turnigy battery charge indicator

[graham.hobart (Graham stevens)]

I bought one of these and it has four wires two at each end with plain bare ends, and the end of the box is marked I think source and load. I assume the red and black go to the poles, but my question is -
seeing as I have a 130AH deep cycle marine battery, and my current connections are to the usual alligator clips to a car lighter adaptor (for my dew heaters/ filter wheel etc), what's the safest way of placing this meter in the circuit without causing shorts/overheating etc. The bare wires are quite short.
I mean, can I just add some 30amp alligator clips to each wire and clip everything together- battery- meter -adaptor?
Cheers for any advice to no electronically minded buffoon!
Graham.

[MrB (Simon)]

I have used a lot of Turnigy products over the years, they are quite good for the price.
I would not use Alligator style clips, the connection isn't great, and it is easy to accidentally swap polarities or even short them out.

Best to use a proper connector.
Anderson or Sermos style would be best, but even the Deans style would be okay with the currents you are drawing.
All are available from Hobbyking, or from Jaycar if you don't want to wait for delivery from HK.

[Merlin66 (Ken)]

I added a 12V cigar female to one end and a 12V cigar male to the other...
I can now connect it to any battery application etc and measure voltage, Amps and Watts.
It's interesting to see the difference between the HEQ%pro and the NEQ6pro mounts......

[MrB (Simon)]

Worth noting also that the Turnigy Wattmeter doesn't do so well with small current draws. It won't even register a 300mA draw, It just shows 0.0.
This was a while back, so not sure if this has been fixed in newer versions though?
I bought the original Watt's Up which Turnigy cloned.

[Nico13 (Ken)]

Originally Posted by MrB

Worth noting also that the Turnigy Wattmeter doesn't do so well with small current draws. It won't even register a 300mA draw, It just shows 0.0.
This was a while back, so not sure if this has been fixed in newer versions though?
I bought the original Watt's Up which Turnigy cloned.

Have you used your Watt's Up for light loads? I still have mine from when I was flying RC Heli's and it worked great on the heavy loads, even peaked over a 100 Amps on one flight.

I might fit it in line on the power to the mount and dew heaters to see what totals I'm pulling, great idea

[MrB (Simon)]

Originally Posted by Nico13

Have you used your Watt's Up for light loads?

Yep. Got mine for fixed-wing RC back in 2005 or thereabouts.
Every Watt's Up has been calibrated, to what I don't know, but it's reading compared to my Tektronix DMM was spot-on