I have recently purchased a MPI wattmeter and have a question about putting connectors on. One end of the meter is clearly marked input, the other ouput. I use standard deans connectors on he bat and ESC, and rigged the meter accordingly to check bat draw for different prop setups.

Now if I want to put the meter between my charger and bat to moniter charging, do I need to make up a new set of connectors to put the charger on the input side of the meter? Or can I simply hook up the meter with reverse current? The instructions with the meter were slim to none.

Thanks for any input.

Catfish, I am assuming you have a male connector on the charger and female on your batteries. If so that would mean you esc has a male connector. If all of the above is true, that means on the meter you have a male connector on the source (input) side and a female on the load (output) side. So what you need to do is make two sets of wires.
One female to female
One male to male
The female to female goes between the charger and the (input side) of the meter
The male to male goes between the (output side) of the meter and the battery.

I would hope you have the female plug on the batteries. Also make sure when you wire and solder, always red to red black to black, so on and so on. BG

I don't know how the MPI meter is but on the Astroflight 101 meter, the battery always connects to the same of the meter regardless of whether you're reading charge or discharge current.


Mike

That's not the case with the Watts Up meter. The side you put the battery on depends on the situation, and which way the current is flowing. IE: FROM the battery and TO the motor, or FROM the charger and TO the battery. I had to make some Male/Male and Female/Female connectors also, for when I want to monitor charging.

BG,

Yes, the female connector is on the battery as described above. So to maintain the current direction through the meter, I would have to make a pair of gender reversers like you said. I'm not sure it's required, but i would rather do a little soldering instead of a smoke test on the meter unless I can find out otherwise.

Catfish2, read the manual and double check what they suggest also. I know my charger checks the connection and voltage of the battery before it will do anything so I'm a bit more safe as not hooking it up wrong, but I don't know if yours does this, so just check your manual for the watt meter and see what they say and always double check the connections before hitting the charger on. BG