Voltmeters: Anyone used one of these?

[OBXTucker]

I was searching around for a remote voltmeter for the battery bank that will charge the new Vetus
and came across this cool product!

http://www.bogartengineering.com/products/TriMetric

Has anyone used the TriMetric? Appears it will work fine on our 32v systems and gathers some
terrific information, such as:

* “Percent Full” (“State of charge”) of your batteries, so you can see if you need to charge them more, or check that overall usage is less than your charging resources.

* Volts of the batteries, for example to check that they are being charged at proper voltage.

* Energy going in, or out of your batteries, measured in Amps or Watts, so you can see that your charging sources are charging properly, or how much current your loads are using.

* How many days since the batteries were fully charged: to remind you to not wait too long between fully charging your batteries to maximize their life.

Looks like this product measures a lot of the data we require!
Thoughts??

 

[MikeP]

Looks like a nice unit but don't most modern batt chargers provide pretty much that same information? The only thing I see that most displays for current chargers don't have is the Days since charging." But that doesn't seem to me to be of any real use because on boats the system is set up to maintain the charge at all times so there is always some amount of voltage is being applied to maintain the batt at whatever the float level is set to be.

Again, it looks like an excellent unit but I'm not seeing what useful information it supplies that isn't already supplied by at least some of the smart chargers that have adjustable parameters/remote displays. OTOH, it would seem to be a good item to have if using an old oem ferro charger since they don't display any info other than amps being delivered to the batts by the charger.

 

[OBXTucker]

Unfortunately we all don't have one of them fancy Outback Steakhouse 3232 models with the Mate unit that's comparable to the Hall 9000.

My Sentry along with the Analog gauges on the box and at the helm really don't tell me squat, other than battery level.

 

[jim rosenthal]

I have something like this, made by Xantrex- I used to have a Link monitor, ,which finally quite working. I replaced it with a Link Lite, I think it's called. It doesn't do as much as this one does, and it costs more.

Jeff, you probably have separate banks for house, engine start, and genset. You would need a monitor that would watch at least the house and engine start banks. You will have to run some wires to do this, but the effort is worth it: you really do know what is left in your batteries, if the system is installed correctly and programmed properly.

The Outback's intelligent electronics do a lot of this, if not all of it. If you don't have a unit like that, and you don't need another inverter, something like this monitor is quite useful.

 

[GJH]

I have one of these on The List for my house bank, and it will read just volts off a second bank, such as the start bank in the other ER. I have seen a couple of the earlier model on some trawlers and it is a good system. It gives you amp hour use and other amp and capacity related data that a charger does not. American made and supported too. I was going to call him and make sure it could be set at 32, but it sure reads like it can be set to about anything up to 60.

What do you plan on charging that 48 volt system with? Quad bank 12 volt? Dual bank 24 volt? ?

 

[OBXTucker]

Dual 24 AGM's.