Thanks! I'll look it up!
Voltage Meter
- Thread starter Mudhorn
- Start date
Thanks! I'll look it up!
Yeah saw that as well but ended up buying from Aliexpress. Only difference is they only had blue LED but I wanted red LED like from DASMULE. But ordering from China only cost me $16 CDN and $3 shipping! Dasmule wanted to charge $20 shipping just to cross the border - go figure! Would cost me 4x the amount to ship from the States. Plus I am assuming it comes from the same mfgr as it looks exactly the same. :noidea:
rageandlove
Member
You coulda done a nice day trip down to Seattle! Now gas would have been $100, but fun drive ;-)
BTW, I find these things off by a little bit. I put one in my truck so I could keep an eye on the battery when I'm dispersed camping and using the battery for some camp lights I have set up on the truck. Works well, but reports 0.1v different from both my SwitchPros and the OBD port. Not enough to worry about.
I think its the voltage loss over distance/crimps as well as dependent on wire gauge. I have a voltemeter i back as well for my fridge connection and it would show a much more significant drop on 12ga wire vs after I reran it with 8ga. It still gets voltage drop when the fridge turns on unfortunately but its a much more tolerable amount for the fridge.
Is there a proper gauge wire to use when installing a voltmeter for an accurate reading? My plan was to use the wires that went to the cigarette lighter - and extend to an empty slot in the dash. Maybe using a slightly larger gauge wire like 18. Will that be sufficient to give me an accurate voltage reading?
It will be close enough I'm sure because it is not a long length like going to the back and there is no heavy load. I onyl see variances because it is a longer distance and there is actual load.
NautyBruiser19
New member
Mine also reads about .15v less than at the battery terminals. It's definitely mostly the inherent error of the meter itself. I had stumbled upon a thread on another forum where Solidkit mentioned the design called for an error of 1%
The path to my meter is about 4ft. of 4awg --> 80A circuit breaker --> 6in. 4awg --> busbar terminal --> 16in. of 18awg --> metripack280 connector --> 24in. of 18awg --> butt crimp --> 6in. 18awg --> in-line meter fuse --> 6in. 20awg to meter.
To compare, I also have a dual USB port that has an integrated voltage meter all the way in the back of the cargo area that only reads about .05v lower than at the terminals; essentially no error for its accuracy. The path to that meter is about 12ft. of 8awg --> fuse panel busbar screw terminal --> 5A fuse --> 30in. of 18awg --> metripack280 connector --> 12in. of 18awg --> spade terminal on the meter.
NautyBruiser19
New member
I'm feeding the "main" voltage reading from an 18awg add-a-fuse connected to a blank spot on my under-dash fuse panel. The add-a-fuse feeds a 8-channel bussed receptacle that feeds all of my accessory switches, GMRS radio, and the "main" voltage reading on the dual meter. Even this reads .15v lower than at the terminals, mostly because of the error of the meter itself (as explained in my previous post).
rageandlove
Member
As part of putting mine in, I tested hooking it up via my switch pros, hooking it up to the cig lighter, and I got *slightly* more accuracy going direct to battery. So I ran a 18awg red and black directly to the battery. Which lead me to conclude that there was a bit of error in these things, as was noted by someone else above. Not enough to really matter for my purposes though. It's easy to add 0.1 to the displayed value in my head
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