Aug 29 Battery Monitor

Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.

Elon Musk

Recently I bought a Battery Monitor from Amazon. I learned, as always, interesting things. This monitor is known by many names,TR16, Qworks, AiLi, and many other rebrandings. My rebrand was called Camway. Prices vary with the brand name, but I am sure all are the same monitor.

What ever rebrand you decide to buy, make sure it has the accessories below. You may also want to add a longer shielded wire. I bought a 26 foot which is long, but will work for a future project.

The manual is in tiny print in basic English. No offense meant, they used a weird color to represent the symbols on the monitor. It was hard to read, at least by these old eyes. I had some problems to get it to work properly. I don’t think it was the monitor that was faulty but me.

First problem, It wasn’t indicating that it was charging. I went to my current Lead Acid Bank to take a look. I am switching to LiFeP04 Batteries a bit at a time. I have a Drok Monitor and shunt there I set up 10 years ago. The charging cable has to be south of the shunt check. I moved the cables to the other side of the shunt. Awesome. The meter was showing charging and flashing to indicate charge.

Next was my Amp hours, and battery SOC percentage. They were out of wack. Showing 62% at full charge. I went back to the manual, I tried the instructions 5 times. The meter would allow me to change the battery AH, but would not let me set it. I decided to go to YouTube. I recognized the meter in one of the videos. I watched his whole video. While I was watching I tried again, this time it worked, mostly. My battery was set at 99 AH instead of a hundred. For now, I can live with that.

I am happy with the meter, it doesn’t have Bluetooth, but also doesn’t come with a $260 price tag. With the long cable and tax, it cost me $87 CDN. I have it setup beside my Xbox, so I can check the meter while I play Starfield. That’s all I needed. Would I buy another? Without hesitation.

I can monitor amps in and out, Voltage, battery percentage. It lights up when discharging and lights up and flashes when charging, but not annoying to watch.

You can buy the original for $14 CDN without the shunt. Before shipping.

I just learned a few seconds ago, Aug 30. E& J Technology has a Bluetooth smart shunt that can connect directly to this monitor. Or maybe the monitor has been upgraded to Bluetooth.

Or you could buy the TBD Victron clone on Amazon.com