Battery Monitor - Advice & Recommendations

DDW said:

And yet, that is all the Balmar SOC meter uses.

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laughably false, please do not make such statements about something on which you obviously have not even done basic research

the very sophisticated technology Gibbo incorporated into SG is indeed obscure and proprietary

however just because we do not understand exactly **how** it works

does not have any bearing on how well it works

DDW said:

SOC meter is a guess, not a measurement, and says little about the condition of the batteries.

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True for all BMs

Yes the AH info is very valuable, and **if** you set & maintain it properly, many of that type can do a decent job.

Some owners prefer to use both.

john61ct said:

laughably false, please do not make such statements about something on which you obviously have not even done basic research

the very sophisticated technology Gibbo incorporated into SG is indeed obscure and proprietary

however just because we do not understand exactly **how** it works

does not have any bearing on how well it works

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Not judging how well or not well the SmartGauge works, but a quick look at how it hooks up confirms that all it's measuring is battery voltage.

john61ct said:

laughably false, please do not make such statements about something on which you obviously have not even done basic research

the very sophisticated technology Gibbo incorporated into SG is indeed obscure and proprietary

however just because we do not understand exactly **how** it works

does not have any bearing on how well it works

Click to expand...

Pray tell, what does it measure other than voltage? Not current, it hasn't the means. Not hydrometry. Not temperature. Perhaps mind reading? Yes, someone does need to do basic research before posting.

It is factually true that all it can measure is voltage. How it guesses SOC from those measurements may be proprietary. I can guess SOC pretty well myself from voltage.

For years I had a Link something-or-other Ah counter. It worked fine, as long as all the settings are right, you return to full charge on a reasonable frequency, and you adjust the settings as the battery ages. The down side is that you tend to take the reading as gospel, and it can be quite wrong at times.


For the past 10 years, both on land and on boats, I've just used voltage and amps. It's not super precise, but close enough. You need to get a feel for how voltage sags or rises based on current, and you need to get a feel for voltage with whatever your background load level is, but that load level is typically quite small relative to the bank capacity. Mine is about 0.02C. With a little experience it works just fine.


I hear over and over again about how voltage is a poor SOC indicator unless the battery has zero load and has been resting for hours and hours. In my experience that's total hogwash. Maybe if you are running a forklift or other heavy load it would matter more, but I have consistently seen voltages recover within minutes, not hours. And if you are accurate to within a tenth of a volt or so, you will know the SOC to within 10% or so. Close enough to know whether it's time to start the generator.


And on recharge, just watch the voltage and the return current and you will know if you are fully charged.

^^ This is the little bit of knowledge I spoke of. It isn't difficult to acquire, if you pay attention even a little. If you don't want to do that, then having the Balmar guess for you is better than no information at all.

DDW said:

Pray tell, what does it measure other than voltage? Not current, it hasn't the means. Not hydrometry. Not temperature. Perhaps mind reading? Yes, someone does need to do basic research before posting.

It is factually true that all it can measure is voltage. How it guesses SOC from those measurements may be proprietary. I can guess SOC pretty well myself from voltage.

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I agree that the Smart Gauge must only use battery voltage to make a determination of SOC. As someone that IS an electrical idiot, I like the idea that the SG uses some sort of deep dark magic to take those continuing voltage readings and eventually some up with an estimate of SOC that is likely going to be better than my amp counter over the years.



What the SG doesn't do is simply take a snapshot of the battery voltage and return a SOC% from a look-up table. That is all that I could do with voltage meter.


I am the intended market for the Smart Gauge. I'm just barely smart enough to want to get the best long term performance from my house bank, but not smart enough to be able to continually adjust the settings in my amp counter to reflect the true capacity of my battery bank every year. As I've said before, I'd like to have one to add to my amp counter. I'll do it someday.

twistedtree said:

For years I had a Link something-or-other Ah counter. It worked fine, as long as all the settings are right, you return to full charge on a reasonable frequency, and you adjust the settings as the battery ages. The down side is that you tend to take the reading as gospel, and it can be quite wrong at times.

