Balmar SG-200 Battery Monitor

[JmanC]

Originally Posted by lateral

The SG200 doesn't control your charger and you have to read the manual context right to understand that once the SG200 reaches charge "termination" point that YOU have set on the gauge YOU have to turn the charger off. But, as John said a little charge over the "set" point will not hurt the battery but it may stuff up the gauges history/learning.
How I see it at this point. On third cycle. Numbers looking what I would expect.
Happy to be corrected.

Thanks.
The endAmps is automatically set to a value that is higher than the true 100% 0.5% taper current. Its set to 2%. So if i understand you, i should set the gauge's endAmps to what ever my batt charger finishes at? Which could be a high value if its solar due to short hours of light.

I cut power briefly on 4th cycle once it was down to 54% soc just to see what happens. Apon repowering it read 25%soc and was way off accuracy during charging until very late absorption then went to 100% by around float. But now soh is 93% instead of 100.
Just curious to play around with it. What does this mean? Dont turn it off!? What if a lfp battery disconnects from a bad cell?

Finally the gauge still wont save my pwr save settings even after a full day always on.

[billknny]

Originally Posted by JmanC

T
I cut power briefly on 4th cycle once it was down to 54% soc just to see what happens. Apon repowering it read 25%soc and was way off accuracy during charging until very late absorption then went to 100% by around float. But now soh is 93% instead of 100.
Just curious to play around with it. What does this mean? Dont turn it off!? What if a lfp battery disconnects from a bad cell?

What does this mean you "cut power briefly"? The power to the smart shunt is supposed to be connected directly to the battery positive. Did you disconnect it?

Why do you expect it to be able to work when it is disconnected? PART of what it does is integrate power in/out of the batteries. It can ONLY do that if it is on all the time. Having it remember the last state before it was disconnected for an indeterminate period of time would be a useless feature.

Just LEAVE IT ON, and don't fiddle with it. Let it learn. If you want to "play around with it" then do not expect it to work. Buy a toy instead.

If you have the shunt power wire connected to the posative terminal of a cell that your BMS disconnects, the battery monitor will stop working. That shouldn't be a surprise...

[JmanC]

Originally Posted by billknny

What does this mean you "cut power briefly"? The power to the smart shunt is supposed to be connected directly to the battery positive. Did you disconnect it?

Why do you expect it to be able to work when it is disconnected? PART of what it does is integrate power in/out of the batteries. It can ONLY do that if it is on all the time. Having it remember the last state before it was disconnected for an indeterminate period of time would be a useless feature.

Just LEAVE IT ON, and don't fiddle with it. Let it learn. If you want to "play around with it" then do not expect it to work. Buy a toy instead.

If you have the shunt power wire connected to the posative terminal of a cell that your BMS disconnects, the battery monitor will stop working. That shouldn't be a surprise...

Translation... you don't know anything about this product and so stop wasting my time. Of course I will leave it on how stupid a thing to say. You know nothing about my setup or how one learns to use a product. Fact is if power is cut the soh & time remaining are ruined. So many things the flawed manual doesn't tell you about so it takes time to learn exactly how this thing works. Won't learn jack from this thread.

[Maine Sail]

Originally Posted by JmanC

I have some questions.
I noticed when the power is cut/ battery turned off and back on later on that the saved pwr save settings are not remembered. Its always back on default.
Will this be fixed and savable with a bluetooth update?

The only time the SG200 should be disconnected from the batteries is during winter storage. Also, the red fused volt sense for the Smartshunt should be directly connected to the banks positive battery terminal.

[sailah]

Update:

Ran the SG200 on its first cruise this week down to Nantucket and back. Cycled it down and back a few times.

Managed at one point to get the SOH to 100% but then it went back to 90% and stayed there.

Overall I really like it, seems fairly accurate and easy to use. Will see how things go as summer progresses and I do some deep discharges with refrigeration etc.

[lateral]

SOH is exactly that. Generally once established should only go down. For fla's anyway, unless you psoc them and manage to give them a reco by equalisation etc.
Dont know about LiFePO4, bank manager said so.

Regarding the SG200.
If I could go back I would buy the BMV712, based on features and cost.

