Smartgauge vs Mastervolt Easyview-5 vs Simarine Pico

[OceanPlanet]

Hope to report back soon. We've gotten sidetracked with work, always trying to keep up.

Short summary is that while Simarine is very sexy looking, there are a lot of unfinished firmware issues to get sorted out. Perhaps someday...but not there yet.

More soon...

[CatNewBee]

made my decision... it's a victron bmv712... It works so far as expected...

[ayates]

Originally Posted by CatNewBee

made my decision... it's a victron bmv712... It works so far as expected...

I too use a Victron solution; a combination of a BMV-702 and a CCGX.

I liked the multi-channel current logging possibilities of the Pico, but in querying Simarine, it didn't have the unattended long term logging I get with the CCGX. The Pico would have been more cost effective for multiple channels.

Originally Posted by Igor Kocman Direktor CEO

Logging capabilities in Pico is limited to 1-3 months, depend of how many data you want to log. There is no option to log into SD card, but we prepare solution for transfering logs into your phone and then the capabilities are practically unlimited. You will be able to see all the data and statistics on your phone and the shortest log period will be 1 minute. This solution will be available until end of this month.

Allan.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by CatNewBee

made my decision... it's a victron bmv712... It works so far as expected...

I used those for years. Great ammeter. Don't use it to judge SOC though, would be my advice, at least not with lead-acid batteries. Works well with lithium.

[OceanPlanet]

The BMV work great for monitoring SOC, if correctly programmed and recently synced. Need to know how to use them for capacity testing, and do so occasionally to know what you have, and reprogram as needed.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by OceanPlanet

The BMV work great for monitoring SOC, if correctly programmed and recently synced. Need to know how to use them for capacity testing, and do so occasionally to know what you have, and reprogram as needed.

Have you ever known any single actual user, who did regular capacity tests in real cruising life?

In my experience, they also get way out under heavy loads -- the Peukert compensation doesn't work. And how could it -- every bank and every model of battery is different.

And any error in SOC is accumulated if you are off grid and can't zero out.

AND the error is nearly always on the harmful side -- overstating your real SOC.

The way i finally started using mine was simply to program in a much smaller capacity -- small enough to cover any of these errors. That worked more or less.

But the whole idea of it is deeply flawed for lead-acid batteries in my opinion. I had a big Eureka moment when I realized that simply reading system voltage under light loads gave far better information about SOC than you can get from counting amps.

[OceanPlanet]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Have you ever known any single actual user, who did regular capacity tests in real cruising life?

In my experience, they also get way out under heavy loads -- the Peukert compensation doesn't work. And how could it -- every bank and every model of battery is different.

And any error in SOC is accumulated if you are off grid and can't zero out.

AND the error is nearly always on the harmful side -- overstating your real SOC.

The way i finally started using mine was simply to program in a much smaller capacity -- small enough to cover any of these errors. That worked more or less.

But the whole idea of it is deeply flawed for lead-acid batteries in my opinion. I had a big Eureka moment when I realized that simply reading system voltage under light loads gave far better information about SOC than you can get from counting amps.

We'll, it sounds like you could do a capacity test if you wanted to, so there's at least one...;-)

And being aware of the effect of high discharge rates has on the effective capacity is not a big mystery, if not an exact science.

So far, of all the monitors we've tested, a properly programmed BMV has been as good as any other. For checking remaining capacity and TTG. Perhaps the Philippi PSM has been the best, however we still want to do more testing....

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by OceanPlanet

We'll, it sounds like you could do a capacity test if you wanted to, so there's at least one...;-)

And being aware of the effect of high discharge rates has on the effective capacity is not a big mystery, if not an exact science.

So far, of all the monitors we've tested, a properly programmed BMV has been as good as any other. For checking remaining capacity and TTG. Perhaps the Philippi PSM has been the best, however we still want to do more testing....

According to my testing, on my boat, YMMV, SmartGauge and reading system voltage are both far -- like, order of magnitude -- more accurate for remaining capacity than BMV.

Yes, Peukert is not a mystery, but with varying degrees of heavy and light loads, the whole method of calculating SOC by counting amps goes right out the window, if your amp-counting meter can't account for it accurately, and my BMV could not. YMMV.

[rom]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Yes, Peukert is not a mystery, but with varying degrees of heavy and light loads, the whole method of calculating SOC by counting amps goes right out the window, if your amp-counting meter can't account for it accurately, and my BMV could not. YMMV.

I may have missed it in this long thread but did you play with CEF (Charge Efficiency factor) AND PC (Peukert exponent) on your BMV ?

I set them to 99% and 1.05 resp. BMV-602 here, obviously something wrong with those parameters (I have GEL batteries) and also the algorithm is wrong, but in the end SOC is not so far from the truth.

When setting those it is important that real 100% SOC is reached before BMV's 100% SOC .

And then if SOC is not reinitialized every few days (at 100%) it may eventually become very wrong, but will show less SOC than truly is. You can then perform a manual reset.

