Balmar SG-200 Battery Monitor

[a64pilot]

I think you need both an AH counter battery monitor and a Smart Gauge.
Seeing as how the new one is both in one, and seemingly as accurate as the Smart Gauge, it would seem you only need it now.

I think you need both because you can monitor your banks state of health with both, you can watch and see if the same number of AH drawn from the bank at night ends up with slowly declining SOC in the morning. That means your undercharging your bank, or need to do an equalization

[sailinglegend]

Originally Posted by Paul L

Its about time they added the shunt. The original SG just didnt give you the info you need as a cruiser. Adding the shunt enables a much better monitor.

It will be interesting to hear the 'full story' of this development from both Merlin and Balmar.

Have Balmar just taken the Smartgauge - SG - SOC% figure and added a battery monitor to compare the two and calculate a 'State of Health' - SOH - figure, or have they acquired the SG software and integrated a shunt to give details on the rate of charging and discharging - and increase the accuracy. If so they have produced a very cheap Merlin Power Systems DATA CELL II which is fitted to many US and UK military vehicles. Obviously Merlin couldn't do this.

I can see this as being a hugely successful product for both Merlin and Balmar - I can also see the SOH showing very incorrect results just because the shunt has been fitted incorrectly or subsequent equipment has been fitted directly to the batteries and bypassed the shunt. This is the cause of most shunt based battery monitor reading errors and is why Merlin were never going to fit a shunt because the original SG was so easy to fit - and didn't need one.

[john61ct]

Do we even know that Merlin is involved in the design?

YouTube vdo https://youtu.be/ddj6Wqk0wJc

[john61ct]

yes combines the original Smartgauge*with a SmartShunt for ammeter function and AH counting, shows how much power is being used or replaced in real-time, calculates total time remaining

can monitor a large number of battery banks with displays located throughout the boat.* Each also monitor voltage for two auxiliary batteries, like engine start or similar non-deep-cycle applications.

purportedly doesn’t lose accuracy while charging, and over time the system will get more accurate withut requiring calibration like typical*coulomb counting shunt-based monitors

Also combines data from the two sources,

Gibbo's active impedance compensation and shunt-based monitoring

to estimate State of Health (SoH), which is delivered as a percentage representing the battery bank’s current capacity versus design capacity.

can accurately measure State of Charge and State of Health for all major battery types: FLA, AGM including Firefly and TPPL, as well as LiFePO4

basic SG200 gauge and shunt will sell for $239 with limited availability until January

winner of the Electrical Products category Innovation Awards at the International Boat Builders’ Exposition (IBEX)

Bluetooth + app add-on and a NMEA-2000 gateway are planned

https://www.panbo.com/balmar-sg200-a...r-gets-better/

[john61ct]

Since Gibbo's original "active impedance compensation" techniques did not work for LFP,

I wonder if that changed here, or maybe it only uses the AH counting side for LFP.

In any case, great potential here, hope Bruce includes it in his comparative benchmark tests.

[john61ct]

And obviously past a normal Alpha stage.

Perhaps there will be a mechanism for user updating the firmware as it evolves.

[sailinglegend]

Originally Posted by john61ct

Do we even know that Merlin is involved in the design?.....

Originally Posted by john61ct

Since Gibbo's original "active impedance compensation" techniques did not work for LPF.....

Merlin did not include LPF in their original design partly because Gibbo found it difficult to crack - and Merlin didn't recommend LPF to any of their customers who are mainly Military and services like Fire, Police, and Ambulances - not sensible to have an LPF battery around fires!

Eventually Gibbo did manage to 'break an LPF battery" as their MD described to me so I expect he must have added that to the SG 200 software along with years of further development which appears to be making it even more accurate. There have never been any plans to update the original 13 year old Smartgauge software - hence the new Balmar SG 200.

So I would be very surprised if Merlin and Gibbo have not been involved somewhere along the line.

