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Smartgauge Questions


rupertbear

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7 minutes ago, bizzard said:

Stay as you are, don't ever become obcessed with the subject, its a pitiful and sad malady.  I know of a chap that is so obcessed with his charging system that he takes a picnic lunch and flasks of tea to the dashboard at the back of his boat, in front of which he has a commode situated, on which he sits for hours and hours on end, eyes glued unblinkingly to his gauges. momitors, lights and stuff, watching and noting down what every indictor light is doing and not doing and the tiniest unusual flicker of a gauge needle makes his heart miss a beat.  He became as bald as a coot and all his teeth fell out very early in life because of the worry of it all. He said he didn't understand any of it, but it all facinated him and loved the worry, so much so that he wouldn't partake in any other hobby for anything.

Thanks for not revealing my identity Bizz

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50 minutes ago, bizzard said:

Stay as you are, don't ever become obcessed with the subject, its a pitiful and sad malady.  I know of a chap that is so obcessed with his charging system that he takes a picnic lunch and flasks of tea to the dashboard at the back of his boat, in front of which he has a commode situated, on which he sits for hours and hours on end, eyes glued unblinkingly to his gauges. momitors, lights and stuff, watching and noting down what every indictor light is doing and not doing and the tiniest unusual flicker of a gauge needle makes his heart miss a beat.  He became as bald as a coot and all his teeth fell out very early in life because of the worry of it all. He said he didn't understand any of it, but it all facinated him and loved the worry, so much so that he wouldn't partake in any other hobby for anything.

but watching batteries charge is much more exciting than watching paint dry.

............Dave

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3 hours ago, Cloudinspector said:

That makes sense. What you’re describing there seems to match what’s happening and given that we only ever charge via the generator or alternator then disabling the float mode may be the answer.

FYI I had the generator and charger on for just over 2 hours this morning before I had to leave for work and these are the charge rate changes.

Start. 14.40v 55amps SG 80%  Abs

45 mins 13.80v 15 Amps SG 84% fl

60 mins  13.80v 10 amps SG 85%

75 mins  13.25v  3.10 amps SG 86%

 

 

 

The SG is reading correctly. It is warning you that you are not properly charging your batteries fully. You can see that the voltage is dropping to float and then storage way too soon. When charing with a generator, these modes are useless and don't really charge the batteries significantly despite the genny churning away! I think the starting point would be to check the setting called "adaptive charging" and turn it off (it is on by default). Changing settings via a laptop and the correct lead is quite easy, but you have to have the correct lead which is not particularly cheap. You can also change the settings by means of the DIP switches inside the case, but this requires careful reading of the manual (which is not well written IMO!).

One thing you could try as an interim measure whilst you are getting to grips with the manual, is to try switching off the Combi as soon as the voltage drops to 13.8v, then back on again after a few seconds (genny still running). Hopefully this will put it back into absorb mode for another 45 minutes but this is by no means an ideal solution, and changing the settings is the way to go!

But don't delay too much, you are damaging your new batteries by not charging them properly.

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2 hours ago, nicknorman said:

The SG is reading correctly. It is warning you that you are not properly charging your batteries fully. You can see that the voltage is dropping to float and then storage way too soon. When charing with a generator, these modes are useless and don't really charge the batteries significantly despite the genny churning away! I think the starting point would be to check the setting called "adaptive charging" and turn it off (it is on by default). Changing settings via a laptop and the correct lead is quite easy, but you have to have the correct lead which is not particularly cheap. You can also change the settings by means of the DIP switches inside the case, but this requires careful reading of the manual (which is not well written IMO!).

One thing you could try as an interim measure whilst you are getting to grips with the manual, is to try switching off the Combi as soon as the voltage drops to 13.8v, then back on again after a few seconds (genny still running). Hopefully this will put it back into absorb mode for another 45 minutes but this is by no means an ideal solution, and changing the settings is the way to go!

But don't delay too much, you are damaging your new batteries by not charging them properly.

All makes perfect sense. I’ve had a good read of the manual and I think I’ve got my head around changing the settings. I’ll probably have a go at the weekend when I’ve got plenty time to approach it slowly and methodically. Thankfully I’ve detected somethings wrong early.

Many thanks for yours and others help. 

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23 hours ago, nicknorman said:

i think you are perhaps slightly confusing synchronising with calibrating. In your case, the SG will synchronise with the actually SoC when the actual SoC falls to the indicated value, in your case 86%. Calibration is an ongoing process where the SG gradually fine tunes itself to the particular characteristics of the battery bank.

 

Nick, no that is not correct on 'Calibration'.

Calibration is the comparison of a piece of test equipment (ie the Smartgauge) with a known standard piece of test equipment ie another accurate or calibrated voltmeter – the output is to ensure the test equipment reads the same as the standard. Therefore to calibrate a Smartgauge, one would compare the Voltage reading with a known standard voltage device. If the readings were different you would then adjust the SG voltage reading to the known reading. Some definitions of the the word 'Calibration' include this second step of adjustment as part of the calibration process. This is what MtB needs on his SG's!

You talk about a process where the Smartgauge gradually tunes itself to a particular bank. This is not Calibration. It is model tuning. The Smartgauge does not calibrate itself.

I do not have a Smartgauge and am not allowed to have one;), but I assume its only input is voltage ie it is not measuring Amps. One output is SoC but this is a predicted value based on output from algorithms derived from comparing V's with SoC's across a wide range of batteries and charge set ups (and the SoC's were not calibrated in the true sense of the word), so in strict terms the SoC reading cannot be calibrated.

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On 07/02/2018 at 10:36, Dr Bob said:

This is what MtB needs on his SG's!

You talk about a process where the Smartgauge gradually tunes itself to a particular bank. This is not Calibration. It is model tuning. The Smartgauge does not calibrate itself.

 

Correct.

And being an honourable chap I am pleased to report I have calibrated one of my Smartgauges and now it works very well. Reports SoC apparently very accurately, even getting to 100% just as my tail current gets down to about 1%.

My beef however is that it didn't do this 'out of the box', I had to learn that it was incorrectly calibrated at the factory at the price of a knackered set of batteries. And being a persistent sort of chap too, I picked away at the problem and eventually revealed the batteries to be failing for this reason.

Most SG users out there with incorrectly calibrated SGs will not go to such lengths as me, so will remain unaware when they have a faulty SG. 

 

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1 hour ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

Most SG users out there with incorrectly calibrated SGs...

We don’t know that there are any. If there are, and I accept there may be, we have no idea how many there may be. If we believe Merlin, the number will be a truly tiny percentage. 

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2 minutes ago, WotEver said:

We don’t know that there are any. If there are, and I accept there may be, we have no idea how many there may be. If we believe Merlin, the number will be a truly tiny percentage. 

If its a very small percentage, will they be collectable? Is MTB sitting on a potential gold mine?

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On 07/02/2018 at 11:53, WotEver said:

We don’t know that there are any. If there are, and I accept there may be, we have no idea how many there may be. If we believe Merlin, the number will be a truly tiny percentage. 

 

Well they would say that wouldn't they?

But I agree we don't know. 

What we DO know is five gauges turned up on here wrong when owners took the substantial trouble necessary to check them. What are the chances of those five gauges being the only ones ever shipped wrong?

My guess is that here were probably hundreds or thousands sold wrong on the basis of the limited information available here, before Merlin tuned in and addressed their dodgy quality control. If they have. 

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6 minutes ago, WotEver said:

We don’t know that there are any. If there are, and I accept there may be, we have no idea how many there may be. If we believe Merlin, the number will be a truly tiny percentage. 

The point I was trying to raise when replying to Nicks post was that he used the word Calibrated (and suggesting SGs are self calibrating). Calibrated gives the user a feeling of accuracy ie if it is calibrated then it must be accurate. To make sure a gauge is continuously accurate, that gauge need calibrating on a regular basis. Maybe most SGs are 'calibrated' before sale but that's it. Gauges can always 'drift' hence loose their accuracy.

I have a financial interest in a Plastic Testing Laboratory which is UCAS accredited. A large proportion of our test kit is calibrated (a key in getting and keeping accreditation). We calibrate our kit on an ongoing basis, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly - depending on which bit of kit it is. That is the only way you can establish that kit gives accurate results.

Smartgauges have two potential points of weakness that could affect accuracy. Firstly its calibration - on point of sale and ongoing performance. Secondly the SoC values output by the SG are predictions of SoC based on voltage measurements and will only be as accurate as the global model it uses to do the prediction. It is obvious that accuracy varies across the SoC range and therefore is likely be different from installation to installation.

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From all of the tests and checks made by both the designer and users over the years the accuracy of a SmartGauge voltage reading doesn’t significantly drift over time. The accuracy of the SoC reading is an absolute maximum of 10% and again, this doesn’t drift, in fact it improves its accuracy with every discharge cycle, which is the point that Nick was making. 

Recently (last couple of days) we have had two users state (more or less) “My SmartGauge is broken. It never gets above x percent”. In both of those cases we quickly established that their SmartGauge wasn’t broken; it was accurately displaying the under-charging being performed by the users. 

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4 minutes ago, WotEver said:

Gibbo said more than once that users often disagreed with what the SmartGauge was telling them. In all cases it was the user that was wrong, not the gauge. 

So when a user installs 2x smartgauges and they read 20% differently, is the user doubly wrong?

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8 hours ago, Dr Bob said:

Nick, no that is not correct on 'Calibration'.

Calibration is the comparison of a piece of test equipment (ie the Smartgauge) with a known standard piece of test equipment ie another accurate or calibrated voltmeter – the output is to ensure the test equipment reads the same as the standard. Therefore to calibrate a Smartgauge, one would compare the Voltage reading with a known standard voltage device. If the readings were different you would then adjust the SG voltage reading to the known reading. Some definitions of the the word 'Calibration' include this second step of adjustment as part of the calibration process. This is what MtB needs on his SG's!

You talk about a process where the Smartgauge gradually tunes itself to a particular bank. This is not Calibration. It is model tuning. The Smartgauge does not calibrate itself.

I do not have a Smartgauge and am not allowed to have one;), but I assume its only input is voltage ie it is not measuring Amps. One output is SoC but this is a predicted value based on output from algorithms derived from comparing V's with SoC's across a wide range of batteries and charge set ups (and the SoC's were not calibrated in the true sense of the word), so in strict terms the SoC reading cannot be calibrated.

OK I'll have to give you that one. Tuning or perhaps learning. I feel hard done by though, someone else used the word "calibrating" and now I've got a row for just repeating it!

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On 06/02/2018 at 10:24, nb Innisfree said:

If I'm rembering correctly Victron chargers go to 13. 6v after absorption charge and stays there for 24hrs after which, if no discharge takes place, it drops to 13.2v for long term float charge to prevent plate corrosion

Edit to change 'bulk' to 'absorption' 

Can only use quote as there is no edit faciliy . 

Edited by nb Innisfree
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56 minutes ago, nicknorman said:

OK I'll have to give you that one. Tuning or perhaps learning. I feel hard done by though, someone else used the word "calibrating" and now I've got a row for just repeating it!

Oh, do you have to? I have lined the popcorn up for at least a 1/2 hour argument.

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7 hours ago, WotEver said:

Gibbo said more than once that users often disagreed with what the SmartGauge was telling them. In all cases it was the user that was wrong, not the gauge. 

In which Gibbo is demonstrably wrong. I can show him two smartgauges, one of which is reading wrong in my opinion.

I think this because both gauges are connected to the same battery and give different readings. In my humble opinion one of them is wrong, and I Challenge Gibbo to prove its me that's wrong and not a gauge!

Edited by Mike the Boilerman
redundant worm
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3 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

In which Gibbo is demonstrably wrong. I can show him two smartgauges, one of which is reading wrong in my opinion.

I think this because both gauges are connected to the same battery and give different readings. In my humble opinion one of them is wrong, and I Challenge Gibbo to prove they are both right even though different.

How can he be wrong, unless he has checked your ones ,one of which you say is poorly calibrated?

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