To be honest I do not totally rely on SOC reading and I am also looking at how many amps my batteries accept at which voltage.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by rom

I may have missed it in this long thread but did you play with CEF (Charge Efficiency factor) AND PC (Peukert exponent) on your BMV ?

I set them to 99% and 1.05 resp. BMV-602 here, obviously something wrong with those parameters (I have GEL batteries) and also the algorithm is wrong, but in the end SOC is not so far from the truth.

When setting those it is important that real 100% SOC is reached before BMV's 100% SOC .

And then if SOC is not reinitialized every few days (at 100%) it may eventually become very wrong, but will show less SOC than truly is. You can then perform a manual reset.

To be honest I do not totally rely on SOC reading and I am also looking at how many amps my batteries accept at which voltage.

I'm sure I could have gotten better results out of my Victron monitor if I had done enough work:

1. Regular capacity tests -- running them down to x volts with a dummy load and measuring the time.

2. Experimenting with the Peukert factor setting

3. Religiously re-initializing it -- every couple of days as you said

But WHY??? I have so many systems to manage on board, why should I be spending that kind of time and effort fiddling with the battery monitor just to get it within +/- 10%, with any error always being a harmful one?

I just don't see how it makes sense. And if you don't do at least part of these things, then SOC reading is not accurate enough to be useful for anything; in fact it's harmful because it gives a false impression of knowing something about the state of the batteries, when you don't.

The SmartGauge, out of the box, zero setting anything, zero capacity tests, zero fiddling, will give you SOC remaining to within a couple of percent or probably as accurate as my specific gravity tests. Won't tell you where you get to on a partial charge, but that information is far less important.

And in my particular application (large bank for the loads), just a simple voltage reading gives similar accuracy to SmartGauge.

So what's the point of trying to measure SOC by counting amps? To me it just doesn't make any rational sense.

[conachair]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

So what's the point of trying to measure SOC by counting amps? To me it just doesn't make any rational sense.

As ever depends a lot on the boat. If you are spending lots of time on the hook then a SG on it's own is not that great on charging SOC and you'll really need some way of measuring the current anyway, so why not add a little cash more & go for a battery monitor, then you can keep an eye on overnight usage & confirm that you are actually getting back to full charge often. Or not care and trash your batteries. If that's the case why bother with anything?

With an auto reset at high volts/low current they're hands free.

[john61ct]

Maine Sail argues pretty forcefully against auto-reset, says should only do it manually.
SG should work fine as primary SoC, just isolate the bank from charge sources a few minutes when taking a reading.

Then an AH counting meter to help decide when to stop drawing down, observe your solar setup's actual charge input rates rather than relying on the controllers' gross output numbers.

Using the SC to calibrate the BM can also help roughly estimate bank's residual capacity as it declines rather than tedious 20-hr load testing.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by conachair

As ever depends a lot on the boat. If you are spending lots of time on the hook then a SG on it's own is not that great on charging SOC and you'll really need some way of measuring the current anyway, so why not add a little cash more & go for a battery monitor, then you can keep an eye on overnight usage & confirm that you are actually getting back to full charge often. Or not care and trash your batteries. If that's the case why bother with anything?

With an auto reset at high volts/low current they're hands free.

Well, I agree that it's good to know the current in any case, and why not keep track of expenditure of amp/hours. Also, an amp-counting meter is actually quite good to keep track of charging SOC -- if you need to know this.

To be sure that you are getting up to full charge regularly, I don't actually think there is any good way besides massive overkill. So overnight on shore power, a long motor with a big alternator, or a good solar charge after finishing the bulk charge with the generator. I don't think you need precise data to do any of these.


But, yes -- a SG plus a Victron would be a good combination. But a Victron by itself I would never recommend to anyone -- based on my own practical lexperience over a number of years. And with a Link amp-counter over years prior to that.

[john61ct]

For those who strive to regularly get their expensive banks back to 100% Full, trailing amps is really the only accurate measure, and not at all difficult.

Then adjustable charge sources can be calibrated so Absorb Hold Time can be adjusted until this is automatically handled most of the time.

Those who just shrug and accept the conventional "cruisers don't get to Full" will say this is overkill, and likely need to replace their bank a bit (or a lot) more frequently

Your boat your call.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by john61ct

For those who strive to regularly get their expensive banks back to 100% Full, trailing amps is really the only accurate measure, and not at all difficult.

Then adjustable charge sources can be calibrated so Absorb Hold Time can be adjusted until this is automatically handled most of the time.

Those who just shrug and accept the conventional "cruisers don't get to Full" will say this is overkill, and likely need to replace their bank a bit (or a lot) more frequently

Your boat your call.

This goes to something which we rarely talk about -- how to regulate the charger. I'm not sure that even with my Victron Multiplus, that i can regulate the absorb hold time like this.

I think this is actually really interesting -- has anyone set up a charger to do it like this?

For all the trouble we go to to try to figure out whether we have 60% vs 50% SOC, we dont' seem to spend much time trying to figure out whether our chargers are doing the right thing by our batteries. That seems to me to be a misallocation of attention and effort.