Battery Monitor - Advice & Recommendations

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john61ct said:
FLA are much more robust, long lived stand up to abuse better than AGM. And much cheaper per AH per year.

Plus hydrometers.

So all in all, if you want / need to know SoC, going with AGM makes, the need greater not less.

I agree LFP is another topic, but it is worth noting SmartGauge only works with lead.
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I gotta throw the flag on this play. The SG200 SmartGuage from Balmar that we've been discussing IS compatible with LFP. It states so here.

SG200 Battery Monitor | Balmar

Support for All Common Battery Chemistries & Voltages
Including Lead Acid, Lithium (LiFePO4), Standard AGM,
TPPL AGM, Carbon Foam AGM, and GEL Batteries
Supports 12V-48V Battery Banks
Typically 97% Accurate within 2 Cycles
Auto-Calibrating
Does not Lose Accuracy with Age


Have you ever maintained a battery bank? Do you know what's involved? Many folks cannot adequately service LAs and AGMs are the economic solution. Only a fool would say all FLAs are more robust than all AGMs. Your sweeping generalizations defy logic and experiential evidence.
 
I thought he said Smart Gauge. Which does not support LFP.
 
john61ct said:
Again, the very recent Balmar SG200 has no official relationship with the original Merlin SmartGauge, even though Balmar rebadges the latter in the NA market.
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No one is stating that the Balmar SG200 SmartGauge is a Merlin product, therefore there is no need to correct someone who never stated what you have posted.
 
^^
@Flywright


And the Smart Gauge does not support LFP - right?


The SG200 is not a Smart Gauge and was designed independent from the Smart Gauge.


You make a misstatement and continue to harangue.
 
Wood said:
^^
@Flywright


And the Smart Gauge does not support LFP - right?


The SG200 is not a Smart Gauge and was designed independent from the Smart Gauge.


You make a misstatement and continue to harangue.
Click to expand...

Yes, the old Balmar Smartguage does not support LFP, but the Balmar SG200 which has been the topic of discussion since post #68 (I thought!) DOES support LFP.
 
@flywright


Except where stated by John61 "Smart Gauge". Very clear to me and in context to the conversation. You should reread it without prejudice instead of making excuses.
 
Apologies if I have confused the issue. I'm only trying to stay with the facts and the truth.

I highly recommend anyone considering a battery monitor to closely consult the Mfr's specs and information and not rely on the words of an anonymous poster for factual information. Much has been posted that is not accurate and should not be followed.

I am concerned when our members and friends get inaccurate and potentially dangerous information from our resident armchair expert. To date, he has not acknowledged operating or owning anything of which he writes. He refuses to tell us his experience or training which qualifies him to "recommend" equipment for our vessels. Trusting unqualified sources can lead to dangerous misunderstandings. We owe it to our members to call out the charlatans when they have exposed themselves.

I stand by what I posted...every word for over 10 years. If anyone wants to know what I do, where I live or what my experience is, they only have to ask. I'm an open book and I stand by my word...every word.

I would expect anyone confident in their abilities to do the same.
 
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Oh well. Whatever.
 
Just buy a voltmeter and live with the guilt.
 
FlyWright said:
Apologies if I have confused the issue. I'm only trying to stay with the facts and the truth.

I highly recommend anyone considering a battery monitor to closely consult the Mfr's specs and information and not rely on the words of an anonymous poster for factual information. Much has been posted that is not accurate and should not be followed.

I am concerned when our members and friends get inaccurate and potentially dangerous information from our resident armchair expert. To date, he has not acknowledged operating or owning anything of which he writes. He refuses to tell us his experience or training which qualifies him to "recommend" equipment for our vessels. Trusting unqualified sources can lead to dangerous misunderstandings. We owe it to our members to call out the charlatans when they have exposed themselves.

I stand by what I posted...every word for over 10 years. If anyone wants to know what I do, where I live or what my experience is, they only have to ask. I'm an open book and I stand by my word...every word.

I would expect anyone confident in their abilities to do the same.
Click to expand...

