battery charging meter

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Thu 7 Nov 2019 01:35
battery charging meter - macski

Bought a trickle charger and it has a tint light on it that turns green or red, trouble is i am colour blind.

would like a meter that tells me how much it is charging if at all, hopefully an in line one.

anyone recommend something, i can do basic electrics

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Thu 7 Nov 2019 07:24
battery charging meter - edlithgow

Mine has an analogue ammeter. Dunno how accurate it is.

If its a trickle charger I'd think it wont be putting out much current, so using a general purpose multimeter in series wouldn't be that much risk.

IIRC mine goes up to 10 amps.

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Thu 7 Nov 2019 09:27
battery charging meter - jc2

Simpler to measure the volts!

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Thu 7 Nov 2019 09:39
battery charging meter - Ian D
CTEK MXS 3.8, or Lidl often do a charger with an LCD display including a volts indication
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Thu 7 Nov 2019 11:18
battery charging meter - Peter.N.

Welcome to the club! I also am red green blind and was an electronics engineer for 50 years!

All LED's except blue and white look the same colour to me, do green LED traffic lights look blue to you?

As suggested connect a voltmeter across the battery, you don't want to see it go much above 14 volts and then not for long.

Or you could buy a cheap ammeter from ebay, cut one charging lead and connect the ends to the meter, if it reads backwards reverse the leads.

Edited by Peter.N. on 07/11/2019 at 11:21

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Thu 7 Nov 2019 23:36
battery charging meter - macski

How did you manage to work in electronics while colour blind?

I can see red and green traffic lights, ON some things like on my TV the two colours look the same but red looks brighter then the green, on other things I just can't tell, I think it depends how bright it is.

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Thu 7 Nov 2019 11:29
battery charging meter - edlithgow

Simpler to measure the volts!

Be even simpler to measure the length, but that wouldn't tell him what he says he wants to know either.

He says he wants to know "How much charging".

That's current.

If the battery was putting out, say 13 volts open circuit, you'd measure 13 volts across if it was connected to a rock.

The rock probably wouldn't be contributing to the 13 Volts.

Edited by edlithgow on 07/11/2019 at 11:35

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Fri 8 Nov 2019 00:00
battery charging meter - focussed

The Lidl chargers compared to the Aldi chargers. Both good automatic chargers, the Lidl one is only a trickle charger at 0.8 amps and if there is a mains interruption it stops charging and has to be reset by pressing the selector button. I have had four of these over the years, two have gone faulty and got binned. The Aldi ones charge at various rates selectable, the top rate is 3.8 amps, and have a good clear LCD readout amps/volts and do not need resetting if the mains fails - they revert to 0.8 amp automatic trickle charge when the mains supply is restored, important if you are using it to keep motorcycle batteries charged in storage. An absolute bargain at £12.99 or €15 in france.

https://www.aldi.co.uk/car-battery-charger-2019/p/099132311147100

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Sun 10 Nov 2019 02:27
battery charging meter - edlithgow

Yeh, I liked the look of them when I was back in the UK last year, but I already have a Taiwanese (allegedly smart) charger, so I resisted.

The OP already has a charger too, but I suppose buying another one might be the easiest way around his difficulty.

OTOH a multimeter is generally useful

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