Battery Voltage Monitor

[Camreal]

Built this little battery monitor a while back. I picked up the readout at a flea market for $4 and mounted it in a small box. The switch on the side turns the display on/off. Sure makes for a quick and easy check of the battery.

[RoyB]

I built my three panel BATTERY MONITOR from a PVC 3-GANG Swicth electrical box and specialty wide switch panel. This is mounted vertical on my cabinet panel I can open the front door and see from the outside when checking things.




The small digital readouts were glued to the back of the specialty switch panel

Routed all of my battery wiring back to the battery switch area using PVC FLEX Conduit and weathertight boxes for terminal connections etc... Each DC line is fused to protect against DC shorts.


Finished three meter panel


Mounted in cabinet with good view. Also installed ON-OFF switch behind the panel as the LED READOUTS turned out to be pretty bright.


Wiring schematic for my BATTERY MONITOR PANEL


Meters from SURE ELECTRONICS ebay/China
PVC items from LOWES

Roy Ken

[beemerphile1]

I simply cut the leads from a free Harbor Freight digital VOM, hardwired it, and stuck it on the wall. Total cost - free.

[64thunderbolt]

Nice....

[time2roll]

Always on

[64thunderbolt]

My friend with a mach shop made the faceplate and the meter & momentary rocker switch was about $11 on ebay. Not elaborate but gives me an idea whats going on & where I am at. I always boondock so after watching tv powered by a 300w psn inverter and maybe the furnace I can check it in the morning and see if the gen is needed for recharge. I have a powermax boondocker 4 stage 55a conv so recharge doesn't take long. It is wired to the conv output @ the converter.

[Wayne_Dohnal]

Does anyone have an opinion or has used something like this to monitor the batteries?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/DC-120V-10A-Voltage-Amp-Power-Ah-Hour-Charge-Discharge-Battery-Monitor-Indic...

OR

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DC-120V-500A-Volt-Amp-Combo-Meter-Battery-Charge-Discharge-Indicator-With-...

I bought one of these for a non-rv application. It needs setup information entered into it, which is ok, but I quickly found that the setup info is lost when the meter is powered down. Because of this I didn't use it, so can't comment on any of its other traits.

[MNtundraRet]

The only suggestion I would make is to check the accuracy by checking voltage at the battery-terminals with a good multi-meter.

This should be done while plugged in (as in your picture) and also when unplugged from shore-power (at least 6 hours to remove surface charge) to compare to actual battery voltage. This is necessary to make sure new meter and wiring distance from battery do not alter the reading done at the battery-terminals.

[mdelleman]

Does anyone have an opinion or has used something like this to monitor the batteries?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/DC-120V-10A-Voltage-Amp-Power-Ah-Hour-Charge-Discharge-Battery-Monitor-Indic...

OR

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DC-120V-500A-Volt-Amp-Combo-Meter-Battery-Charge-Discharge-Indicator-With-...

[azrving]

When you get more to the hydrometer reading, amperage checking, obsessive point you can move up to the 4 digit model so you will know the 1/100 of a volt. 🙂

The other day someone posted in regards to buying some for thirty seven cents on ebay. They come in from China or Taiwan etc. How do they do it with postage and all?

[mena661]

Nice work! Those units are getting popular around here.