Typical Boat Application.
Shown opposite is a typical boat application comprising of two 12 volt batteries each having a seperate function. In this set up when the battery selector switch is positioned to read battery one the DPM62VA can monitor battery1 voltage and current. When the battery selector switch is positioned to read battery2 the instrument will read the voltage of battery2 only. No current measurement of battery2 is taken as the engine starting current is too great for the instrument in this case. It is possible to monitor battery2 engine starter current also but a much larger shunt and different current scaling of the instrument would be required. This simple set up can give an indication as to the state of each battery and further circuit options will allow monitoring of charging current from an engine alternator or mooring based charger or solar / wind system.For simplicity look at the BASIC1 schematic.