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hi everyone jeff cote here with  boatingtechtalk.com we've got a question  from jason  jason has a magnum inverter charger the  me 2012  20 or the first part 2000 is  the watts 12 is the voltage so it's a  2000 watt 12 volt  inverter charger and i would like  to use a magnum battery monitor or a  standalone  battery monitor so what's your choice so  the good news is  magnum actually makes a device called  the bmk  bravo mic kilo and it's a plug-in  and it actually plugs into the inverter  itself now remember your inverter should  be close to your batteries  right it should be because you can't the  voltage drop is  too much it can't handle that much  current over a long  cabling so generally batteries and  inverter are really close  good the bmk is a little device a little  black box  and what it does it actually has a few  inputs  one of which is voltage of the battery  at the battery which is important  and that's what you need for a battery  monitor you want to be able to measure  battery voltage  not at the inverter but battery voltage  at the battery bank so that's one thing  and the other thing it comes with is a  shunt and a shunt is good to measure  both current going in the battery bank  and current going out of the battery  bank  right so that's another good thing and  the good news is that magnum  uh makes a remote control i think it's  called the rc50  or they even have the arc so r  is romeo charlie 50. and it's a remote  panel  and on there there's one of the buttons  at the bottom that calls that says  meters  and if you press the meter button button  and you have a bm  bmk so bravo my kilo  you'll suddenly have your remote panel  for your inverter charger  also be a battery monitor sort of portal  um it doesn't have all the bells and  whistles of other battery monitors like  the victron or the blue seas one  i'm not saying that it's got all that  but most of us honestly with battery  monitors are looking for  realistically three pieces of  information  uh what's the battery voltage which is  good but that's not a battery monitor  that's just battery voltage it happens  to be a good  piece of information for troubleshooting  what is  battery voltage second what are the amps  going  in and out of the battery bank super  important and then lastly  what is basically the amp hours or  battery percentage  so what is my battery capacity so those  are really the three sort of variables  that most of us use for a battery  monitor there's way more  but the bmk gives you all three of that  so i'd say  95 plus percent of the time when we're  installing a magnum inverter charger  will be also installed on the mk yes of  course some owners want more information  and  you know we're all different but in the  general sense  most of us are going to be quite happy  with the vmk and it makes installation a  breeze because remember you don't have  to mount a new  monitor somewhere because it's already  part of your inverter charger rc50  remote  and you don't have to run a cable which  is great so it makes the whole  installation of a battery monitor pretty  low  in terms of headaches or time  so that's why we're a big proponent of  the bmk from magnum so definitely good  question  and i would stick with the bmk if i've  got magnum on my boat unless of course  you love tons of information and you  feel like geeking out and in that case  you might consider a specific separate  battery monitor that's going to give you  more information  great question jason thanks for asking  thank you for watching this pys video if  you've got further questions please ask  it below or contact  us on our contact form on our website and don't forget to subscribe thanks  again for watching  English (auto-generated)  Videolytics