Battery Monitor

[Greg G.]

Can aynone recomend a good battery monitor for a dual-bank system. The only on I have seen was the Heart 1000 and it was pretyy high priced and seemed to be that way due to its connectivity to the Heart Inverter which I do not have.

 

[Jim Facteau]

I have a Link 20 2 bank monitor and it works very well. Cruised for 4 years through the east coast and Bahamas. It has LED lights that change colors to warn of low batteries in addition to a digital readout. Also provides a lot of other "stuff"Not cheap, but well worth it in my opinion. Page 271, West Catalog.

 

[Les Blackwell]

I agree with Jim

We installed a Link 20 on our H380 to monitor two banks of batteries--one bank the starter battery and one bank of golf cart batteries. I always know the status of my power banks. Good device.Les

 

[Bryan C.]

Cheaper alternatives

If you want to save a little money, get a plain jane volt meter and anometer (sp?) to show volatage and current used -- hooked up at the isolator switch they will register the voltage of whichever bank you have switched on. It will still cost you close to $100; might be worth it to get a smart monitor which has the advantage of keeping track of cumulative amp-hours used and/or estimated battery power remaining.I don't think you have to have a "dual-bank" monitor if the the price differential is great. Just get a rocker switch for $8.95 and splice the sensor wire from the monitor to the rocker switch to each battery bank on the isolator switch. You do lose the cumulative amp hour registered when you switch if you go that way, though. I have an older digital Link 1000 (I think that's what it is) that is not a dual bank but which works fine with the rocker switch.

 

[Roger Mummah]

SALT Monitor

We have a SALT (Sea Air Land Technologies) monitor. It was not cheap, but it has all kinds of cruising capabilities. It can monitor or controll anything electrical. We have a big house bank, and a starter battery, as well as wind generator and solar panels. The SALT monitor allows us to record just about any electrical thing we want. Like how many amps did the wind generator produce in any time period we select. Or how much draw was there on the house bank for any period of time. It makes it easy to monitor what everything electrical on our boat is doing to/for us. The SALT monitor can also serve as a controller, to turn various charging sources on or off. We are not using that capability now, but it is there for futures. Roger Mummah s/v Endless Summer (H31)