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Thanks  [Music]  so here we are again on a cruiser 420  Express and we've recently installed a  large battery bank about 400 amp hours l  16 wired in series to make a 12-volt  battery bank and it was really essential  and what I always recommend to owners is  know where you are you know I think it's  especially with a battery bank know what  your depth of discharges and the only  way of knowing that is really with a  battery monitor and a battery monitor is  not adjustable meter of course it gives  you volts but it also gives you other  really pertinent formation the two ones  I really always recommend to people to  look at is capacity expressed as a  percentage so readily available and  understandable so a little bit in our  cars it's may be fractions you know full  half full 3/4 full quarter full but on  here they just show that as a percentage  so 50 percent 70 percent 25 percent and  then the other thing too is it shows you  amps in and out and this here actually  the meter actually the shunt is close to  the end the house bank but what the user  is going to be or the boater is going to  be checking is actually right here at  the battery monitor and the battery  monitor on this bone is a victim arm  battery monitor and right now the first  thing you'll notice is it's a little bit  dark and that's a way for the screen not  to burn out so you can press any button  and you're not really going to change  what you're seeing you're just kind of  waking it up so I press a button and  here we see that we're looking at  percentage and you can see actually it  says a hundred percent meaning the house  batteries are currently full and that  makes sense because we're actually right  now charging the batteries because we're  connected to shore power and we can  actually see that here on the Victor on  AC mains are on and we're on the charger  Mo's inverter charger mode on so we've  got 100% capacity and with AGM batteries  you can obviously like they're all let  acid batteries but depending on the make  you can compromise a little bit and  bring your batteries down to obviously  50 percent and sometimes even thirty  percent and so as an owner you want to  kind of make sure that you don't ever go  below 30 percent especially with these  aging and batteries 50 is probably  preferable but you can do it sometimes  and then know when it's time to actually  reach this  start the generator run the engine or  however you need to to actually get the  batteries recharged because there's a  big sacrifice that happens when you  bring your batteries down to zero or ten  point five volts you know capacity or  heavy complete discharge of the battery  is going to affect the number of cycles  so batteries are at play between two  variables how many times can you use  them and what's the depth of discharge  and so the deeper the depth of discharge  the least amount of cycles you're going  to be able to use so good compromises  around 50% or 30% on some AGM makes so  the next thing that's really useful in a  battery monitor which I really like is  seeing the amps so here on this Victor  on battery monitor you just simply press  the down arrow and then eventually we're  going to get two amps and you can see a  little a right here and amps can either  be positive or negative negative amps  means you're drawing from the battery's  positive that means you're charging and  that's really good as a way to kind of  figure out if you're using too much  power and also to extrapolate and figure  out how long can you stay an anchor  because if you're on your boat and  you're suddenly using you know 40 amps  why are you using 40 amps on this sized  boat what's on maybe you left your radar  on maybe your TV and is on or maybe  you've left the coffee pot on and your  inverters on it's really important to be  able to gauge what's being drawn from  the batteries and the aunt tells you  that it's a way it's like a speedometer  car how fast are you going if you're in  a school zone you've got to be looking  at your speedometer to know that you're  not going over 20 cars an hour or 30  kilometers an hour and it's the same  thing with the apps if you're going to  about to call it for a night you know  why are you drawing 30 amps on a boat  like this you know all the lights should  be off pretty much the only thing that  should be on is your fridge and maybe  some lights and anchor light maybe the  chart plotter if you're looking at your  location but you should have very  limited limited loads and so amps is a  really good way of assessing what your  loads are but also figuring out what  your charge rate is how many ants are  you getting when you're running your  engines on this specific boat he has a  diode combiner you know from the  alternator so he's going to have limited  output figure out okay look I'm  recharging right now but I'm not  recharging that much so I got to run my  engines for long  to get my batteries charged and so  that's a way for them to know the speed  at which they're recharging the  batteries and that's really useful  you