How do I wire up my throttle's battery indicator?

[ClintBX]

Hi ESFMs,

I have this throttle with a dgital LED display that tells me exactly how many volts my battery is down to. I'm currently using it on a controller with a yellow battery indicator wire and that works beautifully.

However, I have a new controller that I plan to switch over to. It doesn't have this indicator wire (sometimes labeled "power positive").

Looking at other controllers, I notice that they rarely have them. Is there a way to set up this indicator on my new controller or am I pretty much limited by this feature that few controllers seem to have?

Clinton

 

[skeetab5780]

You can just hook the indicator wire directly to the battery red posistive wire it will work, may not be 100% accurate tho most of those meters are based on sealed lead acid capacity figures.

 

[ClintBX]

Are you sure? Seems like such daint wire to connect to main power like that. I would have though it was a 5v max kind of function. I don't want to fry anything and I'm a running a 48v 30A max system.

 

[ClintBX]

may not be 100% accurate tho most of those meters are based on sealed lead acid capacity figures.

From experience it pretty much matches what the watt meter tells. In fact, I notice that my watt meter gives a higher reading when just connecting followed by a slow drop down to 0.5 of a volt less than it initially stated. All in all, The throttle indicator has been pretty good at giving a ball park indication of where I'm at and I've gotten familiar with its quirks. It shows me a certain voltage after releasing the throttle and now, I know that if I leave, it kinda recovers a couple more decimals.

 

[docw009]

The wire on this battery check circuit can be thin because it draws very little current. You can run a small lead from battery to it. Do you also run a LCD display with a start function? Many of them also use battery positive, so you could grab that lead instead of running an extra wire from the battery.

If you do run an extra lead from the battery, might as well put a small fuse on it. The positive wire used in your prior controller was probably current limited in case you crashed and wrecked the display or throttle indicator.

 

[ClintBX]

Yeah, I see. I touched throttle's indicator lead to the red's semi exposued connector to see if that turns on the display. It did just that. I've ordered some splice connectors. Thanks again for clarifying this.