller, as the PT100 from Magnum came out about 6 month after I made all of my choices and purchases. Same with the Hybrid series of Inverter/Charges too, missed them by about 3-4 months.
So no one sold me all of this stuff. I chose it myself, after much research and getting help from various boards in RV'ing/Off Grid and Boating forums. So I take responsibility for my component choices.
Install of both the Solar Panels & Controller, as well as the full Magnum series of components supporting the MS2812, were also all done by a single RV facility. (Unfortunately, my timing did not match up with the Yuma based Starlight Solar (They're reverse Snowbirds:)!), or I would have had them do the total install. Have lots of respect for how Larry and Debbie(Or Deb or Deborah?) do business including installs.
I did have some teething pains with the first install by the RV Repair facility that did the work. The Tech I feel did a very good, neat, professional job. He did miss one negative feed over to the Shunt funnel, which cause some questionable results on our shake down trip after the install. Working together via phone while traveling for those months, we identified what was missed. And I elected to wait until I was back in their area to have it modified. (My goal on the install, including this minor missed item, was for it too to be done with only one shop involved. The shop also did a Buskote covering of my roof, prior to installing the panels.)
In my Aerospace Career as a Staff Business Systems Architect - I'd been caught too many times with the 'pointing of fingers' between suppliers and software vendors. So I rapidly learned to eliminate this by having one 'integrator' of hardware, installation of hardware, software, and software customization. Again, the Buck stopped with one Integrator, and no pointing of fingers... Made the actually roll out and training and sustaining phases much more manageable. (28 countries, 270+ manufacturing plants, between 285-300K end users of the various systems - so, lots of 'help' form executives when things did not go as perfect as possible:)!).
My main message here is I chose my components. And think I made good choices at that time. And, all of my requests for help over the 4 1/2 years or so with Magnum, Lifeline, MidNite - have always been very positive. In many instances, the weak link was me. Where as I've stated before 'I found out later, that what I thought I knew, was not what was, or should have been:)!'.
Best to all,
Smitty
And PS: I'm still keeping an open mind on KISS again approach to the maintenance of this new battery bank. I could easily see myself ending up in the months ahead, putting the ARC-50 Charge selection into permanent Standby. And just install stand alone charger for while I'm on shore power. One that I control the On/Off of manually, or with a time in the mix. I belie the BMK-Meter, along with he MidNite Controller also feeding off of the same Shunt, does provide adequate visibility of AH's Out/In, and current under load/charge Voltage levels. But before I do this, if I do this, I want to understand more about the capabilities of the MS2812 with Temp Sensor and BMK-Meter in the mix...
