asj1
New member
I have just bougt 2nd-hand a Sterling digital battery monitor of a type no longer made by them (I have looked on their website) and need some help on the wiring - no instruction whatsoever received. I am sure someone must have one similiar or can provide help !
It has one LCD screen, which can be backlit (a switch to turn backlihjting on and off), and two manual dial switches to a) switch between batteries and b) switch between "off" "amps" and "volts".
Today I tried to use wire it up to see check it worked before making holes in the boat to fit it etc. AS regards the wiring what it has is:
1) a single black and a single red wire - these obviosly go to the -ve and +ve feeds and indeed when I did that the display lit up and registered "0", so far so good.
2) then there are 6 other wires, in two sets - one for each battery - I know this is right as the circuit board distinguishes set A, B etc.
3)Each set comprises three wires, but two of them are attached to the same connector, and the third to a sepertae connector.
4)With the black and red wired up correctly. I can get the device to measure volts simply by placing the two wires which are wired into the same connector on to the +ve battery terminal. I'm not sure why this is the case as I expected to have also to conect something else to the -ve terminal. This suggests that you can measure volts simply from the +ve terminal , but that surely can't be right. Perhaps the black wire that I connected to the -ve terminal as part of the pair that I thought was only providing the power has something to do with it. Any thoughts.
Now the difficult part....
5) With only wire left from the set for this battery I thought it must be the case that I attached that to the -ve terminal of the battery. That made it read "1" ( not sure of this 1 or 0.1 !) and it made no difference how many lights, fridge etc I turned on. So obviously something is wrong here. I hav eread on another post that ammeters are connected up in series, but that would suggest that all the power I currently have potentially going from the battery to the switch panel would now go through the very small wires into this unit - which I don't think can be the case.
It is possible that a) the unit doesn't work ! or b) the sets of wires for each abttery shouldn't ever have been wired up as a 2+1 (but that does look original I must say !)
Sorry for the long post has a any one got any ideas, or better still got one of these units?
Regards
Andrew
It has one LCD screen, which can be backlit (a switch to turn backlihjting on and off), and two manual dial switches to a) switch between batteries and b) switch between "off" "amps" and "volts".
Today I tried to use wire it up to see check it worked before making holes in the boat to fit it etc. AS regards the wiring what it has is:
1) a single black and a single red wire - these obviosly go to the -ve and +ve feeds and indeed when I did that the display lit up and registered "0", so far so good.
2) then there are 6 other wires, in two sets - one for each battery - I know this is right as the circuit board distinguishes set A, B etc.
3)Each set comprises three wires, but two of them are attached to the same connector, and the third to a sepertae connector.
4)With the black and red wired up correctly. I can get the device to measure volts simply by placing the two wires which are wired into the same connector on to the +ve battery terminal. I'm not sure why this is the case as I expected to have also to conect something else to the -ve terminal. This suggests that you can measure volts simply from the +ve terminal , but that surely can't be right. Perhaps the black wire that I connected to the -ve terminal as part of the pair that I thought was only providing the power has something to do with it. Any thoughts.
Now the difficult part....
5) With only wire left from the set for this battery I thought it must be the case that I attached that to the -ve terminal of the battery. That made it read "1" ( not sure of this 1 or 0.1 !) and it made no difference how many lights, fridge etc I turned on. So obviously something is wrong here. I hav eread on another post that ammeters are connected up in series, but that would suggest that all the power I currently have potentially going from the battery to the switch panel would now go through the very small wires into this unit - which I don't think can be the case.
It is possible that a) the unit doesn't work ! or b) the sets of wires for each abttery shouldn't ever have been wired up as a 2+1 (but that does look original I must say !)
Sorry for the long post has a any one got any ideas, or better still got one of these units?
Regards
Andrew
