Battery Monitors

[Fred Mc]

I am looking at 2 different battery monitors, a Heart Interface / Xantrex Amp Hour meter(Link 20) and a Trace/ Xantrex Amp Hour meter. The Link 20 is brand new (never used) but also almost 15 years old.

Does anyone have any comments on either of these. My bus is a GMPD4106(12 volts)

Thanks

Fred.

[bobofthenorth]

My boat came with a Link.  I put up with it for about a month before I threw it overboard and replaced it with a Trimetric.  The Line was the worst electronic crap I've ever encountered.

YMMV

[Debo]

I second the recommendation for the Bogart Trimetric. If I remember correctly, it wasn't all that expensive, and it gives me a lot of information in a small package. Just my thoughts.

[Iceni John]

I'm wary about the usual amp/hours-in & amp/hours-out battery monitors that can accumulate significant errors over time due to the batteries' inherent charging inefficiencies, so I've been looking at the SmartGauge battery monitor that uses algorithms to constantly improve its accuracy even when the batteries age:  http://www.smartgauge.co.uk/smartgauge.html   There's another company called NASA that also has something similar-ish to SmartGauge:  http://www.eastcoastmarine.com.au/bm_1_battery_monitor.html   Both these gauges are imported to this country.   They're not cheap, but neither is a new set of batteries that have died prematurely because they've always been deficit-charged and allowed to sulfate.

A hydrometer is also useful to check the batteries' Specific Gravity (unless you have sealed or AGM batteries!)  -  if the electrolyte is less than about 1.275, the battery is not fully charged.   Acid density never lies!   A hydrometer will allow you to detect bad individual batteries within a bank, or even bad individual cells in a battery, and then you can take the bad battery out of use before it drags down all the others in the bank.   The Swiss-made Hydrovolt is good:  https://www.solar-electric.com/midnite-solar-battery-hydrometer.html

John