Mecer 1200VA. Fault.

[AlphaJohn]

Source: Battery University

 

[Vis1/0N]

It runs to 10% remaining, it's a cheap inverter not really smart. You've got to do some battery maintenance.

Bad news already. Lead acid start degrading (crystalline growth) the moment they not @ 100% and that growth increase the deeper you go into its charge.

PS: Lead Acid self discharge over time (Some as much as 5% per month) so should be connected and at float even if you not using em.



Its a cheap/dumb unit, it has no way to know the chemical make-up of the batteries you using so it uses normal rule of alarm at 25% off at 10%, which is fine for lithium not so much for Lead acid or AGM for that matter.

That is disappointing to note. I was expecting settings and USB and there was no smarts available me. Is it worth googling the forums for hacks on these? A simple ESP8266 and a relay would have been $3 BOM for some basic smarts for this.

I took the single 12V AGM configuration from Geewiz, received 2 weeks back. My drain should be 50W peak, mostly 30W most of the time. So it would last many more that the 2 hours of loadshedding before it would reach 50% DoD.

I will look into the threads for hacks and settings into the guts but I don't want to mess with the warranty, for now I think perhaps I need to add a webcam in front of the display to monitor periodically with a OCR function and sonoff to disconnect the load at suitable DoD. There will still be a drain for the inverter though, hope I don't need to do something ridiculous like jigging a solenoid to press the switch.

 

[AlphaJohn]

That is disappointing to note. I was expecting settings and USB and there was no smarts available me. Is it worth googling the forums for hacks on these? A simple ESP8266 and a relay would have been $3 BOM for some basic smarts for this.

I took the single 12V AGM configuration from Geewiz, received 2 weeks back. My drain should be 50W peak, mostly 30W most of the time. So it would last many more that the 2 hours of loadshedding before it would reach 50% DoD.

I will look into the threads for hacks and settings into the guts but I don't want to mess with the warranty, for now I think perhaps I need to add a webcam in front of the display to monitor periodically with a OCR function and sonoff to disconnect the load at suitable DoD. There will still be a drain for the inverter though, hope I don't need to do something ridiculous like jigging a solenoid to press the switch.

I opted for Sonoff POW's that I can remotely monitor and switch off load if needed. Added Bonus of being able to track all my equipment usages as well.

As for Battery monitor I dont trust that OCD one bit, in fact most I know have cheap V meters on there set-ups.
ie: my meters seen here I got over at Takealot, Others Like Pineapple Smurf went another route

 

[neoprema]

Reviving this dead thread because I have a Mecer doing the same thing - soon as it needs to run on batteries it beeps with a steady red light. Unit is just over 1 year old. Batteries reporting 13.7V.

For anyone landing here from Google, a fixed red light and continuous beeping = "General Fault. See Service Center"....

 

[TheChamp]

Reviving this dead thread because I have a Mecer doing the same thing - soon as it needs to run on batteries it beeps with a steady red light. Unit is just over 1 year old. Batteries reporting 13.7V.

For anyone landing here from Google, a fixed red light and continuous beeping = "General Fault. See Service Center"....

The most obvious thing to do is to get another battery to test with, regardless of what readings you get on your current battery, it could be failing under load.

 

[bhoorn7]

Hi i need help the inverter is working an everything but the plugs i connect to it doesnt seem to take power from the inverter itself. Its like the power is not pushing through the top plugs on it ? What could be wrong