having read about @Chris Hobson's digital aquarium thermometers to monitor battery temperatures, the question arises where would i place the temperature sensitive tip of the thermometer for the best reflection of the state of the battery temperature?

any thoughts?

God bless

g

I have some of these so they don't have a tip as such...

59 minutes ago, gabriel said:

where would i place the temperature sensitive tip

It's customary to mount the temperature prove to the negative probe of the battery. Not sure why that one precisely, but it seems that the lead probably conducts the heat better than the plastic/rubber/polyurethane/whatever casing of the battery.

35 minutes ago, Mark said:

I have some of these so they don't have a tip as such...

i believe a digital one will give a more accurate reading - that is if it is calibrated in the 1st instance. obviously the ideal would be to to sit in front of your pc and get the data over bt or wifi. then again  a good thermal scanner will even show us whats happening inside our batteries...

then again this medical non contact thermometer would do well for spot checks

 

Edited June 21, 20188 yr by gabriel
xtra data

41 minutes ago, gabriel said:

then again this medical non contact thermometer would do well for spot checks

I'm not always sure if they do as well on surfaces other than human skin. The one we have (which is notoriously inaccurate even for its intended purpose!) has two settings, one for human skin and another for other objects. This alone leads me to believe your results with this rather expensive meter is going to be disappointing.

In fact, I'm thinking of getting a nice industrial one for maybe double the money shown here... and using it on my kids too. 50 bucks says it will do better that way round than the cheap pharmacy model.

47 minutes ago, gabriel said:

non contact thermometer

I have had a cheapie lying around for a while so I took it now and measured boiling water through the transparent glass kettle, which in Joburg will be around 96C. My results varied from 85C to 56C depending on the measuring angle (85C when square on). 

2 hours ago, gabriel said:

having read about @Chris Hobson's digital aquarium thermometers to monitor battery temperatures, the question arises where would i place the temperature sensitive tip of the thermometer for the best reflection of the state of the battery temperature?

I stuck mine on the middle (top) of the  polyurethane case with prestik and although I did  use the values to adjust charging regime I was more interested in any temperature variation in the batteries. I thought I would pick up any impending disasters. In the end (probably one of Plonky's pet peeve phrases ) it was the BMV rather than temperature that heralded my battery banks's demise. 

On my old Morningstar I had a temp sensor, which was aimed towards adjusting the charging algorithm, based on ambient and 1 battery pole temp.

I think the Victron controllers takes the ambient temp, and adjust accordingly.

So now I am thinking, once I start worrying about temp on a batt, by then it is too late, the batt is a gonner, last leg, and all that.