LED Voltmeter AND Amp meter All In One

Zeusdafreak

I have been looking for an LED Voltmeter to show my entire battery bank so as to indicate when to recharge. I ran across a combination voltmeter/ammeter all in one. It has a small button on it to switch from volts to amps. Where could this be hooked(across which two connections) to read voltage AND how many amps the motor is drawing realtime or is this even possible/practical? If it would work both ways I think it would be cool to see. Here is a brief description of what I am looking at.

"200V500A COMBO meter, it will meet your requirement, the accuracy is (0.1V,1A), it cost US $25.00, A 500A 75mV Shunt must be used for the meter to read current"
Shunt is like another 10-15 bucks. For 40 bucks I could have a combo meter.

BGW

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dougmcp

Great idea, where did you find this item?
I've seen the LED voltmeters and LED ammeters but not a combo for 36v or 48v.

freddmc

The guys who convert buses into motorhomes quite often have elaborate battery systems with inverters to convert DC to AC to run their various electrical appliances. As such they need to keep track of battery power. Many have meters that keep track of the power input (i.e. charging) as well as the power usage so at any particular time they know exactly how much power is left in the battery. They all use golf cart batteries(mostly 6 v) so this may be something golf carters might want to look into to.

OutCole'd

I would make sure the shunt can handle the load from the cart. Depending what you are looking to measure the amps for, it can be a lot of amps.

Zeusdafreak

Here is a shunt that is rated for this application:

http://www.lightobject.com/500A-75mV-DC-Shunt-P217.aspx

My question is.........Where would you hook the wires, assuming you have only two for measuring volts AND amps that would not only show voltage of the battery bank BUT ALSO amp draw at that given moment in time?

Most of these have 2 measuring wires and an additional one or two wires for powering the LED meter itself(like from a voltage reducer 48-12v).

Here is one similar to the one I am looking at. It just doesn't cover the right amp range:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...=STRK:MEWAX:IT

dougmcp

Lightobject (ColdFusionX) also has the meter to do the job.
You can only measure 1 parameter at a time not both.
The voltmeter section is wired across the battery pack and the ammeter section would be wired in series with a 500 amp shunt.

Here's one with red LEDs, also available with blue LEDs.

Zeusdafreak

the cost is a little more but has more options. It looks like it also has limit alarms too.