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by john61ct

Since Gibbo's original "active impedance compensation" techniques did not work for LFP,

I wonder if that changed here, or maybe it only uses the AH counting side for LFP.

In any case, great potential here, hope Bruce includes it in his comparative benchmark tests.

I’m thinking it gained LFP capability by amp counting, that shouldn’t be difficult to do, a difficulty though is determining where the calibration point is, exactly what voltage equals some SOC, once you get that, amp counting should tell you the rest.

As far as state of health, that isn’t difficult either I don’t think if you can determine an accurate SOC.
My 660 AH bank for example, if it hits 75% SOC and has used 150 AH, then it had a 600 AH capacity, down 10% from the rated 660.
That is a simple algorithm.
I’ve done this a few times with my AH counter and Smart Gauge, and gotten repeatable results, so I assume it’s accurate, or repeatably inaccurate at least.

[witzgall]

We have an adapter plate that fits the Original SmartGauge hole. It has four crew holes in the corners, and a center hole for the SG200.


It will be available ~ the first of the year, At $14.99

Chris

Originally Posted by a64pilot

Only question I like to ask them is why did they not use the same mounting hole for the new monitor?
Be nice if you could remove one and replace with the other, but you can’t .

[witzgall]

Originally Posted by john61ct

Do we even know that Merlin is involved in the design?

YouTube vdo https://youtu.be/ddj6Wqk0wJc

The SG200 was engineered entirely by our team in Huntsville, AL. Merlin has not been involved in the design at all. No Merlin code, no Merlin design work, No consulting, nothing.

Chris

[witzgall]

Absolutely! As we make product improvements the Firmware on both the Display and SmartShunt will be update-able using the Bluetooth Gateway. If we introduce new chemisties, they will be added using the same mechanism as well.

Chris

Originally Posted by john61ct

And obviously past a normal Alpha stage.

Perhaps there will be a mechanism for user updating the firmware as it evolves.

[ontherocks83]

Does anyone know when compared to the original smart gauge if the SG200 will be better at giving you accurate readings during charging?

Originally Posted by a64pilot

I think you need both an AH counter battery monitor and a Smart Gauge.
Seeing as how the new one is both in one, and seemingly as accurate as the Smart Gauge, it would seem you only need it now.

I think you need both because you can monitor your banks state of health with both, you can watch and see if the same number of AH drawn from the bank at night ends up with slowly declining SOC in the morning. That means your undercharging your bank, or need to do an equalization

I definitely agree that having both a smart gauge and a AH counter can be beneficial, but my reasoning is that you can use the AH counter to track how many Ah's you are using during a 24 hour cycle to be able to adjust your usage as needed or help determine if you have an appropriate sized battery bank for the type of cruising you are doing.

[Paul L]

Originally Posted by ontherocks83

Does anyone know when compared to the original smart gauge if the SG200 will be better at giving you accurate readings during charging?



...

It's not clear that the newer version of the SG is using any of the prior products approach to battery state guessing without a shunt. The added shunt means you should see much better accuracy during charging periods. Any decent amp counter does well in showing relative changes.
This new one seems like it has smarter algorithms to detect true full, so it should be better than many other amp counters.

[john61ct]

Originally Posted by witzgall

The SG200 was engineered entirely by our team in Huntsville, AL. Merlin has not been involved in the design at all. No Merlin code, no Merlin design work, No consulting, nothing.

Chris

Thanks for clarifying.

[john61ct]

Originally Posted by ontherocks83

Does anyone know when compared to the original smart gauge if the SG200 will be better at giving you accurate readings during charging?

Yes their claim is that problem is gone.

Which could just be the AH counter.

And for that to work well, at least occasional 100% resets would be required.

Which the AIC (SG1 style) side could handle automatically, as long as charging actually goes that high.

Or a quiescent period would perhaps allow the AIC to re-calibrate the AHC (AH counting) side's SoC at less than Full.

Combining both technologies this way, letting best-of-both-worlds each inform the other, certainly holds a lot of promise!