Simple Battery Voltage Gauge

For those of you with battery tender cabling... going on my Christmas list.

http://www.revzilla.com/motorcycle/batt ... tage-meter

Love the price. Assume it is not polarity conscious ?

Torontonian said:

Love the price. Assume it is not polarity conscious ?

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I assume that you will have your tender cable hooked up properly and at that point it wouldn't care. Doesn't this thing just want to know what the battery is doing, not where it's grounded? But I'm not the electrical engineer...

if your using a battery tender the unit already has the tell tale led lights on it already ?? :? But if your into gadgets .... :lol:


Tim_S

Some intelligent battery chargers are not so intelligent. Like the cheapo ones. I use the same bleed-off connector for the electric vest ,it is not polarity conscious ,just asking.

Tim_S said:

if your using a battery tender the unit already has the tell tale led lights on it already ?? :? But if your into gadgets .... :lol:


Tim_S

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I don't think you know how this thing works.

I was thinking it would be pretty cool if you ran a Battery Tender cable from the permanent lead on the battery up to the front of the bike. Then when you want to hook up the charger you can just unplug it at the battery. Judging from the picture, the thing is really small. Maybe some doublesided sticky tape or something. I wish I had a fairing sometimes to hide the gadgets.

For cheap, try this: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Digital- ... 26657.html

That cigarette lighter one is the one I chopped up and fitted into a disc where my ammeter used to be. Volts are so much more interesting than amps. In blighty they are about £1 each on ebay but delivery from China takes forever. Buy a dozen and give them to your mates for Xmas. You could fit a cigarette lighter to your Commando but make sure the wiring is correct for +ve earth. Handy for inflating your camping mattress or anything else!!? including lighting cigarettes.

powerdoc said:

For cheap, try this: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Digital- ... 26657.html

Click to expand...

Except there's no cigarette lighter on the bike... :roll:

This is neat. As soon as I read the first post I ordered one.

I've converted all my bikes and battery chargers to use this type of connector. See what happens when you get a Harley?

I received this the next day by UPS after ordering - Revzilla is in Philly.

Nice little piece and I didn't realize that it is actually made by Battery Tender (Deltran). (Actually it is $11.95 on their site.) I think it will be a winner for them.

Today I took it in to work and hooked up the test equipment. The voltmeter is right on the money for accuracy. The 3 LEDs come on and change when they say they should: Green >12v, yellow 11.6-12v, and flashing red <11.5v. The specs say it will read from 3-16 volts. Not that it matters much at all, but I found it to be very inaccurate below 4V. I did not go above 16.5V - scared to burn up my new gadget.

The unit turns on when it is powered up or when the button is pressed. Normally it turns off after about 20 seconds. But it is not completely off. I was thinking of leaving it connected so was concerned about the current draw in the "sleep" mode. It is only 15 uA (microamps) so it could be left connected. However, if the battery voltage is below 11.5V when in the sleep mode, the red LED still flashes once per second, causing the battery to drain a little faster! Strange that they do that. The green and yellow LEDS are turned off in sleep mode.

This is made to measure battery voltage and connects to the pigtail from the battery which would normally be used for connecting a Battery Tender charger. If you don't have a Battery Tender charger already then you need to buy the pigtail cable.

So dat's da story. Sure you can do basically the same thing with a $4.95 Harbor Freight DVM but not quite as conveniently.

Russ

Great review!

That's unusual it's so accurate, not that it can't be done, but I've got one of those cheap DVM HF type and it doesn't even read to the 1/10 volt plus it's off by about a volt on the single volts. I'll have to look into a few.

Dave
69S

I ordered on yesterday. My Gerbings gear is acting up and I need to know whats going on. This thing will come in handy.

If I understand correctly this gizmo is still sucking juice when left plugged into the pigtail that is connected to the motorcycle....micro amps yes...but still pulling energy from the battery. And once the batt. is drained the little blinking light comes on consuming more power. So, to walk away from the bike for any length of time (a few days or more?) this meter would need to be unplugged.
The convenience of this seems obvious but I am curious about any hidden gremlins that may creep out later on. My battery charger/tender is over twenty years old and works exactly as if new,, so I think I am going to need yet another connector, as well as the one from the battery to the meter, I will also be in need of one from the charger to the meter input...

So if I need two connectors and a meter seems I am getting pretty close the price of permanently mounted digital LED meter.

By the way the site upgrade is really cool...well done.

I have been running one of these for a couple seasons now. Pos ground. I leave it on the pigtails in the battery box. It's pretty useful sometimes.

I see it as a tester to pull out when there’s a problem just so you can rule out low voltage.

swooshdave said:

I see it as a tester to pull out when there’s a problem just so you can rule out low voltage.

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Exactly! All that is needed with it is a BatteryTender pigtail connected to the battery. I have pig tails on each of my bikes. This very inexpensive item is so much simpler than getting out my multimeter to read battery voltage.

Ive installed one of these little units in an existing headlight hole on each of the old bikes. The modern bikes are getting them next, good to know whats happening there too.

Waterproof, auto dimming for night riding, in full view while riding and quite inexpensive.

Glen

http://www.sparkbright.co.uk/sparkright-monsoon-battery-voltage-monitor.php