Installing the New SG200 Battery Monitor from Balmar

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LeslieTroyer
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Installing the New SG200 Battery Monitor from Balmar

A quick writeup of the new Balmar SG-200 Battery Monitor.  The unit should be considered late beta quality, and buying early (Annapolis Boat Show) we got the bluetooth dongle included (when released).  

 

Les & Trish Troyer
Mahalo 
Everett, WA
1983 C-36 Hull #0094
C-36 MK 1 Technical Editor. 

Commodore

 

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LeslieTroyer
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Comments from Chris Witzgal
 

  • I didn’t want to poke around in the menu too much for fear of setting something incorrect. I look forward to the Bluetooth Interface to the settings

We wanted a hard button, not a membrane, as they are much more prone to failure. Putting two hard buttons on there would have really complicated things, and complication = expense. The bluetooth app will make things allot easier,
 

  • Either both bolts on the smart shunt should be captive or neither of them captive – I wonder what the design reason was for only one to be captive.

This is something that has already been addressed, and all SmartShunt bolts going forward will be fully captive.
 

  • After setting battery type and capacity a blue progress bar goes across the screen twice with the back/exit prompts still on the screen and no idea what your waiting for.

You are waiting for the Chemistry to be loaded into memory.
 

  • No EEPROM saved settings – all settings erased after power removed from the unit.

The settings for chemistry and capacity are saved right away. Other things, such as alert settings, are saved once an hour. We wanted to ensure that the EPROM had a long life as they all have a number or read-write

  • I didn’t see it in the manual – and I didn’t play enough with the config – but it would be nice to name/rename the banks – ie Bank-1 to House, Bank-2 to Start, Bank-3 to Windlass. And have them referred by that name in the menu’s

This is something that will be able to be accomplished with the Bluetooth app, either the first iteration or a following one.

Chris Witzgall

CDI/Balmar Product Application  Coordinator

I did pull power twice and both times it defaulted to a "new" install with nothing set, but the time never exceded an hour-- I'll go back to the boat tonight and see if settings now remain after full power off. -- Les 

Les & Trish Troyer
Mahalo 
Everett, WA
1983 C-36 Hull #0094
C-36 MK 1 Technical Editor. 

Commodore

 

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