March 1, 201610 yr Author Bought myself 8 of these little guys. Going to mount them into a nice box, and will be a nice way to eyeball the voltage of each individual battery.
March 1, 201610 yr 1 hour ago, viceroy said: Bought myself 8 of these little guys. Going to mount them into a nice box, and will be a nice way to eyeball the voltage of each individual battery. Only problem with them is that they are very inaccurate. I've also bought 4 of them a while ago an connected them to an adjustable power supply. Their readings were out by as much a 2V at certain voltages with about 1.5V difference between the meter with the lowest and the meter with the highest reading at 13.0V. Mine cannot be calibrated, but at some point in time I might add a multi-turn preset or two to each panel meter to try and calibrate it. I guess you cannot expect much accuracy for about R25 a shot.
March 1, 201610 yr What volts ranges can they read? Where? How much? Led select in bid or buy. Or alice1101983 on eBay of you can wait... :-) Sent from my GT-I9195 using Tapatalk
March 1, 201610 yr Author 35 minutes ago, viper_za said: How much does it take out of your batts to run these I doubt they'll take much, but I will be adding a toggle switch so I can turn them on/off when I want to. Also planning on running them off a standalone 12V 7ah battery, so in my case wont put any drain on the batteries 33 minutes ago, The Terrible Triplett said: What volts ranges can they read? Where? How much? The ones I bought can measure to 100V and cost about R70 each. http://solarandleds.co.za/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=178 22 minutes ago, superdiy said: Only problem with them is that they are very inaccurate. I've also bought 4 of them a while ago an connected them to an adjustable power supply. Their readings were out by as much a 2V at certain voltages with about 1.5V difference between the meter with the lowest and the meter with the highest reading at 13.0V. Mine cannot be calibrated, but at some point in time I might add a multi-turn preset or two to each panel meter to try and calibrate it. I guess you cannot expect much accuracy for about R25 a shot. I did do some testing of one on various sources (9V batteries at various states of charge as well as a 12V source) and compared to my trusty multimeter and values were pretty much spot on. Claims 1% accuracy, so arguably accurate to within 0.01V. Guess that only trying them will tell
March 1, 201610 yr Am I right: Add one per 6v Trojan batt to see the volts per batt, powered by the same 6v Trojan batt the device is connected to?
March 1, 201610 yr Author 18 minutes ago, The Terrible Triplett said: Am I right: Add one per 6v Trojan batt to see the volts per batt, powered by the same 6v Trojan batt the device is connected to? You could I do that I suppose. I think the pic I posted is slightly misleading as the displays I bought have 3 leads, so the power source for the display need not be the same as the one being measured.
March 1, 201610 yr Was looking at these ones, 2 wires? http://solarandleds.co.za/index.php?route=product/product&path=65&product_id=160
March 1, 201610 yr Author That one also apparently has three wires too. Last point in the specification says so.
March 1, 201610 yr 1 hour ago, viper_za said: How much does it take out of your batts to run these <23mA. 1 hour ago, The Terrible Triplett said: What volts ranges can they read? Where? How much? Up to 30-32V depending on the supplier start at about R15 on E-bay. Edmundp bought some for about 10 bucks but I do not find that listing any more. Look at digital voltmeter or digital motorcycle voltmeter. 1 hour ago, superdiy said: Only problem with them is that they are very inaccurate. I've also bought 4 of them a while ago an connected them to an adjustable power supply. Their readings were out by as much a 2V at certain voltages with about 1.5V difference between the meter with the lowest and the meter with the highest reading at 13.0V. Mine cannot be calibrated, but at some point in time I might add a multi-turn preset or two to each panel meter to try and calibrate it. I guess you cannot expect much accuracy for about R25 a shot. I bought 10 and sorted the 4 that were the closest . There is one that differs by about 0.05 V sometimes it start changing to the next digit slightly before the others. For my purposes they are fine. I also have a BMV 702 midpoint readings to fall back on. The HA01 battery balancers have an LED that flashes if there is any current flow from one battery to the other so at a glance I have a pretty good idea what is going on.
