Zeus Regulators?

[DDW]

That article seems a little dated. The Wakespeed 500 Pro has Bluetooth and a smartphone app for programming with about equal capability. It also has most of the features claimed by the Zeus. They are actually very close to equal in feature set and capability. His conclusion comparing them to a Ferrari vs a Hyundai is specious and incorrect.

As far as support goes, Arco may respond to Rod Collins emails, but they did not respond to mine.

 

[SteveK]

ARCO Zeus. Vs. Wakespeed - Marine How To

A Cost Comparison - Wakespeed WS-500 vs. ARCO Zeus Having been involved early on in the open source Development of the Wakespeed regulator by Al Thomason, I found it fascinating Al & Rick (Wakespeed owners), did not

marinehowto.com

@JackConnick
Wow, can you show this to your guys and let us know what they think now.

 

[JackConnick]

@JackConnick
Wow, can you show this to your guys and let us know what they think now.

Yeah, that article is dated, the Pro version is pretty equal and the costs work out the same. My guy just said he can tune the Wakespeed more and the Arco is pretty locked up.

 

[l00smarble]

They both work comparably. And it is good to work with a full service dealer/installer who will be responsible for the results so brand choice may be driven by this as in your case.

However I can't see how someone would come away with the impression that the Arco is "locked up." I would love to hear a more specific comparison feature by feature as maybe I am missing something?

Personally and professionally I am primarily hitching my alternator regulation wagon to Arco as a company vs. Dragonfly which seems very likely destined to fail at this point especially with the way they are handling the Battleborn crisis.

They are losing millions of dollars per quarter, they have only $3M cash and $70M in debt. Their stock almost got delisted from the NASDAQ If they hadn't done the 10 to 1 reverse split in December the company would be a penny stock trading at $0.22. I'm guessing bankruptcy of some kind is likely soon.

It is a shame that Wakespeed got brought into that mess but they are indeed in that mess. It would be great if they came out the other side indepenedent again but unless the original founders/engineers want to run with it who is going to do further development and support?

 

[klee wyck]

ARCO Zeus. Vs. Wakespeed - Marine How To

A Cost Comparison - Wakespeed WS-500 vs. ARCO Zeus Having been involved early on in the open source Development of the Wakespeed regulator by Al Thomason, I found it fascinating Al & Rick (Wakespeed owners), did not

marinehowto.com

Yeah, I am pretty comfortable with my choice to go Arco Zeus in the alternator/ regulator pair and the Dragonfly situation figured in.
I was initially led to Zeus by the regulator choice. I am looking forward to seeing how this 24V high output 4KW LTO alternator performs. My ask was to be able to charge the lithium bank fairly quickly from the engines even though I idle at 600 rpm and cruise at barely over 1000 rpm. These alternators have a low turn on rpm (LTO). The ratio on the pulleys is 3:1 so I am expecting to be putting out just over 100 amps of 24v from each side at 600 rpm idle. I am leaving the generator in the boat for now but with an eye to take it out if the doubling of solar and these alts perform as I expect.
The alternators I chose are shown in the green and orange lines in the graph below. 4kw peak is plenty of output for my system and the potential benefit from charging at idle is interesting and accommodates my normal low rpm cruise.

 

[La Sirena]

I just installed an Arco Zeus on my boat that already had 4 Epoch V1 460Ahr in parallel/series to get 920Ahr at 24V and a Balmar Series 98 220A @24V alternator. My first Zeus only had about 2-3 feet of bluetooth range. I got a warranty replacement and I can read it from well outside the ER. I had a few snafus when I did the install which required me to call Tech Support. Not "best in class" but not horrible either. It turned out the problems were on my end and the regulator gave the correct error codes.

At the dock I was able to get about 130A out of my alternator at my cruising speed of 1250 RPM and a 1.8:1 pulley ratio. I'd be happy with that. I just installed a bunch of Victron stuff including a Cerbo GX. I have DVCC turned on, but only to share the SmartShunt voltage and current between all connected devices. Then I set the Absorption voltage on all chargers at 13.7. In a couple days I'm headed to the Bahamas for a few months. That will be the true test.

 

[ronobrien]

Sounds like Chat trained on Arco/Zeus marketing literature, which is a big hazard in LLM AI these days. The Wakespeed marketing literature isn't nearly as flowery, so less for AI to chew on.

My personal bias would be not to integrate everything that tightly. It makes a complex system even more complex. The cost/benefit ratio seems low.

I am curious about the statement that with Wakespeed, you have to run a generic LFP profile. Is that actually true? Also the statement

• Any odd behavior or firmware quirks would fall to your installer to diagnose rather than being part of the system’s logic.

Seems generic to any multi-brand complex installation, Zeus included.

Agreed on the caution using AI. I have asked Q's on NMEA 200 networks and gotten answers that are flat out wrong. One day it tells me one thing and the next day same Q gets a different answer. Be careful.

 

[drewread]

Agreed on the caution using AI. I have asked Q's on NMEA 200 networks and gotten answers that are flat out wrong. One day it tells me one thing and the next day same Q gets a different answer. Be careful.

Kind of like asking a question on a public forum..

I wonder where the A"I" pulls its data from. (I don't actually wonder, that is sarcasm... Hint - a lot of data is pulled from forums exactly like this one.)

 

[NoRain]

GIGO