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[email protected] gfretwell@aol.com is offline
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First recorded activity by BoatBanter: Jul 2007
Posts: 36,387
Default Advice for a Battery maintainer/ tender...

On Thu, 8 Dec 2016 09:09:13 -0800 (PST), Tim
wrote:

Time to park the jackal and gold wing for the winter. Good time to do maintenance too to Make sure all is ready for spring.

I'll pull the batteries and store in the warm. What is a good brand battery tender for let's say in the $50.00 +/- range? If I'm going to spend more than that I'll buy new batteries...
Thanks!


These are basically just a trickle charger with a voltage sensor in
them. I made the last one I had from plans in one of the electronics
rags. It is really a pretty simple circuit tho. You just monitor the
voltage and when it drops below a certain level around 12v, it turns
on the charger.
The circuit is just a zener diode for a reference voltage, an
adjustment pot a comparator or an op amp chip and a solid state relay.
It will work with any small charger. Mine was a wall wart type thing.

I have to believe the chinese have packaged this all on a 15 cent chip
by now.