For the past 10 years, both on land and on boats, I've just used voltage and amps. It's not super precise, but close enough. You need to get a feel for how voltage sags or rises based on current, and you need to get a feel for voltage with whatever your background load level is, but that load level is typically quite small relative to the bank capacity. Mine is about 0.02C. With a little experience it works just fine.

I hear over and over again about how voltage is a poor SOC indicator unless the battery has zero load and has been resting for hours and hours. In my experience that's total hogwash. Maybe if you are running a forklift or other heavy load it would matter more, but I have consistently seen voltages recover within minutes, not hours. And if you are accurate to within a tenth of a volt or so, you will know the SOC to within 10% or so. Close enough to know whether it's time to start the generator.

And on recharge, just watch the voltage and the return current and you will know if you are fully charged.

Click to expand...

DDW said:

^^ This is the little bit of knowledge I spoke of. It isn't difficult to acquire, if you pay attention even a little. If you don't want to do that, then having the Balmar guess for you is better than no information at all.

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That is exactly CMS' argument for the Smart Gage, and a valid one. What TT and I are doing is interpreting the instantaneous voltage with some knowledge of the history, I'm quite sure the Smart Gage is just a formally developed algorithm doing the same thing. That's all it can do, because that is all the information it has. With additional knowledge of load (provided by the amp meter) the algorithm can be improved. I don't consider SOC to be a very useful number in how I manage the boat - but in different circumstances for different owners, it might be.

Codger Nailed it. Don't waste money on anything else.

In fact, how many of you ever look at the volts or amperage on your cars? NOBODY uses them to troubleshoot anymore. The car runs until it doesn't. On a boat, after finding out from the manufacturer the characteristics of YOUR batteries, the volt meter is all you need.

from Chris Gibson directly:

"Obviously I am not prepared to disclose how SmartGauge works. Anyone who asks me to do so is simply being totally unreasonable.
But to say that only voltage can be measured via 2 wires is *completely* incorrect.....

Pull a brief current pulse from the battery and measure the voltage drop, this will give an indication of internal resistance.

Present an AC voltage across the battery and measure the phase angle and amplitude of the resultant current. This will show the AC impedance of the battery.

Do the same thing with a wide variety of frequencies and analyse the results. This is know as AC impedance spectrography."

___________
SmartGauge of course measures voltage, just that it's doing it over a thousand times / second, modeling against an internal database, and improving its accuracy over time without user intervention.

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f14/balmar-sg-200-battery-monitor-209056-4.html#post2747251

also
http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?440321-Best-battery-monitor-system/page6&

john61ct said:

from Chris Gibson directly:"Obviously I am not prepared to disclose how SmartGauge works. Anyone who asks me to do so is simply being totally unreasonable....

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Remarkable how similar that is, to your declining multiple requests to tell us the source and experience behind your self asserted expertise.

Codger2 said:

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I feel your pain.

BruceK said:

Remarkable how similar that is, to your declining multiple requests to tell us the source and experience behind your self asserted expertise.

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With the exception that Mr. Gibson likely knows what he is talking about.

DDW said:

That is exactly CMS' argument for the Smart Gage, and a valid one. What TT and I are doing is interpreting the instantaneous voltage with some knowledge of the history, I'm quite sure the Smart Gage is just a formally developed algorithm doing the same thing. That's all it can do, because that is all the information it has. With additional knowledge of load (provided by the amp meter) the algorithm can be improved. I don't consider SOC to be a very useful number in how I manage the boat - but in different circumstances for different owners, it might be.

Click to expand...

That does work well for most chemistries, but not so for Lithium. Voltage readings are pretty much useless, so I rely on the same Link product TT probably used to have - a Link 20. It seems to count Ah used accurately enough for me to see when the bank should be recharged and when it is full.

Regarding the Smart Gauge, if one actually wired one up as opposed to doing Google searches so as to pose as an expert, one would find that of course it is only measuring voltage since that is the only sensing/power connection made. It does some magic with what it does with that voltage measure, but that's the only data its got to work with.