[Paul L]

Originally Posted by sailah

Update:

Ran the SG200 on its first cruise this week down to Nantucket and back. Cycled it down and back a few times.

Managed at one point to get the SOH to 100% but then it went back to 90% and stayed there.

Overall I really like it, seems fairly accurate and easy to use. Will see how things go as summer progresses and I do some deep discharges with refrigeration etc.

I understand that Balmar doesn't give any accuracy specs on the unit so it's hard to analyse your values. This thread has a bunch of posts that indicate the values displayed are not consistent stating it is probably due to not enough time to learn the bank. Your readings of 90% and 100% for SOH may mean that is the expected accuracy, +-10%, or perhaps it can be another case of it hasn't cycled enough.

I'd still like to see an indication on the device when its displays are not reliable because of inadequate 'learning'. Also an accuracy spec for the SOH under normal use conditions.

[Peeew]

I’ve had my SG200 on the boat about two weeks now along with a bank of new firefly batteries and the info seems appropriate so far. The SOH was blank for a while and now shows 100%. in agreement with a new blank. However my backlighting on the unit died. A phone call to tech help was answered and a new display unit should be on the way. They say mine is the first with this issue, anyone else? If the replacement shows up quickly and works I will be happy with the service.

[Peeew]

And... the Bluetooth option is still not available.

[lateral]

*The manual is obtuse compared with Victron.
*Doesn't have bt onboard. Ya gotta pay extra.
*Was released before app was out.
*No programable relay output.
*Otherwise , it's ok.
*IMO.
* If they gave me a blue tooth dongle and released the app I would look more
favourably at the device.
* haha!

But it will serve its purpose (I hope) when it has enough data & I have ratchetted the tail current into the zone SOC becomes meaningful for my family who arn't that interested in battery house keeping.

[sailah]

Interesting find today. I had put away wet sails Tuesday afternoon. Kept meaning to get back down to boat to shake them out which I did today.

When I went below I saw the SG200 flashing an error code that SoC has fallen below 5%, was at 4%. Immediately looked right and saw bilge pump LED lit up. Pull the floorboards, no water. Somehow my new bilge pump switch flaked out and stuck on. Pump was hot. Not sure how long it was running but likely days (230 Ah bank).

Fortunately my isolated engine start bank cranked engine fine and the poor Balmar alternator was shoving 60A into bank.

I didn't mean to deep cycle my new bank like that but will be interesting to see if it helps the SG200 learn some more

Brought boat into dock and charging on shorepower.


All this brought my attention to vessel monitoring. My business is in IoT, specifically designing ultrasonic sensors that detect ultrasonic noise in industrial steam environments. I (well my developer) have a lot of experience in designing circuits utilizing ultra-low power sensors (nanoamps), mesh BLE networks, LoRaWAN, cellular backhaul etc.

Got me thinking about a mesh, modular vessel monitoring system that could track a variety of sensors wirelessly using a very interesting mesh stack from Europe. Send alerts via low cost SIM globally to either APP or text.

Will make a prototype and test on my boat. I can surely think it would have been awesome to know 3 days ago that my bilge pump was running continuously, or that a high water switch had been triggered. I can also think an insurance company would also be interested.

[rgleason]

Got me thinking about a mesh, modular vessel monitoring system that could track a variety of sensors wirelessly using a very interesting mesh stack from Europe. Send alerts via low cost SIM globally to either APP or text.

Sounds like a great idea.

[john61ct]

Make sure to investigate all the main OTS offerings before reinventing the wheel.

Worth its own thread.

[sailah]

I can tell when the coolest stuff out there is touting Zigbee protocol that they are 10 years behind what i would be doing. There are some very interesting ICs and SoC that just hit the markey and are ideal. Stacking BLE5, NB IoT, GPS, ultra low power.

Would probably be worth it for me to build myself one and then open source it. I really dont want to be in the consumer space selling onesie twosies.

I would integrate an NMEA2000 connection and maybe even read the SG200 output to save on needless redundancy. Wonder if i could read the NMEA to see the next waypoint for a stolen boat... lol

[CatNewBee]

Any good cheap ultrasonic ble tank sensors available ?
Need some for the black water tanks, water tanks, fuel etc, would be great to monitor them by the tablet, nmea2k optional.