Peter Thornton
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Posts posted by Peter Thornton
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15 minutes ago, rusty69 said:
You use 100 Ahr overnight. Wot are you doing man, that's nearly a whole armful!
I deliberately provoked it by leaving lots of lights on as I wanted to test it out and give it a chance to calibrate itself. This evening’s been much quieter and it’s moved from 94% to 90% so about 12 Amp/Hour or so (bearing in mind that 4x100 doesnt equal 400 when they have some age.
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22 minutes ago, Dr Bob said:
If I use 100Ahr overnight - so am 100Ahrs off full, I will be down to a 1% tail current after 4 hrs running ...using a 90A alternator. In your case you were putting in circa 120Ahr (66% to 100% assuming your capacity is slightly down) so should be not far off full ....but you didnt say how long ...3hrs +?
It was just over 3 hours - well guessed!
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1 minute ago, Dr Bob said:
As Loddon says, your abilty to get fully charged will be down to the voltage. If you are up over 14.2 (ish) V then you should be able to get fully charged - but what capacity is your battery bank?
It’s 4, 100AH batteries. I’ll check the charging voltage tomorrow.
I do know that when we return to the Marina after a long cruise and hook up the onboard charger (Sterling Pro) it does put quite a bit more in. It’s difficult to track exactly how much as the current keeps varying but probably 20 - 30 AH’s in total.
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3 minutes ago, Dr Bob said:
What voltage were you charging at as you finished your cruise?
Good question! I’ll check next time .......
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Did my first cruise with Smartgauge today.
Started with 66% showing and it climbed nicely for the first 3 hours then slowed and ended up at 94% when I moored. I assumed that was because I have a standard charging system with no trickery?
But this evening I’ve been reading some old posts and come across one that says they have a tendency to show 94%. Is this just co-incidence?
Just to avoid a three page note on batteries and charging, (!) I’ve always understood that it’s unlikely/impossible to get to 100% whilst cruising with a standard car based alternator set up.
So, is this 94% thing a feature?
But I’m very pleased with the Smartgauge so far. It seems to work exactly as promised.
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That makes sense, thanks Nick.
Meanwhile, it seems to be working fine - without my having to understand why!
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25 minutes ago, WotEver said:
Besides, Gibbo informed me ages ago that Bob’s guess at how SmartGauge works is wrong anyway.
Have to say, I don’t really understand the principle on which they work. We have been using a voltmeter to monitor SOC and, as anyone who’s tried this knows, the problem is that the volts measured varies with the load on the batteries. So I guess that one function of the Smartgauge is to smooth all of these variations out. But without knowing what load is on the batteries - i.e. the amps being drawn - how does it learn the characteristics of your battery bank and deduce the SOC?
One thing I’ve noticed, after having it for all of 30 hours, is that it stays at 100% for quite a long time after charging stops and current draw begins.
But I like its simplicity and think it might be very useful on our Share Boat.
Incidentally, I spent Saturday night at a marina social event and met a couple who had just embarked upon a Livaboard Life. They seemed a little suprised when I congratulated them on their new life and said that it would now be dominated by batteries and toilets .............
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1 minute ago, Sea Dog said:
Well, checking the calibration is a faff and how can you trust it unless you know is right? Pondering where you are with it because no-one really knows how it works is a nuisance, if not a faff. MtB has 3 he doesn't trust. Others agree. Others don't. The post above points that out too.
I don't have a dog in the fight though, as I went t'other way on battery monitoring. The above is one reason why I made that choice.
I don’t think the fitting and operation is a “faff”, it’s just that it looks as if there were some faulty units around. Mine reads exactly the same as a good quality meter I have and reads 12.8 on a fully charged bank, which suggests that all is well.
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25 minutes ago, Sea Dog said:
Crikey, this seems like a lot of faffing around for something you don't trust anyway!
Our boat is a share boat and our owners fall into two camps:
1. Owners who are intensely interested in batteries and spend a lot of time looking at numbers and voltages.
2. Owners who would rather look at the view, don’t want to think about batteries on their holidays and just want to know when the engine needs running or they need to turn some lights off.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the Smartgauge is a great aid for the second group.
It’s the first group (which includes me) who ask all the complicated questions and who would actually probably be better served by an Amp Hour counter.
26 minutes ago, nicknorman said:I think you are misinterpreting slightly. Yes the actual SoC is lost, but not the learnt parameters that are used to optimise the algorithm. I presume the decision not to “remember” the SoC was a deliberate one in case the battery SoC changed significant whilst it was disconnected (eg very flat batteries taken off for charge).
The “given time” bit refers to the need for the SG to re-synchronise with the actual SoC. Note that it says “given time” not “given cycles”.
That’s more or less the conclusion I came to, but I wondered if anyone had evidence other than reading the manual?
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Just picking up on this topic having fitted a Smartgauge this morning, Obtained from Cactus, it works fine but wouldn’t enter the set up menu until I’d done a Factory Reset. It made me wonder whether it was a returned unit? It seemed to have been supplied with the Menu Lock active.
The only issue is that the letter T doesn’t display correctly. Anyone else noticed this?