Just by plotting the voltage over time, I can guess the SOC to within 10%, and probably close to 5%. No AC spectrography required. I'm not disputing that the Smart Gage isn't that accurate, don't know. For me, providing one fairly useless number without any other information including how it arrived at that number, isn't something I'm interested in, I'd put the money towards something with richer data and nothing hidden under the covers. All of the 'problems' that the Smart Gage is supposed to solve over a good AH counter aren't problems for me, and it introduces several of its own.

Lithium batteries are a whole different animal, the Smart Gage doesn't claim to work with them, and they require a very different level of management.

Gibbo has specifically stated SG only works with lead.

Thus for LFP you must use a coulomb counting type.

And such a SoC meter is more critical with LFP, voltage is even less useful than with a lead bank.

For longevity you really want to stay in the flatter middle area of the voltage chart, while by the time you get useful V changes you are likely to be hitting the shoulders, especially at high C rates.

Balmar's new SG200 apparently incorporates (and integrates) both technologies, they claim can work with LFP, but too new to know its accuracy performance yet even with lead.

john61ct said:

laughably false, please do not make such statements about something on which you obviously have not even done basic research

the very sophisticated technology Gibbo incorporated into SG is indeed obscure and proprietary

however just because we do not understand exactly **how** it works

does not have any bearing on how well it works

Click to expand...

john61ct said:

Gibbo has specifically stated SG only works with lead.

Thus for LFP you must use a coulomb counting type.

And such a SoC meter is more critical with LFP, voltage is even less useful than with a lead bank.

For longevity you really want to stay in the flatter middle area of the voltage chart, while by the time you get useful V changes you are likely to be hitting the shoulders, especially at high C rates.

Balmar's new SG200 apparently incorporates (and integrates) both technologies, they claim can work with LFP, but too new to know its accuracy performance yet even with lead.

Click to expand...

How, praytell, do you plan to analyze its accuracy performance?

Please leave the electrical advice to those here with vast electrical experience. Your armchair expertise can be misleading at best, dangerous at worst.

BruceK said:

Remarkable how similar that is, to your declining multiple requests to tell us the source and experience behind your self asserted expertise.

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He's an enigma for sure. You guys just can't stand it!

From Webster's....

Definition of enigma
1 : something hard to understand or explain
2 : an inscrutable or mysterious person
3 : an obscure speech or writing


Not for me, live long enough and observe people...they generally fall into patterns.

FlyWright said:

How, praytell, do you plan to analyze its accuracy performance?

Please leave the electrical advice to those here with vast electrical experience. Your armchair expertise can be misleading at best, dangerous at worst.

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Count your blessings. He has almost 8,000 posts in a couple of years on the sister site, plus thousands more on other non marine related forums.

Wood said:

He's an enigma for sure. You guys just can't stand it!

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On current information,"Enigma" is not a word I`d choose.
It`s not a question of 'can`t stand it". I usually value technical opinions expressed on TF. With most people of expertise on TF,there is no secrecy about their experience and professionalism, it`s easy to consider their advice and opinion and give it appropriate weight.
In the face of refusal to disclose experience and professionalism,and taking into account some opinions expressed so far, I cannot rate the advice and opinion as of value. It may be of value, but on present information I cannot assign it positive value. Would it was otherwise. And it is so easily resolved.

My thoughts are,vif you are going to cut and paste some "known to be reliable' advice or info...then just do it with a link or reference,.

Commenting on it usually only has value if one has nearly equal experience or at least one real world experience to go along with it.

Then to expound on all this book gained knowledge,vand argue with those that are actually sitting at anchor, and have been on and off for decades, actually using real world battery banks with real world maintenance and costs to factor in.... Well....that's my take on it all....

But just to be clear...just because someone has been doing something forever doesn't make it right or they know squat....they do have to show some level of competence.

I have the smart gauge

Delfin said:

That does work well for most chemistries, but not so for Lithium. Voltage readings are pretty much useless, so I rely on the same Link product TT probably used to have - a Link 20. It seems to count Ah used accurately enough for me to see when the bank should be recharged and when it is full.

