Xantrex LinkLite Passive Current Draw

Thread Starter

jjmalove

Joined Jul 6, 2016
51
Hello,

I'm using the Xantrex LinkLite as a battery monitor in a project, link below:
http://www.xantrex.com/power-products/power-accessories/linklite-battery-monitor.aspx
Got everything working fine but for some reason it seems to be drawing way too high of a passive current draw. The datasheet says 7ma passive draw, but when I left it on over the weekend it went from 100% to 90.5% in 3 days. That is with a 35Ah battery. So it thinks (not sure if I believe it really did) drained about 3 amps in 72 hours. Well that doesn't seem like it makes sense. That would make the passive draw 41.6 mA?

The monitor has always said it was draining at -0.1A when simply attached to the battery and nothing else. I assumed it was just saying that because it was accounting for itself and telling me it was draining some amount, but now I'm wondering if it thinks its draining over -0.05A and rounding it to -0.1A for some reason?

Anyone have any ideas?

The main issue is that this is going to be installed on a system where I won't have control over, but a customer/user. I found out the hard way that I have to keep power on to this guy even when the main switch is turned off because when this battery monitor looses power and comes back it needs to re-sync itself which requires either it being recharged or pushing a manual button to tell it its full charge. I was hoping the passive draw of this thing would be small enough the system could go months without monitoring, but at this rate the battery won't last much more than a month or so before the passive draw kills it.
 

Thread Starter

jjmalove

Joined Jul 6, 2016
51
Nevermind think I figured it out/fixed it. For anyone reading and curious:

Put a current meter to it and sure enough it was pulling 44mA. Datasheet says 7mA. Saw a note on there that mentions the 7mA number was taken with the backlight off and alarm contacts not engaged. Hmmm...wonder what I have those set at?

Well sure enough I have the backlight as always on and the alarm as a NC, so the relay contacts are powered until the alarm is trigger and then they are unpowered. Set the backlight mode to always OFF, and the alarm to act as a NO now, so the contacts are unpowered until we reach a low battery % and then they are now powered. Backlight was pulling about 25mA, relay about 11mA.

Sure enough current reading is now 8.1mA.

Gonna do an overnight test to confirm but my hope is that the battery is drained maybe 1% or less now overnight.
 
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