Here’s my query:
The manual makes a lot of the learning process during the first few cycles. Is this learning retained if the power is cut? I notice that the SOC is lost after a power cut.
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On 12/08/2018 at 20:12, Murflynn said:
walking along my Sunday path with the dogs this morning an *sshole approached me at about 30mph down a slight incline, slowing when he met me. full camouflage gear and a very sophisticated looking electric bike. I hope a large heavy dog jumps out of the wood and knocks him flying. our local parks tolerate bikes but suggest 10mph maximum.
Assuming his electric bike was legal, the motor assistance cut out at 15.5mph, otherwise it was an electric moped needing registration, tax, insurance etc
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3 minutes ago, doratheexplorer said:
There are lots of threads on here about battery charging where people say they run their engine 2 hours daily and a long 7-8 hour charge once a week. It's deemed to be good practice for looking after your batteries. Why should this person be excluded from that?
I often run my engine for over 5 hours and I bet loads of other people on here do too.
We run our engine for around 5 hours on most days - but we are moving. Even CC’s are meant to move sometimes ...........
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3 minutes ago, RLWP said:
It still wouldn't help our boat. We would have to run the engine for hot water and battery charging
But you can charge your battery from the mains then use 12volt from there? Doesn’t help with the hot water I know, but solutions are available.
We all need to realise that there is a concerted effort to clean up diesel emissions and the time is soon coming when running engines in towns will not be allowed.
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8 minutes ago, RLWP said:
Mains power is no use to us, we are a 12V boat
So are we, but it goes to an onboard battery charger .....
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The only time I knocked on a boat to ask them to stop was at Llangollen at about 7am. Being as every berth has mains power I didn’t see why it was necessary .......
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Horsepower is a complex subject. I’ve read that a horse can produce 14.9 horsepower, at peak.............
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24 minutes ago, Boater Sam said:
Premature cam and follower wear is a sign of lack of clean engine oil.
Earlier Ford OHC engines, Pinto, suffered badly from cam wear, my oppo had one in which he changed the oil regularly, it did over 260,000 miles before he sold it.
Yes, that’s what I thought. That was the point at which the syndicate was just setting down after the Ownerships collapse and from then on we have changed oil at regular intervals.
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We estimate about 11,000 hours or so. (There was a period when the hours counter was not working properly.)
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2 minutes ago, cuthound said:
It is usually a worn camshaft that determines the end for a BMC 1.8.
We had the Turkish sourced Calcutt BMC 1.8 in my old shareboat reach over 13,000 hours before it became was replaced with a Beta 43.
The Beta is a much better engine, quieter, more torque, better fuel consumption and examples with over 20,000 hours on thrm can be observed in plant equipment.
We’ve been through that one! We had a new camshaft etc about 5,000 hours ago.
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Hopefully someone from the Forum will be by there and able to see it better? It’s on a private mooring so it must be possible to find out - it’s quite a small place.
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There you go .....
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Our share boat (ex ownerships Sunseeker) has a BMC 1.8. We’ve recently (about 3000 hours ago) had a new head and had the injectors and pump serviced about 1500 hours ago.
She is currently running well and we do about 800 hours a year. We have a full engine service over the Winter and a couple of oil and filter changes in between (200 - 300 hours)
Is there anything we should be doing proactively, or do we just wait until problems occur and/or it starts smoking more? Difficult to judge of course.
I’m particularly wondering about the injectors. We did leave them too long last time and I wonder if there is a recommended interval between servicing of these and the pump?
Any other thoughts would be welcome ..........
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There used to be an old guy selling fruit, veg, eggs etc at Quoisley (or was it Povey) lock on the Llangollen. Anyone know what’s happened to him - we haven’t seen him recently?
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4 hours ago, BruceinSanity said:
You know we had that business of teapots on top of boats as some sort of code a couple years back? Maybe we could agree something similar to mean “I’m a grumpy sod so don’t moor near me, run your engine in my hearing or work my locks for me”.
Suggestions for what it should be?
Maybe a guzunder, decorated or not as preferred, to mean p*ss off!
Tell us about the Teapot Code please ........
My third SmartGauge...
in Boat Equipment
Posted
Very possibly.
Here’s the post I referred to:
Strangely enough I have one
It makes battery monitoring real simple you dont need to know the size of the bank and subtract what you have used just look and so long as its above 50% you are OK.
Hasnt really changed how I run my system but I worry less as I can see its still above 50%.
I tried to confuse it by running the tumble dryer off the inverter whilst boating which gives me a net loss from the batteries of 50Ah ( TD draws 100A alternator is 50A) it came up with the correct answer, after a couple of hours boating and drying my 400Ah battery bank had dropped from 75-50%.
It doesnt always get to 100% it levels off at 94%charged however that could be my charging system
Its a small unit 90x60x25mm the only downside is that as mine is an early one it has no mounting brackets so its fixed to the wall with DS tape.
Other than that it does what it says.
What it will do is control external relays according to voltage so if you havent got a system linking your alternators to charge the domestic bank at a higher rate it should be possible to do this (ask Chris at SG).
Would I buy another one?
I am about to for the 12v system (first one is on the 24v system)