Many others share your concern, Fly, and many others on this site and others have requested the poster's credentials to make some of the declarative, and clearly wrong statements made. Only the sound of crickets in response. Kind of a self correcting problem in that after people have followed a few threads, they learn to just ignore him. Not that everything he states as fact isn't accurate. It's just that when b.s. is stated with equal authority as things that are true, sorting the chaff from the grain is more effort than it is worth. So just do what every person I know of from personal contact who actually knows what they're talking about does, and that is just to pay no attention.
 
I'm in the "keep it simple" camp and am happy with my AGM's and voltmeter.

If a person is aware of what their charge settings are, and how that affects the volt meter reading, one can have a fairly good understanding of the state of charge . I've got a $8 LED voltmeter mounted at the helm that I leave on and glance at it often. You soon learn what it should be at depending on whether I'm charging with just solar, plugged in at the dock, time of day, refrigeration activity etc.

If I required and had a generator, big invertor, electric stove, blow dryer etc and much bigger battery bank, perhaps a SOC meter would be a worth investing in, but I have enough hobbies as it is.
 
Delfin said:
Many others share your concern, Fly, and many others on this site and others have requested the poster's credentials to make some of the declarative, and clearly wrong statements made. Only the sound of crickets in response. Kind of a self correcting problem in that after people have followed a few threads, they learn to just ignore him. Not that everything he states as fact isn't accurate. It's just that when b.s. is stated with equal authority as things that are true, sorting the chaff from the grain is more effort than it is worth. So just do what every person I know of from personal contact who actually knows what they're talking about does, and that is just to pay no attention.
Click to expand...


Exactly, just ignore, as you would ignore a parrot.
 
It`s likely that if the frequent contributor had persuasive credentials, they would be before us by now.They are not, take from that what you will.
 
Maybe he remembers the times when I stated my creds and some people posted "big deal", "who cares", " doesn't matter", etc, etc. :)

It deems its more important that you are published than anything for some people.
 
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I hope you’re not talking about me because I’m very sensitive and you might hurt my feelings. What was the question?
 
Case in point....

john61ct said:
SmartGauge is the original Merlin SmartGauge, invented by Chris "Gibbo" Gibson.
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Gibbo? Wow, you must really know a lot about this if you are on a nickname basis with Merlin's principal.

______
john61ct said:
The SG200 is a very recent Balmar product, in fact still under development (in Alpha afaik)
Click to expand...
Do you know what an alpha version is as the term is applied to technology? Perhaps you mean beta? But that can't be right either because Beta products are generally not for sale to the general public until final UAT is conducted, and the SG200 is available today from PKYS, even if due to limited production availability so you might have to wait.

john61ct said:
Although it has nothing to do with Merlin, it apparently does incorporates some of Gibbo's active impedance compensation tech, perhaps "reverse engineered" from his SmartGauge.
Click to expand...
Here you manage to combine sleazy slander - the accusation that Balmar are such scum bags that they steal someone else's technology by reverse engineering, with a separate falsehood. Active impedance is not mentioned anywhere in ole' Gibbo's descriptive page, here, for a very good reason. It is what Balmar calls their method used to compensate for errors in coulomb counting. Here's Balmar's Chris Witzgall's quote from the panbo site you reference, but apparently didn't read:

"Ben, Active Impedance Compensation Is something we came up with for the SG200, and does not apply to the original SmartGauge. It is compensating for errors in Coulomb counting."

john61ct said:
It also includes shunt-based coulomb-counting style monitoring to integrate AH in and out into SoC calculations, but does not display that AH information.
Click to expand...
False, as you can see on Balmar's page, here.

john61ct said:
combines data from the two sources to estimate State of Health (SoH), aka residual AH capacity

apparently works with all major battery types: FLA, AGM including Firefly and TPPL, as well as LiFePO4

can monitor a large number of battery banks with displays located throughout the boat. Each also monitor voltage for two auxiliary batteries, like engine start or similar non-deep-cycle applications.

