Good Morning All! Battery Monitor 2 Bluetooth 4. So you can get this thing on Amazon for 20 pounds and really all it is is a device that measures the voltage of your car battery. the 12 volt battery that is, and um, well, if you're within Bluetooth range, it uploads it to your phone. If you're not, it stores the voltage over time and then when you bring your phone within range of this thing, it uploads all the data so that you've got all the graphs and charts and stuff that you want on your phone.

So let's open this up. Um, I'll put a link to this on I got it from Amazon UK I'll put that in the description below, but let's get it out of the packaging. So Battery Monitor 2 uh, a manual. A little bit of double-sided sticky Velcro so that you can stick it down on your battery.

now. unfortunately, there are no screws on here so it's it's going to be difficult to do a tear down. I Don't think I want to really because this may have a good hermetic seal on it and I don't particularly want to breach that. So this will be more connecting this up to a 12 volt battery and looking at what the app does now.

I've already loaded the app on my phone, so let's go into that. Um, of course it's not paired with the monitor yet and there's no power on this thing. Um, it's very easy to find this app. It's on the Google Play store, it's on the Apple equivalent, whatever that's called.

Um, you don't have to hack anything, you don't have to bypass security, and it does look like a competent app. But first, let's put Power to this thing and see if I can pair it. now. One thing that's interesting to note about this is it looks like there are two wires running down to each probe.

and that's going to be so that it can do four wire measurement. So the idea behind that is that this draws a small current. In fact, it says they're 1.5 milliamps. I Suspect that most of that is going to be used in the Bluetooth module.

so you're going to get because of that current. You're going to get a voltage drop over these wires because they're being used to supply power to this. So it uses a second pair of wires to do the voltage measurement. Now, there's practically no current running through those wires, so you'll get very little voltage drop.

So you're effectively measuring at the measuring device in here, which will be an analog to digital converter. You're measuring exactly the same or very close to the same voltage that you're seeing at the terminal. So my guess is this does do four wire voltage measurement because of this double wire thing that we can see here. And if you look at the back of this uh card, it's got um.

voltage accuracy between 9 and 16 volts, which is really the full range of a lead acid battery. 30 millivolts, so quite accurate. Um, now this other thing about being out of range of, uh, between this and your phone, it will actually store 31 days of information. Um, so that when you bring your phone within range of this device, all that data can be uploaded and you can get your graphs and whatnot.

So let's put it on a 12 volt battery I've got this uh old Maplin 12 volt, 2.3 amp power battery. That's the sort of battery that this is expecting to be connected to now. Can I do this in such a way that it'll make a connection and retain a connection. Definitely pause that side neg that side not expecting there to be a light on there so we won't see anything I'll put that just behind my desk area there and then we'll take a look at the app.

Oh well. I Fired the app up and it just sort of found the battery monitor which was amazing. Um, okay, so it's saying select battery type. Well, I'm going to select a regular 12 volt lead acid battery because ultimately I'm going to put this in my car because I've got issues with the 12 volt lead acid battery and I want to see what's going on so we'll take it at a as a regular 12 volt load acid battery.

Um, it's showing 12.54 volts battery. Okay, 90 state of charge. That's really an estimate, isn't it? Um, and we've got the beginnings of a graph forming here, so perhaps I'll leave it for a little bit of time to build up some graphical data. Uh, while I'm doing that, I'm just going to get these crop Clips out of these rubber covers and uh, just use them to clamp these.

you can't see it. Can you to clamp these connections on a little bit more tightly than they are currently? Because they are not probably making a very good connection and as these wires warm up, uh, they're going to fall off, aren't they? Right across the bottom. We've got voltage test and that's creating a graph. Uh, cranking test.

Well now of course on my car, there won't be any cranking because I don't have a starter motor because I don't have an engine. Uh, so I won't worry too much about that. We've got charging test. Uh, as yet I don't quite know what that does, but I Imagine it's um, to monitor when the battery is being charged by the alternator or in my car.

it's not an alternator. it is a DCTC converter from the big main Lithium traction battery down to the lead acid battery. And then you've got a thing called trip and there's no data in there and I've no idea what it does. Let's go back to the main screen up there.

you've got the linked or not linked icon and here we've got settings and in here we've got all lots of things: Bluetooth Device Daily Power Notification: Abnormal cranking That doesn't bother me much Power Alarm: We've got two parameters for the power alarm. Now that might be useful for me because the problem I'm having is that the 12 volt battery. After a period of time when you've got V2l switched on, which is a vehicle to load, that's where you can pull power out of the main traction battery and turn it into Mains And after a period of time, the 12 volt battery seems to be abandoned by the system and it starts to really drain down quite quickly. Language: Hardware Installation Oh, that's just going to be some instructions, Online, service, and firmware Update: That's interesting I Wonder if you can get new firmware over your phone and then actually Bluetooth it down to this device.

Actually, why don't we do that now? Firmware Update: Okay, we've got current version V8 Current program is the latest version. Okay, now what I'm really interested in is getting this device to notify me if the battery goes below I Don't know, say 12 volts. That would be useful. Um, you've got power alarm here.

Optional two parameters and it looks like there are two sliders here I Can slide this one, but they're marked in percentage which I don't know quite how useful that's going to be. Uh, and they're a little bit tricky to move actually. but anyway, there are two sliders. Um, what I'd like it to do is give me an alarm based on voltage.

