For a while, I have wanted a battery monitoring system for the Electro-Metro.
I have been especially jealous of the fancy LED system in the Forkenswift.
My friend Tom (of the 300V AC Neon project) is planning on making some sort of a similar LED monitoring system, but he is busy with plenty of other parts of his project as well.
In the mean time, I like things that are cheap, and just plain work.
The last time I was at the Harbor Freight tool store, I saw that plain multimeters were on sale for $3 each - so I bought 6!
At the Milwaukee Electric Car Club EV Build Day today, I got some banana plugs and cable from Tom. Once home, I spliced the banana plugs together into an 8-conductor cable that ran back to the battery box. I have 5 of the meters hooked up so far. The sixth battery is in the front, so that has to be on another cable.
For now, I still have to turn on each meter individually, and just have them set on some plywood. Mostly, I am just going to use this to see what exactly my batteries are doing under load, and figure out how far I can drive before the first battery takes a dive.