purportedly doesn’t lose accuracy while charging, and over time the system will get more accurate without requiring calibration like typical coulomb counting shunt-based monitors
Click to expand...
Thanks for regurgitating the Balmar description of their product. Makes it sound like you came up with all this information yourself rather than parroting what Balmar wrote.

john61ct said:
no idea whether accurate or not yet but does look promising
Click to expand...
Well, that's reassuring. I guess we'll all wait for your final conclusion before buying one. :facepalm:

john61ct said:
and I look forward once it is released,
Click to expand...
It's been released. You can order it today from PKYS.com

Now I know all of this will roll off your back like water off a duck, but you really should consider how you come across to many of us when you post a mixture of nasty bile, bilge water and regurgitated public information as if you're providing instruction to the clueless.

I'm breaking my own IGNORE rule here, I know, but I couldn't let your reckless and slimy accusation of high-handed theft by Balmar to go uncommented upon.
 
I have a Victron battery monitor. It does the job, but it is only as good as the setup. If you put in the wrong settings, you will get inaccurate results and your indicated battery state may not match the actual state.
 
Delfin said:
Now I know all of this will roll off your back like water off a duck, but you really should consider how you come across to many of us when you post a mixture of nasty bile, bilge water and regurgitated public information as if you're providing instruction to the clueless.

I'm breaking my own IGNORE rule here, I know, but I couldn't let your reckless and slimy accusation of high-handed theft by Balmar to go uncommented upon.
Click to expand...

:D ? Battery fetish..? Obsession sounds inadequate somehow..? :socool:
 
Delfin said:
Now I know all of this will roll off your back like water off a duck, but you really should consider how you come across to many of us when you post a mixture of nasty bile, bilge water and regurgitated public information as if you're providing instruction to the clueless.
Click to expand...
:iagree:
 
Peter B said:
:D ? Battery fetish..? Obsession sounds inadequate somehow..? :socool:
Click to expand...

Not so much Peter. Every contact I've had with Balmar has been outstanding, and they seem to be a fine company. Kind of surprised you and perhaps TF seems to think that slandering them in public is acceptable. Reverse engineering is what you do when you lack the brain power to develop your own products and instead steal someone else's, which is what they were blandly accused of. You think Balmar stole technology that the person in question incorrectly attributed to his close friend "Gibbo"?
 
Is it too “Stone Age” to suggest that a good indicator of health of FLA batteries is how much water you have to add?
 
Impedance spectroscopy isn't something "Gibbo" invented, Cadex has a patent filed way back in 2002 for the method. There appear to be numerous recent papers applying the methods to lithium batteries. There is no need to reverse engineer anything.
 
john61ct said:
No but worth checking you're not overcharging "too much", maybe your voltage or Absorb hold time could be scaled back a bit.

Hitting endAmps before dropping to Float does not need to be every cycle, just a few times per week is fine for longevity.

Overcharging actually causing damage to FLA is relatively rare, long as you do keep up with the water level.

While PSOC abuse is very frequent for those living away from shore power.
Click to expand...


So...you are saying that a 5 year old battery bank, properly cared for requires no more water than a 1 year old one with similar care?
 
JDCAVE said:
Is it too “Stone Age” to suggest that a good indicator of health of FLA batteries is how much water you have to add?
Click to expand...


It's definitely one. The bank I'm working on replacing with LFP batteries is consuming several gallons a month. They keep working, but I'm certain I'm on borrowed time.
 
Delfin said:
... the person in question incorrectly attributed to his close friend "Gibbo"?
Click to expand...

Delfin, you surprise me somewhat. I was actually referring to - well, what you said above, as he writes on no subject except batteries and their condition, is all...and therefore invites this being pointed out - like you did.
How could you take my comment so wrong..? :confused:
 
Peter B said:
Delfin, you surprise me somewhat. I was actually referring to - well, what you said above, as he writes on no subject except batteries and their condition, is all...and therefore invites this being pointed out - like you did.
How could you take my comment so wrong..? :confused:
Click to expand...

Apologies Baker - two people separated by a common language perhaps, but sorry about misunderstanding your meaning.
 
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