So I'll keep looking see if there is that facility. Okay, let's see what happens if I put a load on here. I've got this 5 watt bulb. Let's see if I can put that across it and certainly the voltage is going down.

Will I get an alarm because it's going down quite a lot. Not on that one. Okay, well, this one will certainly do it. This is a 50 watt bulb I don't think it's going to like this actually.

But let's give it a try. Where it lights up 10 volts. Yes, there's a bit of a lag isn't there? I noticed it's a bit laggy. Still saying battery.

Okay though at 10 volts. Oh no, maybe not. Well, the graph's gone away for some reason I don't quite know why. Oh, that takes you into a more detailed graph.

Okay, well, no error triggered by that. So maybe I need to look at. um, this thing in the settings of the power alarm. Optional two parameters, right? It seems that when you move these, they only move in 10 increments or decrement.

So 60 percent, eighty percent, seventy percent. And if I put the top one at 100, I've got an alarm. So let's put that at sixty percent with the top one at ninety percent. See if I can trigger.

Let's go back. see if I can trigger an alarm with this big bulb? Put that on which should take it down to about 10 volts. Yeah, there is a delay and that's presumably because of the Bluetooth Oh, and we've got an interesting uh graph shape there, but not getting an alarm as yet. Okay, okay, maybe it's time to consult this manual and see what uh Power alarm does If, indeed, it's in here.

There's a lot of stuff in here about cranking voltage and charging voltage in idle speed. charging voltage in high RPM I mean they're all irrelevant to me because electric car doesn't have an alternator. so you've got, um, the DC to DC converter isn't going to be fitting in with these specific parameters. So I really think I'm interested in this power um, this power monitor trigger thing.

but um, Power and percentage and what I really want is to trigger on low voltage. So power alarm Slide the Bell icon. Two parameters can be set freely. when the battery power Falls to reach either value, user will receive app notification.

Okay, so if it falls to the one parameter, you'll get a notification. If it then falls to the lower parameter, you'll get a another notification saying that you've hit your lower parameter. Um, so really, what I want to do is try and get a relationship between what they think is battery percentage and battery voltage. So at 12 and a half volts, it's saying 84 percent.

Let's draw that down to a much lower voltage. wait for the delay. Yeah, you see the percentage uh indicator doesn't respond directly with changes in voltage. Perhaps it would over time.

It's presumably doing some sort of algorithmic calculation to try and estimate battery percentage based on voltage. Well, a sudden pull down to a lower voltage doesn't mean that you're at a lower percentage. You've got to sort of aggregate that over time. So I don't know I'd rather see it trigger on voltage.

But if I have to have it trigger on percentage then so be it. Now in the daily power notification, you can alter it so that it sends a notification every so many hours. Nine hours doesn't seem very sensible. I think actually 24 hours would be the most sensible.

so transmit one time every 24 hours at what time though? I'm not entirely sure I mean firing this up for the first time transmitted a notification. so presumably on the 24 hour. Uh, every 24 hours after that. Don't need anything relating to abnormal cranking notifications.

But I do want to get this parallel notification uh, sorted out right. I've put the 5 watt bulb on the battery and I'm just going to leave it there for a bit so the voltage will creep down and I'll just see how the percentage level indicator tracks that over the next few minutes, If indeed, it does. Now, the other thing this says is that it'll work within a 10 meter range. My car probably is about 10 meters away from here, but of course there are a couple of walls in the way.

So the other thing that'd be interesting to see is whether or not um, the Bluetooth can actually communicate with the car. Even if it's intermittent, it doesn't really matter. Um, from my desk here or my office here to where my car is parked about 10 meters away, the voltage has stabilized at around 12 volts 11.99 This percentage is tracking down. So there's obviously some algorithm in here where it's um, estimating state of charge from the change in voltage.

But of course I've got no control over how that algorithm is working. Um, these power level notifications probably will be useful, but it would have been far better frankly if this has had voltage level notifications. But let's see if that gets down to 70. That's where one of my alarm settings is.

It looks like it's tracking down to that and see if I get that 70 notification right? it's run down to 71. We should get a notification at 70. Make sure my phone yeah, keep. Whenever you touch the graph, it jumps to this more detailed graph which is a bit of a pain.

But there you go. Uh, see if we get the notification notification that's 70 and then I think the most important thing that I can do now is attach this to the car. The issue I'm having is that V2l where you uh, take car battery energy the main lithium arm battery and turn it into Mains seems to hold the lead acid battery up for a while, seems to maintain it for a while and then it just seems after we don't know an hour, a couple of hours we're down to 70. Now it just abandons the lead acid battery and then lets it drain down to completely flat.

I came out the the this morning to my card is very cold this morning or was and my car was just completely flat. It wouldn't even unlock the door. so I had to use the mechanical key. So that's really what I'm looking for I'm looking to see when, uh, when you're in V2l mode.

the lead acid battery is abandoned by the car and starts to track down in voltage rapidly. Okay, this thing will only trigger um on power levels. These uh, power levels hasn't actually sent the notification yet. Maybe it needs to go down to 69.

Still hasn't set a notification which is strange because in settings, one of my parameter uh, two parameter power alarms is 70 percent and it hasn't done that. so that's old isn't it? But anyway, I need to get this on the car. That's probably it for this video. Just get a general taste of what this thing is and what it does and how well the app works.

Shame about not having voltage triggers, but maybe power triggers will be adequate. But there we are for now. Cheerio.