Regarding the Smart Gauge, if one actually wired one up as opposed to doing Google searches so as to pose as an expert, one would find that of course it is only measuring voltage since that is the only sensing/power connection made. It does some magic with what it does with that voltage measure, but that's the only data its got to work with.

Click to expand...

I use it on the house bank AGM batteries. I find it to be usefull. I can't tell you how accurate without having a standard against which to compare it. The only downside i can think of is that it does not tell you how fast you are recharging. I can see how many amps the charging system is providing, but don't really know what that means to the batteries.

I have a friend who has a link 10 system and the smart gauge. He thinks the smart gauge is more accurate on tracking the SOC.

Gordon

Gordon J said:

I have a friend who has a link 10 system and the smart gauge. He thinks the smart gauge is more accurate on tracking the SOC.

Gordon

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FWIW I also have both the Smart Gauge and the Blue Seas M2 DC SoC Monitor which I added so I could see the rate of charge & discharge. I also feel the Smart Gauge is more accurate.

I find the Magnum BMKs (yes, two of them) to be quite useful for many things, including:

• • Monitoring the house bank charging rate (voltage, amps and SOC ) when cruising with genset off.
  • Voltage when going from absorb to float
  • Amps being used when at anchor - finding at times the wrong stuff left running

Magnum actually lets you control the transition to Float (end of shore charging) based directly off the BM-measured bank acceptance rate trailing down to mfg spec'd endAmps.

Much better than having to re-calibrate Absorb Hold Time settings as weather / usage patterns change.

Maybe 4-8 such setups exist on the solar side, but I think now unique to Magnum for mains charging?

Apparently Victron eliminated its gear's ability to do that with recent firmware updates?

john61ct said:

1. Magnum actually lets you control the transition to Float (end of shore charging) based directly off the BM-measured bank acceptance rate trailing down to mfg spec'd endAmps.

2. Much better than having to re-calibrate Absorb Hold Time settings as weather / usage patterns change.

3. Maybe 4-8 such setups exist on the solar side, but I think now unique to Magnum for mains charging?

4. Apparently Victron eliminated its gear's ability to do that with recent firmware updates?

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I added numbers for reference.

Could you explain #1? Are you saying the SOC meter controls the charger?

2. Who is reprogramming their SOC meter as weather or usage patterns change? Why would one need to do that?

3. What do you mean by this question? I can't make sense of it.

4. Are you asking us to confirm the year Victron updated their software? And, as a matter of conversation, why do we care when or IF Victron updated their firmware software? Is this in any way helpful to the OP?

Please tell us about your experience or expertise to help us to know if the words you type come from someone who KNOWS what he is talking about. We have many folks here looking for valid, trusted information. Many of your posts display a lack of basic understanding of electricity or communication. Our members deserve to know who is providing this electrical advice.

One last request...I wish you'd read your posts before posting.

Gordon J said:

I use it on the house bank AGM batteries. I find it to be usefull. I can't tell you how accurate without having a standard against which to compare it. The only downside i can think of is that it does not tell you how fast you are recharging. I can see how many amps the charging system is providing, but don't really know what that means to the batteries.

I have a friend who has a link 10 system and the smart gauge. He thinks the smart gauge is more accurate on tracking the SOC.

Gordon

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I installed a Smart Gauge to monitor the starter bank, and it is nice to see an accurate SoC. Problem is, when it says the battery is at 100%, one has to ask 100% of what? A diminished lead acid battery that now has 70% capacity will still show 100% with the SG. Yes, one can do a 20 hour test, but that is a pain. A coulomb counter like the Link 20 gives you the other half of the information needed, which is how many Ah were used to get to 60% SoC.

Xsbank said:

Codger Nailed it. Don't waste money on anything else.

In fact, how many of you ever look at the volts or amperage on your cars? NOBODY uses them to troubleshoot anymore. The car runs until it doesn't. On a boat, after finding out from the manufacturer the characteristics of YOUR batteries, the volt meter is all you need.

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Victron 702 for us.
I monitor amps in and out, state of charge, AH used and voltage several times a day. (Walk past, press buttons, OK, move along)
There is no shore power or automobile club roadside assist as backup when cruising and living on the hook.