I was looking at the perfect switch, but it looks like it's pretty expensive. I'm leaning towards this one:
Sure Power 1314 200 Amp Battery SeparatorIt's unidirectional, but if I'm not mistaken that's what I actually want for my setup. If I'm understanding things correctly, the bi-directional isolator would charge the cabin batteries when the alternator is on, and then charge the engine battery when the solar is coming in.
I want to completely maximize the amount of charge from the solar to the cabin batteries and don't want any of it getting sucked up by the engine battery. I drive around quite often and never have any issues with it starting, so I don't really see any benefit to bi-directional.
I'm also looking for a method to divert the charge from the isolator to my extra backup battery (damaged agm battery discussed
over here) when it needs. I was thinking about getting one of those marine battery switchers to manually switch to it when my main cabin batteries are already charged up. Something like this:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000K2MCR2/ref=ox_sc_act_image_1?ie=UTF8&smid=A1UNWS4MSNTF2AIt looks like the perfect switch dual rectifier would accomplish this, but like I said it's way too pricey...