Battery Monitoring

[Boneyone Member Find all posts View Profile Close Boneyone]

What does everyone use for monitoring their main & second battery? I use a simple LED volt meter that I can manually switch between main & second battery volts which is really good for keeping an eye on things easily & quickly. A recent post by drivesafe shows an excellent item that is Bluetooth capable and provides historical graphing capabilities of voltage. dBC posted a graph that showed main volts, second volts, & second current, which looks really good. Units that monitor the current as well as voltage appear to be expensive, generally behave like a fuel gauge for the battery, and I can't find one that has the historical graph function.

[Justinvv Member Find all posts View Profile Close Justinvv]

I use a dual voltage meter. Similar to what you have but dual voltage, LCD and it auto turns off when you turn the car off.

[Boneyone Member Find all posts View Profile Close Boneyone]

That's a good spot for the meter. A big difference between the regulators too.

[dBC Member Find all posts View Profile Close dBC]

For normal monitoring I just use a dual voltmeter: http://www.solidkit.com.au/product/p...it-volt-meter/

When I need to collect data or plot graphs, I use one of these: https://www.progressiverc.com/powerlog-6s.html, but I don't leave it permanently installed. User LeadWings here in pradopoint put me onto that one.

[dBC Member Find all posts View Profile Close dBC]

[Boneyone Member Find all posts View Profile Close Boneyone]

Voltmeter looks good. The data logger looks great, the ability to log the current as well is excellent. Looks like it has an internal shunt, is that correct?

[Pradosaur Member Find all posts View Profile Close Pradosaur]

Plenty of these “dc volt amp flush mount” monitors
on eBay for around $30

[craigm Addicted PP Member Find all posts View Profile Close craigm]

Projecta do one too

[Pradosaur Member Find all posts View Profile Close Pradosaur]

Projecta do one too

What $$$$ for 5he projecta Craigm

[Justinvv Member Find all posts View Profile Close Justinvv]

That's a good spot for the meter. A big difference between the regulators too.

Its because I have a BCDC on one battery and the Alternator (with a diode) on the other. Once the BCDC goes into float mode it will sit at about 13.6v.

[Boneyone Member Find all posts View Profile Close Boneyone]

I meant it was a big difference between the PWM & MPPT regulators for your solar, 1 amp in your case = about 20% so that's very worthwhile. The PowerLog 6S logger referred to by dBc looks really good, multiple temperature inputs too, so you could log the temperature at each battery as well as at your charger to monitor just how much it de-rates to compensate for increases in temperature.

[dBC Member Find all posts View Profile Close dBC]

Yes, the PowerLog 6S has an internal shunt which makes connecting it up a bit painful. It measures current on the high side, so you need to insert it between all the Red leads that used to go to the +ve post of your battery, and the +ve post of your battery. You do that via the provided T-connectors which apparently are all the rage in the R/C LiIon car world which is the intended use for this thing. It's definitely not designed for this application but with a bit of fiddling can do the job fine. It's only good for +/-40A continuous so not suitable for VSR applications.

The most current my aux battery ever sees (in or out) is 25A from the BCDC and I only use the smaller terminals on the dual terminal battery so that makes it a little easier to insert this thing into the path, but I don't do it robustly enough for me to leave it there indefinitely. I bodge it up, take it for a drive to gather the data, and then remove it. It has a bunch of voltage inputs, the intent being to measure the voltage of individual LiIon cells, but since I wasn't interested in that I repurposed one of them for measuring the voltage at the cranker. And yes, you can tape the temp sensor to your battery to monitor its temperature.

[drivesafe Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close drivesafe]

Not sure if thinks have changed, but if anyone is after a PowerLog 6S, when I bought mine, there was none available in Australia, but a New Zealand company stocks them, and at competitive prices.



Hi again Justin, and can I make a couple of suggestions relating to your solar tests and results.

First off, like DC/DC devices, all solar regulators should be located as close to the battery as possible.

So your PWM reg was at a disadvantage from the start.

Next, not sure what size cable your extension lead is, but it looks a bit on the thin side as far as for using it to connecting the solar panels to your vehicle goes.

This is one of those occasions where going oversized with cable does have advantages.

If you used a much thicker cable, your PWM reg would probably have performed better, but so would your MPPT reg.

Next, to see how they really perform, try first testing them again in the middle of the day when the sun is at it’s highest point, and then late in the afternoon, less than an hour before sunset.

If the PWM Reg is any good, the current ( watts ) being supplied to the battery should be very close, if not the same as the MPPT reg.

In the evening you should get better results from the MPPT as this and in the morning, is when they out perform other types of solar regulators.

NOTE, the MPPT advantage increases the further south you are, and diminishes the further north you are.

Anyway just some suggestions.

[craigm Addicted PP Member Find all posts View Profile Close craigm]

What $$$$ for 5he projecta Craigm

From memory I paid about $80 for it from Repco (RACQ members get a 10% discount)

[Pradosaur Member Find all posts View Profile Close Pradosaur]

Thanks craigm