Volt & Hour meter for a generator?
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Soundguy
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Pull start so no 12v battery on board.
Guess you could get a 120v driven mour meter / clock and run it to one o fthe 120v outputs.. or a hobbs 12v meter and do the same with a simple circuit with a resistor, diode bridge and regulator to get down to 12v dc.
Another thought is a small watch battery powered tachometer that uses a inductive wire pickup on the spark plug wire.. Many units have a hour meter.
Volt meter is easy.. find an analog meter or digital voltage display and wire up to the circuit...
There may be a comercial unit add on that already does theis.. I dunno?
Soundguy
Guess you could get a 120v driven mour meter / clock and run it to one o fthe 120v outputs.. or a hobbs 12v meter and do the same with a simple circuit with a resistor, diode bridge and regulator to get down to 12v dc.
Another thought is a small watch battery powered tachometer that uses a inductive wire pickup on the spark plug wire.. Many units have a hour meter.
Volt meter is easy.. find an analog meter or digital voltage display and wire up to the circuit...
There may be a comercial unit add on that already does theis.. I dunno?
Soundguy
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MrJimi
Elite Member, Rest in Peace
I've seen some higher dollar generators with a digital read out of volts, I am using a hand held VOM now and it's ok for now. I looked at RS ( radio shack ) and all they had was analog up to 15 volts?
Jim
Jim
sandman2234
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Do a search for "Kill a watt" on ebay. Some of them are more, but there are ones for less than 20 dollars. They also tell you the cycles, which is probably just as important as the voltage. I bought one for my Steiner, to keep the output as clean as possible.
David from jax
David from jax
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MrJimi
Elite Member, Rest in Peace
Looks like a nice gadget to own, is this something that could stay plugged in all the time ?
patrick_g
Elite Member
The Kill-A-Watt is selectable to read out freq or volts and even will give you the accumulated watt hours you produced if you want.
Otherwise you can try Digikey, Mouser and the like (G O O G L E )for a volt meter and an hour meter. There are several surplus outfits selling good stuff for your purpose really cheap.
Don't bother filtering the supply to run the old style Hobbs meters as they are just a solenoid wound escapement driven timer and are not sensitive to waveform. If there are solid state components then filter it.
Pat
Otherwise you can try Digikey, Mouser and the like (G O O G L E )for a volt meter and an hour meter. There are several surplus outfits selling good stuff for your purpose really cheap.
Don't bother filtering the supply to run the old style Hobbs meters as they are just a solenoid wound escapement driven timer and are not sensitive to waveform. If there are solid state components then filter it.
Pat
RonMar
Elite Member
Second the Kill-a-Watt.
It will just plug in to any outlet and give you volt and freq info. You can also plug an apliance or power cord into it and it will tell you the electrical load being drawn thru it in amps or watts up to it's 18A/2KW maximum. It will also give you the power factor for inductive loads. It will totalize an electrical load, so you can plug in the freezer for a month and see exactly how much power it is consuming short and long term in KW hours. Pretty handy for doing an electrical load study of your plug in appliances and seeing how large a generator you actually need. The older model will unfortunatly loose all it's stored information when it is unplugged but mine is handy. I guess they have a newer model out now that has a memory battery in it so it retains the recorded data when it looses power. I assembled a slow speed diesel generator this past summer and that is my only generator instrunment. I use it to set and monitor the RPM/frequency. Harbor freight recently started selling them in their stores, I am not sure if they are on their website or not.
As for an hour meter, you can get one from surplus center for around $24. You will need a small 12VDC or larger plug in power supply to power it. They run on 10-80V and consume about 6 watts if I recall the label on the one I just bought. The battery operated/inductive pickup models used on many lawn and garden tractors are pretty expensive, but would make a more compact installation on the pictured generator.
It will just plug in to any outlet and give you volt and freq info. You can also plug an apliance or power cord into it and it will tell you the electrical load being drawn thru it in amps or watts up to it's 18A/2KW maximum. It will also give you the power factor for inductive loads. It will totalize an electrical load, so you can plug in the freezer for a month and see exactly how much power it is consuming short and long term in KW hours. Pretty handy for doing an electrical load study of your plug in appliances and seeing how large a generator you actually need. The older model will unfortunatly loose all it's stored information when it is unplugged but mine is handy. I guess they have a newer model out now that has a memory battery in it so it retains the recorded data when it looses power. I assembled a slow speed diesel generator this past summer and that is my only generator instrunment. I use it to set and monitor the RPM/frequency. Harbor freight recently started selling them in their stores, I am not sure if they are on their website or not.
As for an hour meter, you can get one from surplus center for around $24. You will need a small 12VDC or larger plug in power supply to power it. They run on 10-80V and consume about 6 watts if I recall the label on the one I just bought. The battery operated/inductive pickup models used on many lawn and garden tractors are pretty expensive, but would make a more compact installation on the pictured generator.
Wayne County Hose
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Baileynet.com: Main Page has an hour meter on page 81 that is activated from vibration. Internal battery, just attach it and forget it.
SnowRidge
Elite Member
The newer model is the P4400. It has a battery to monitor cumlative KWh, but as far as I can tell, it won't log plain old hours. The manufacturer's web site has a link to a manual, but it is really just a brochure, which doesn't provide much useful information.RonMar said: