For over a year now I have been designing a new battery monitor. I say new, but in fact the only monitor Chestnut has is a voltmeter.
So I have designed current shunts to fit in the main battery cabling and digital voltage monitors for both batteries. They all connect into a display unit with an Arduino computer module that will make sense of the inputs.
But I wanted two extra things:
- A computer output so that I can check on the unit while away from the boat.
- A simple “at-a-glance” display of the state of the battery
I will begin fitting the units onto the boat in the near future and then put all the designs and construction on this website for others to follow – Assuming it works.
I anticipate that even after the physical units are installed it will take some time afterwards to fine-tune the arduino software so that the whole thing works reliably.