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Hi all,
Glad to find an online community with a knowledge-base for all that is solar!
I've just set up a small 10w panel to charge a 12ah deep cycle battery to power my garden sheds lighting - 1 switch to 2 x 3w LED bulbs and a 1 metre LED strip, plus a further switched 10 LED for a dartboard, 1 switch to a 60cm LED strip for workbench lighting & 1 switch to an external 10w LED for lighting the doorway, all connected through a PWM charge controller. At no point can i imagine all of the above being used at the same time and up to now its working really well.
My question is that i wanted to add a battery monitor to the setup to keep an eye on the power level of the battery, current drain and ideally power coming in from the solar panel. On searching for such a device i found it very hard to find something specifically designed for a 12v solar setup. I decided to buy one of the ones below as it was cheap so wouldn't matter to much if i couldn't use it. I've managed to wire it solely to the battery and got a reading on the screen for battery charge voltage but don't want to risk wiring anything else when the instructions are very basic, mainly chinese, and also not really referring to a solar setup all running through a charge controller.
I think the 2nd image is the most likely to be relevant to my setup but again it looks like its intended to be a passthrough between the power supply (solar panel i guess in my situation) and the battery/load, instead of wiring also into the charge controller.
Any help would be great but also if you think i'm just wasting my time then just say so.
Thanks.
Glad to find an online community with a knowledge-base for all that is solar!
I've just set up a small 10w panel to charge a 12ah deep cycle battery to power my garden sheds lighting - 1 switch to 2 x 3w LED bulbs and a 1 metre LED strip, plus a further switched 10 LED for a dartboard, 1 switch to a 60cm LED strip for workbench lighting & 1 switch to an external 10w LED for lighting the doorway, all connected through a PWM charge controller. At no point can i imagine all of the above being used at the same time and up to now its working really well.
My question is that i wanted to add a battery monitor to the setup to keep an eye on the power level of the battery, current drain and ideally power coming in from the solar panel. On searching for such a device i found it very hard to find something specifically designed for a 12v solar setup. I decided to buy one of the ones below as it was cheap so wouldn't matter to much if i couldn't use it. I've managed to wire it solely to the battery and got a reading on the screen for battery charge voltage but don't want to risk wiring anything else when the instructions are very basic, mainly chinese, and also not really referring to a solar setup all running through a charge controller.
I think the 2nd image is the most likely to be relevant to my setup but again it looks like its intended to be a passthrough between the power supply (solar panel i guess in my situation) and the battery/load, instead of wiring also into the charge controller.
Any help would be great but also if you think i'm just wasting my time then just say so.
Thanks.
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