Cheap Chinese Battery Monitors

It may be worth a punt for £25

You cannot tell much about the quality from an eBay advertisement,
 
I have this on my ebay "watch" list as they have been recommended on a previous thread but have not tried one yet.

The supplier - "elite.element" - has them with different current and voltage ranges. The higher current version will probably be better if used on the engine starter circuit.
 
I and at least one other forumite have bought these. Very disappointed as current has to be calibrated and is very unstable. I am looking at one on my bench now. It has sat there for a year or so unloved. I wanted to use it to monitor battery state of a 12v home garden light PV system. The volt meter works fine. It has a separate current shunt. The percentage battery remaining is I found a bit confusing. It would be really excellent to my mind if it simply had a provision for AH change in or out since reset instead of pursueing this battery % thing it would be far more accurate and useful. That is assuming they can fix the unstable current and hence AH function. olewill
 
William_H said:
I and at least one other forumite have bought these. Very disappointed as current has to be calibrated and is very unstable. I am looking at one on my bench now. It has sat there for a year or so unloved. I wanted to use it to monitor battery state of a 12v home garden light PV system. The volt meter works fine. It has a separate current shunt. The percentage battery remaining is I found a bit confusing. It would be really excellent to my mind if it simply had a provision for AH change in or out since reset instead of pursueing this battery % thing it would be far more accurate and useful. That is assuming they can fix the unstable current and hence AH function. olewill
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Ah well, that's a shame, but thanks for your comment, I think I'll get a Nasa BM1.
 
jwilson said:
I'd give one a go except for £25 the fact that the max current is 50 amps, which is less than my windlass uses when running.
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It's the lower currents that are more useful being monitored, it would be nice to monitor the high current on your windlass but in terms of monitoring general charge and discharge from your batteries over the long term is less important .
 
There's no indication of the power consumption of the device. As it uses LEDs rather then LCDs it may use more than you want from your battery.

I'm not sure what this means in the specification...

Volt ± 1% + 2byte / Amp ± 2% + 5byte

It says that it measures current to 2% accuracy, so +- 8A at the maximum 400A, but the display resolution is 0.01A, i.e. you can't believe the accuracy of the value being shown on the display.

Usually with electronic equipment that measures anything you get the accuracy you pay for, irrespective of where it's made, because high tolerance components cost more money everywhere.
 
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AngusMcDoon said:
There's no indication of the power consumption of the device. As it uses LEDs rather then LCDs it may use more than you want from your battery.

I'm not sure what this means in the specification...

Volt ± 1% + 2byte / Amp ± 2% + 5byte

It says that it measures current to 2% accuracy, so +- 8A at the maximum 400A, but the display resolution is 0.01A.

Usually with electronic equipment that measures anything you get the accuracy you pay for, irrespective of where it's made, because high tolerance components cost more money everywhere.
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They probably mean bits rather than bytes? I came back to thread to make the point about it being LED rather than LCD. An LCD unit will have very low consumption and left on in order to monitor solar charging etc. Any unit monitoring battery charge and discharge would preferably have something to record Amp Hours (or Coulombs) if possible.
 
GHA said:
Check out this thread...
http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f14/low-cost-battery-monitor-137003.html

Towards the end some posts suggest it can be accurate, just not obvious to calibrate.
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Thanks for that, the post is very detailed on how to accurately calibrate it (particularly Vladis's post no.39 if anyone else is interested http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f14/low-cost-battery-monitor-137003-3.html).
On that basis I'll buy one and report back my experiences with it.

Edit: Just bought the 100A version which is more than enough for me (http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/181289957019) let's see what happens!
 
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