Forum Discussion
BFL13
Jun 07, 2017Explorer II
DiskDoctr wrote:BFL13 wrote:
If he were getting a Trimetric, AFAIK the choices are 100 or 500 and he needs more than 100. However, he is looking at other monitors.
Didn't you have a thread about a Poor man's Trimetric a while back? What ever became of that?
It was an eBay gizmo. Mine was too fragile for me and broke, but others here have had some luck with theirs.
It also got complicated where some of the gizmos only read amps into or out of the battery but not both ways, like a Tri, so you have to be careful what you are buying or get two one-way jobs I guess. There is something about their AH counters having a limit? Forget--Mr Wizard has some info on that ISTR.
There were 100a or 200a versions of the one I got ISTR. The Tri choices also relate to voltage decimal point readings, where the 500 shows one and the 100 shows two on the display IIRC. Don't know about the gizmo ones for that. The Tri with one decimal point voltage is ok for government work, but sometimes you want two so out comes the multi-meter.
I needed more than 100 to show inverter amp draws, but also for charging amps. I charge at up to 155 amps at times. (Same as guys with those big inverter/chargers that are eg, 3000w/150a.)
EDIT--on where to use double #2, you need high ampacity from any buss so it will carry the total amps of all the incoming "branches" to the buss. Same with the shunt to battery--it carries the total amps of everything going into the outer end of the shunt.
If it is a pos buss, you fuse each branch wire before the buss according to its individual ampacity, then fuse the fat wire from the buss with a big fuse for that fat wire.
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