Battery monitor: useful tool or toy?
Hello all. As we prepare for FT (mostly boondocking) I am working through the 12v upgrades. Got the 600 AH of Lifelines in place. Two banks of 6v pairs; 4 batts in all. Upgraded the converter to 80, p...
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I did a little playing tonight with that elite.element combo meter. It seems like it can be a poor man's Trimetric. From what I can tell, you can set the battery AH capacity, or any reference number you want as a substitute. Like say 50% of your AH capacity. And you can tell it how full you are now for AH in percentage terms. From that point on it will track net AH in and out, and tell you where you are in AH storage and percentage. No Peukert compensation though. At some point you'd have to guesstimate and reset your numbers.
Unfortunately it appears it loses those settings if you disconnect it from power. But, you can leave it connected and blank the display with one press of a button. I will install it on the battery side of the disconnect switch, and will have an on-off switch so I can turn it off if need be.
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EDIT to add: The meter can save all configuration settings. What it won't save is battery state of charge. Which sort of makes sense anyway.
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The shunt is only 100A, so no good for those with bigger inverters. Maybe not even enough for a genset starting? Not sure. I think they sell a 200A version too.
Anyway, it's another ebay-China hobby project type of thing. If it works half- decent it should be useful to me.
Unfortunately it appears it loses those settings if you disconnect it from power. But, you can leave it connected and blank the display with one press of a button. I will install it on the battery side of the disconnect switch, and will have an on-off switch so I can turn it off if need be.
====
EDIT to add: The meter can save all configuration settings. What it won't save is battery state of charge. Which sort of makes sense anyway.
====
The shunt is only 100A, so no good for those with bigger inverters. Maybe not even enough for a genset starting? Not sure. I think they sell a 200A version too.
Anyway, it's another ebay-China hobby project type of thing. If it works half- decent it should be useful to me.
