Will a small digital meter work for battery voltage?

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
Film at eleven

FILM at eleven!

Not enough digits ;)

Is that 11 AM or PM?

11:02? 11:02:40?

Must be exact around here....

For the OP: This is mine. Works fine.

The amp resolution is only 0.2a, and I agree not an issue.

The voltmeter portion being off by 0.2v is not acceptable, if I wanted it to actually display voltage, which I do not, as I have the calibrated 3 wire voltmeters in the same spot.
Thankfully one has the option to display only the amps.

How accurate the amps are is also a close enough. I am not sure which of my meters to trust the most but I did run 3 and 4 meters on the same load and loads from 0.8 to 2 to 12 to 25 amps, and they were all pretty close. Close enough. and more than good enough for my intentions( total alternator amperage), if I ever get around to installing the thing.

the one I linked too
i put on the output of the PD70 right at the output
and the voltage is spot on, but i think the amps might be off by 0.2

at 65 amps, i'm not worried by the 200MA error ( if that is truly the case )

Film at eleven

FILM at eleven!

I have 2 , one decimal place digital voltmeters on my dashboard. Each has 3 wires, one of which is a dedicated voltage sense wire, and also have a calibration pot on the backside.

Calibrating it with a 2 decimal place DMM was a process of trial and error and 'good enough' once I ran the sense wires directly to battery terminal(+)

They come on with my ignition. Before I ran the voltage sense wires they just fed from the OEM fuse block, temporarily. I could turn on various loads, not even on the same circuit and they would fluctuate wildly, where actual battery voltage was much less erratic.

Next to my voltmeters is a potentiometer that attaches to an adjustable voltage regulator controlling my alternator. Best Modification ever :)

I own the hall effect sensor Ammeter/voltmeter linked to previously. Its voltage reads 0.2v off. Soon the it will be on my dashboard displaying only amperage.

The thread title is amusing, kind of like will a voltmeter work as a voltmeter?

Lets see if we can debate this for a few more pages.

My answer..... It depends. Details at Eleven.

I have found that ebay voltmeters are sensitive to how thin and long the wire is from the meter to the battery, so you get different amounts of voltage depending on how you wire it up.

I am suspecting that the "junk" ones are not really junk, but "victims" of how they are wired up.

The golly gosh folks may take exception with whom is polite.

Yeah, I am sad I got excited too early in the thread, wasted 2 bucks on 3 digit one.

Some folks want "Dragnet" script.

Will meter work?

Yes

No

Yes

No

Yes

No

Script too many words.


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A discussion is valuable. Especially if the discussion if polite.

yeah.. but the point was made.. some are just junk and not worth buying

the other point, connect to battery, don't take readings from 12v sockets connected to light circuits, where there is a load dropping the voltage reading