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A useful gizmo ? A Voltmeter !

Posted: Sat May 27, 2017 3:54 pm
by Simon Hyslop
I was out the other day in a car that I'd been working on over the winter. The ammeter was showing near 30 amps charging even after quite a bit of journeying on a battery that was fairly well charged and it got me thinking about the regulator which had been ok before the winter but last winter seemed a funny one. Things that had been ok before the winter certainly weren't afterwards, mainly due to dampness.

I have fitted cigarette lighter type sockets to most of the cars so that things can be readily plugged in to charge or work and I came across a plug in LED voltmeter on ebay, £3.18 from a UK seller. It arrived today and I'm rather pleased with it. Plug it in and it lets you know whether the battery voltage is within the limits it should be, or not. Handy for knowing whether to be on summer or winter charging for the LA10 and handy for knowing just what the LD10 was doing with it having neither a voltmeter nor an ammeter from new. Just something that seemed Quite Useful even if not Quite Interesting ! Lots of other sellers have similar, this was just the one I landed one that was actually posting from the UK.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/12V-24V-LED-C ... 0577&cust=

Re: A useful gizmo ? A Voltmeter !

Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2017 1:28 pm
by theoldman
Couldn't resist it. What a great piece of kit for not a lot of money!!

Re: A useful gizmo ? A Voltmeter !

Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2017 9:17 pm
by John Hitchins
Can you confirm works on a pos earth as I would have thought polarity sensitive like wirelesses and sat nav?

Re: A useful gizmo ? A Voltmeter !

Posted: Sun Jun 04, 2017 8:31 pm
by Simon Hyslop
When you wire in a socket on a positive earth car, the wires go to a negative feed and a positive earth, so any device connected in to the socket works properly. This works as long as the socket and device are otherwise electrically insulated. As the socket and the voltmeter are both plastic cased and fed by two wires, there are no polarity problems.

Re: A useful gizmo ? A Voltmeter !

Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 10:12 pm
by David S
HOW INTERESTING....!
Have you seen this seller's 'other items for sale'?

David

Re: A useful gizmo ? A Voltmeter !

Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 8:36 am
by HenryC
Well - the voltmeter works, couldn't tell you about the other 'items'!

Re: A useful gizmo ? A Voltmeter !

Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 9:49 pm
by captain bobo
It looks really useful, well spotted! :D

I couldn't resist buying one for the Daimler 15 which has a cigar socket (Daimler owners had cigar sockets not cigarette sockets!!) fitted as standard and is negative earth.