Battery monitor gauge upgrade

I would go with a quality digital volt meter mounted close as possible to the power bank.

I've never felt the need for more than a digital volt meter. Make sure it is a 2 place decimal (hundredths of a volt).

You can definitely go more complicated, and spend your life looking at amp in/out values, and if that's something you enjoy, go for it.

Hundredths is helpful? IMO if you need to watch that close more/bigger batteries are in order.

I have a voltmeter and a (bidirectional) digital panel ammeter that shows the charge or discharge current for the battery. Many of the inexpensive panel ammeters available cannot measure bidirectionally, and it required a bit of extra fiddling (installing a little isolated DC-DC converter so the ammeter's supply isn't referenced to ground) to be able to get the bidirectional readings, but it's most useful to be able to see both charge current and discharge current.

Oasisbob wrote:
I would go with a quality digital volt meter mounted close as possible to the power bank.

Mounting the voltmeter close to the battery bank is not essential for an accurate reading. Connecting the sense wires as close as practical to the battery bank is important, but they can be run quite a distance without materially affecting the accuracy as the amount of current they carry (and hence the voltage drop due to wire resistance) is miniscule. This is doubly true if you have the sense wires separated from the power supply wires.

The same applies to the sense wires from a current shunt, as well; they can be any halfway reasonable length without appreciably impacting the accuracy of the reading, for the same reasons.

Contrary to the others, I prefer a meter that counts amps in vs. amps out for tracking the battery's state of charge.

My choice is the Victron BMV. I like it because there's a Bluetooth interface and I can just check the status of my batteries from my phone as long as I'm 20-30' from the batteries.

This is what I have:
https://learntorv.com/victron-battery-monitor/

ependydad wrote:
https://learntorv.com/victron-battery-monitor/

x2

Before the depression, I did a lot of boat work and still keep some track of the technology.
I will advise that if you plan the work the bank near its capacity I will recommend that you look at both the Trimetric and the Victron monitors both.
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These are not inexpensive devices, but are worth the cost of both purchase and installation.

If you scan E-bay, you will find many devices that look like this, but they have very little, if any, technical support available. That can matter a whole lot.

Yes, they are expensive, but one instrument should still be less than what you paid for the pair of T-105s, and you will only have to buy it once.

Matt

I recommend the Bogart Engineering TM-2023-TV.

bpounds wrote:
I've never felt the need for more than a digital volt meter. Make sure it is a 2 place decimal (hundredths of a volt).

You can definitely go more complicated, and spend your life looking at amp in/out values, and if that's something you enjoy, go for it.

X2. I have a factory One Place Monitor Panel with voltage readouts for chassis and house, and a factory installed Zamp ZS-30A solar charge controller display of charging status, voltage, amps in, total harvested amps, and they were already installed in my rig. Fancy digital voltmeters? Together, they're probably good enough for me.

I built a monitor panel up suing one of those three position light switch plastic panels... Have three meters glued to the panel..

This monitor the DC VOLTS coming from my two batteries groups and DC AMPS feeding my setup.

The two DC VOLTS will read the same DC VOLTAGES if both battery banks have been selected. Sometimes I will be using One battery bank while I am charge the second battery bank...

I like to monitor the 12VDC Battery voltages when camping off-grid so that I will not want to go below the 12.0VDC level which is approximately the 50% charge state of the batteries... When this happens I want to be start my battery charge operations as soon as possible using my 2KW Generator setup. Most of the time I do the three hour charge mode starting around 8AM each morning during our breakfast time...

I have this panel mounted on a side panel just as you enter my off-road POPUP camper...


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