Bluetooth battery monitor

  1. My model of MX-5 is: __ND 1.5
  2. I’m based near: __Warwick
  3. I’m looking for technical help or recommendations on: __ BT battery monitor

Just enquiring if anyone has one of these, looks interesting, but not sure if it’s solving a problem I don’t have !

Basically there is an app on your phone that collects the data from the battery and can warn you if it gets low etc.

They’re around £20 off Amazon

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If you’re a gadget man like me, I reckon it’s an essential bit of kit! How would you manage without one, once you’re made aware of it? :thinking: :nerd_face: I’m getting a caravan next year (not towing it with the 5) and think it might be good for connecting to leisure battery?

Barrie

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An interesting generic toy. (Loads of sellers)

It will add something like another 1mA to your car’s dark current, small compared with the existing ~35mA.
Its Bluetooth might confuse a tea-leaf trying to hack into your car’s system to drive it away.
Or your car system might be able to pick it up and see it, but who knows until it’s tried?

Fortunately my car is too primitive, so I’ll not be tempted.

Edit
But I might be tempted by this neat display solution that plugs into the OBDII socket. Except no current consumption is shown.

Edit2.
Or maybe not after seeing a 1* review from a German user of something similar on his CX5 where it stopped his car.

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Got ine fitted to my bmw c650gt good thing
tells u cranking amps etc and when out a run gives u a graph of what the charging systems been doing when riding bit over priced imho but im happy with it

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I have these on my car and camper-van (Veh & leisure battery). 5mins to fit. Well worth it

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Seems a bit overpriced to me, almost as much as a CTEK.
I know they give a lot more data, but battery maintainer, like a CTEK is more useful.

Good lord, £20? two bottles of nice wine (3 for others).
Hardly over priced in todays terms.
Just an opinion. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I agree, it’s pretty well priced if it does what it says. If the car isn’t used so much over winter it could save a flat battery… then it’s paid for itself.

I’ve got the CTEK version arriving tomorrow, works identically but it’s twice the price of course!

See link …

My reasoning for paying more is mainly it has an inline fuse. Having fried a wiring loom on my Mini in my younger days … I’m now paranoid.

I’ll post up some pictures when fitted. Theoretically i should be able to read the voltage from my kitchen… not that I’m into gadgets of course :wink: !

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I finally fitted the CTEK Bluetooth battery monitor (Battery sense) today along with a CTEK Charging port (comfort adapter) .

The car will sit outside over winter under a half cover, so I wanted to easily know when to charge it, unable to leave it permanently connected.

Below is a screenshot from my phone of current battery voltage.

Whole installation…any spare wire hidden between fuse box and battery.

Earthing and Ctek adaptor.

Bluetooth to phone Range seems ok, can be read inside house as long as nearest point to car.

I covered the Ctek wires with spiral binding to stop chafing and cabled tied everything in site for good measure. All working well !

A cheaper unbranded battery monitor is also available, probably works just as well. But I wanted a fused unit.

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Nice job. :slightly_smiling_face::+1:

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Thanks ! Forgot to add that I think the Bluetooth range has been kept deliberately quite low by CTEK (3-4 MTRS ?) , which many reviewers say isn’t enough. But that presumably means it’s own power draw is also less. I’d rather have it like that, than a huge range which flattens your battery, kind of defeats the object of the device.

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