ePropulsion Spirit Battery Charge Level Indicator

[wonkywinch]

Since I know Ian posts here and has input to future designs, please could we have a battery charge level indicator on the battery itself?

I'm a new user and unless I plug the battery into the motor, I have no idea how much charge it has left. As I need to run the inverter to charge the battery, I can't always run the charger until the battery is fully charged and the light goes green.

A simple 4/5 LED "fuel gauge" type like all my Dewalt batteries have would be useful as I would like to know before going to the trouble of accessing the dinghy and/or motor leg to find out how much juice there is in the tank.

 

[davidaprice]

I've a Spirit and a couple of batteries, and I agree that this would be useful. Until they do this, a solution for you would be to buy the Spirit Battery Activator, a device the size of a champagne cork which you plug into the battery, which then displays the battery's percent charge. I've one, and use it a lot. So far I've only used it to check the remaining charge in a battery, but since it plugs into the battery output socket and the charging socket is separate, you might well be able to leave it in while the battery is charging and see as the percentage rises.

 

[cpedw]

I've a Spirit and a couple of batteries, and I agree that this would be useful. Until they do this, a solution for you would be to buy the Spirit Battery Activator, a device the size of a champagne cork which you plug into the battery, which then displays the battery's percent charge.

That's what I was looking for but at that price, I'll just connect to the motor!

 

[Boathook]

I thought a good idea but at that price I will also just connect the battery up.

 

[wonkywinch]

With the battery at approx 50% charge, the connectors don't present a meaningful voltage, the two pin charge connector reads zero and there is 2.5v present on a couple of pins of the multi connector that the leg plugs into.

The state of charge can only be an approximation based on static voltage and that would be really cheap to measure using one of these £8.50 devices from Amazon.

https://amzn.to/3XaSW7D

I wonder if it's possible to get a circuit diagram and access the raw battery voltage, the readings I got suggest some electrickery switching between the plugs and battery that make a simple multimeter/voltage reading impossible. It appears you need the battery "activator" to trigger the connection to the two pins and allow charging/discharge that way.