Balmar SmartGauge battery monitor

[Rusty123]

I've seen some recent posts regarding shunt-type battery monitors. While I'm a newcomer to the camper forums, I've been hanging out for a long time on the boating (cruising) forums, so I thought I'd mention a different type of monitor that is getting some attention lately in the boating world.

Here's a great independent write up by a very well regarded technician.

http://www.pbase.com/mainecruising/smart_gauge

 

[billharr]

$319.00 is a lot of money. I guess if you were out on a boat or camped away from the grid long enough I might be worth it.

 

[Ethergore]

This monitor looks very interesting. The installation is dead simple. The only down side is the lack of some features like amp draw. I had no idea the shunt type monitors were so difficult to "dial in"

 

[Rusty123]

Amperage is a useful thing to measure, to calculate daily energy budget, for example. But you can install a relatively inexpensive ammeter (without the sophisticated algorithms of a monitor) to obtain those values.