March 1, 201610 yr 1 hour ago, viceroy said: I did do some testing of one on various sources (9V batteries at various states of charge as well as a 12V source) and compared to my trusty multimeter and values were pretty much spot on. Claims 1% accuracy, so arguably accurate to within 0.01V. Guess that only trying them will tell Connect all of them to the same source at the same time when you test - mine had readings as much as 2V apart. I've ordered 4, two for myself and 2 for a friend. I tested them by connecting all of them to the same source at the same time and gave him the two with the readings closest to my fluke - the 2 I've kept for myself are way off and totally unusable for rather "accurate" battery voltage measurements.
March 1, 201610 yr Connect all of them to the same source at the same time when you test - mine had readings as much as 2V apart. I've ordered 4, two for myself and 2 for a friend. I tested them by connecting all of them to the same source at the same time and gave him the two with the readings closest to my fluke - the 2 I've kept for myself are way off and totally unusable for rather "accurate" battery voltage measurements. The ones I bought is adjustable. They were extremely close to spot on. Calibrated them with my multimeter. Only 2 wire connection so no external power source. Sent from my SM-N900 using Tapatalk
March 2, 201610 yr Author 22 hours ago, superdiy said: Connect all of them to the same source at the same time when you test I will do this.
March 2, 201610 yr Author Created a Emoncms.org account and set AICC to export. Since I wanted something up quite quickly for testing, I blatently copied JDP's setup. I really need to get the AC side of things sorted this weekend so I can start testing real numbers.
March 4, 201610 yr Author Good news everyone. I've tested all the volt displays on the same source at the same time and with my multi-meter to confirm accuracy, and all but one are spot on. The last one is showing 0.1V too high, but it looks like the voltmeters are adjustable, so I can fix that.
March 4, 201610 yr 3 hours ago, viceroy said: Good news everyone. I've tested all the volt displays on the same source at the same time and with my multi-meter to confirm accuracy, and all but one are spot on. The last one is showing 0.1V too high, but it looks like the voltmeters are adjustable, so I can fix that. Just don't use a size 3 phillips.
March 9, 201610 yr Author I've been running my 2 Axperts with nothing connected except the PV and batteries (still haven't connected up the AC side), and I don't really understand what I'm seeing in the monitoring. During the evening (or even if I disconnect the PV) the batteries show a load of about -120W (-2.2A) which is fine as I assume each inverter draws 60W just to run. What I don't understand is the Solar Watts value and why it fluctuates so wildly. Surely it should be sitting steady at around 120W?
March 9, 201610 yr Hey, that Pv graph looks familiar .... is it not maybe linked to the rand / dollar exchange rate? (f)k daar val ek van my stoel af soos ek lag! I have no idea but am very interested in what others say on why it is all over the show? My controller is very stable in amps and volts, bar clouds.
March 9, 201610 yr As I understand it solar watts is either batts or pv power or combination of both during day time. (when you are not on grid/utility mode) The fluctuation I have no idea about
March 9, 201610 yr Looking at mine, volts climb quick, amps slower. As the day grows, SOC is reached, load is powered. Peak hour there is like +-700w coming in, with a load of 650w, with very little going into the batts, so the graph, if I had a Pi, would probably be quite curved, not like a Zuma rand, at least that is what I would like to believe looking at the numbers.
March 9, 201610 yr Author 8 minutes ago, viper_za said: As I understand it solar watts is either batts or pv power or combination of both during day time. (when you are not on grid/utility mode) The fluctuation I have no idea about You understanding is spot on. Maybe by the end of this weekend I'll have the AC connected, and can check with the system actually working as it should.
March 9, 201610 yr Viceroy that does not look right. Are you sure you configured the feeds correctly ?
March 9, 201610 yr What do you see on the AICC graphs ? If you did it correctly they should look the same. AICC EmonCMS
March 10, 201610 yr Author AICC is mirroring EmonCMS exactly, so yes the feeds are configured correctly. The strangeness continues. Around 21h30 last night AICC stopped sending updates, and this morning when I had a look, the app was not running. I suspect the laptop rebooted from an update. Anyway, still no AC connected to the system, but the solar watts graph line seems to be behaving now. One thing I did this morning, was to turn off the 2nd Axpert. With no AC as backup charging on the batteries, I wanted to slow down the draining. I will test again tonight by turning on the 2nd inverter again and monitoring what the solar watts graph does. And on a side note, check those PV watts. It's completely overcast and raining here and I'm peaking at 650W on a 3kW array
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.