How can you keep your EV's 12v battery charged, especially if you're not driving it? What if your EV's 12v battery is hard to access?

Let's look at what's going on, ways to solve your 12v battery issues, and how to monitor your 12v battery accurately, including getting alerts when your 12v battery goes flat, even when you're not near the vehicle.

Driving frequency / drive type

How far you drive, and how frequently you drive, directly effects when your EV's 12volt battery gets a charge, from the DCDC converter onboard.

Less frequent drives, covering only short journeys, combined with always-on Internet-connected EVs, means your 12v battery gets constant use, gradually draining it.

And if it's winter, that's a double whammy, because the weather directly reduces 12v battery performance. This is exactly why more EV drivers experience a flat 12v battery, during winter months, vs in summer.

Battery age

Add to this: battery age. Most EVs use a heavy duty 12v battery (such as AGM or Lead Acid battery). After 2-3 years of ownership, these batteries are beginning to show their age. Through in the colder winter months, your EV needs all the help it can get, to keep the 12v battery charged.

There must be an easy way to charge an EV's 12volt battery?

You can certainly trickle-charge an EV 12v battery, just like you can on internal combustion engine vehicles. But many EVs, including the Volvo XC40 / EX40, have cover panels hiding the battery, making charging (and replacing) the 12v battery, a lot more complicated.

Luckily, EV's have one special trick up their sleeve... They can draw-down charge from their drive-train battery, to charge the 12v battery. But you must tell the car to do this trick, and do it more often. Let's introduce you to pre-conditioning timers.

What are pre-conditioning timers?

These are timers, available in your EV's Infotainment system or App, that allow you to get the car "ready for use" (i.e. warm up, or cool down the cabin). What most EV owners don't realise, is that when running, these timers also allow your EV's 12volt battery to be charged. A small amount of your high voltage battery is converted into a charge in your 12v battery. All without any jumper leads, and without the need for a battery charger.

Example of timer usage - office worker

Let's say you work in an office, and leave work at around 5.00pm each weekday. You could set a preconditioning timer, to get your vehicle ready at 4.30pm, so that by 5.00pm, it's ready to drive. That timer also has an extra 30 minutes of crucial 12v battery charging time (the equivalent 12v battery charge to driving your EV around for 30 minutes). And all you have to do is set it  up with a few taps from your EV's smartphone app.

Another example - an EV not driven frequently

Now lets say that your EV gets less frequent drives. The risk is that in this scenario, your EV's 12v battery may steadily go down, and not get enough driving-time, to get charged from the built-in DCDC converter (the modern equivalent of the petrol-engine alternator). 

For an EV owner in this scenario, you could set a regular timer, that draws a small charge from your drive-train (high voltage) battery, to top-up your 12v battery every couple of days.

The Key - Monitor your 12volt battery charge

Most EVs don't allow you to monitor you 12volt battery's state of charge. As EV owners ourselves, we know the pain of a flat 12v battery. That's why we stock Internet-enabled (Wi-Fi enabled) 12 volt battery monitors. The voltmeter lives in your car's cabin, and when your car is within your Wi-Fi networks range (at home or work -- you can add whichever suits you), the voltmeter sends you updates about your car's 12v battery. You can even use our Internet enabled voltmeters on internal-combustion cars too. 

You can see recent data as a graph, or see exact current voltage levels, live. 

Yes, you can even monitor your EV's 12v battery status while you are traveling overseas (while your EV's parked up safely in your garage or carport at home).

Get Alerted when your 12v battery is getting low on charge

Our Internet enabled 12v battery monitors have a special trick of their own. They can send alerts to your smartphone, to let you know how your 12v battery is going. As long as the car is connected to one of your Wi-Fi networks, your smartphone can get the alert anywhere in the world.

Set a custom alert when your 12v battery charge gets too low (e.g. at 11.9 volts), and you can even set alarms, when the voltage drops to critical levels (e.g. below 11.5 volts). 

So don't suffer a flat 12v battery in your EV ever again. Check out our Internet-enabled 12v battery voltmeters from our online store today.

EVs are super-quiet. And that is one of many draw-cards. But the downside of electric vehicles, whether it be a passenger, recreational, industrial or mobility vehicle, is that in many situations you need pedestrians to be able to hear your vehicle coming!

That's where our Pedestrian Alert Warning System (or PAWS) for short come in. Our PAWS devices allow you to add your own customer MP3 or WAV audio file, which when triggered alerts pedestrians to your vehicle's presence.

We also make custom audio files for our PAWS units. Check out our most popular PAWS audio file.

For fully waterproof situations and restricted space installations, we recommend the W-PAWS model.

For applications where you want a move powerful weatherproof audio output, we recommend the PAWS model with an external horn speaker.

And for applications where you'd like the choice of multiple audio files or triggers, our original all-in-one PAWS unit comes in.

Not sure what PAWS model suits your needs? Or need a custom pedestrian-alert audio file? Contact us to discuss your individual requirements.

OK, so you've got an EV. It's silent, and awesome. Problem is: pedestrians, cyclists, kids and even animals can't hear you. Solution: Our PAWS Pedestrian Alert Warning System for EVs.

PAWS allows you to play a pre-recorded piece of audio from it's all-in-one casing, to warn pedestrians that you're approaching. You can trigger one of 7 replaceable MP3 or WAV files with your own audio.

Our idea is simple: put the PAWS unit somewhere water-tight, like in your EV's frunk, wire it to 12v power, and chose the tone(s) you want to play, and then simply trigger that tone.

We've included a futuristic 'EV' car sound, a bike bell, and even a V8 engine roar.

But if you don't like the tones we've pre-installed, you can mount the PAWS unit as a USB drive, and add your own sounds! (MP3 and WAV files welcome).

Check out the PAWS video to see the sounds we provide by default:

Want help with your PAWS units, or need more information? Let us know!

Ready to check-out the PAWS units? Visit the Pedestrian Alert Warning System product page.

Got that sinking-feeling when you ignored the urge to check your email? Did you miss a super-important message? In reflection perhaps if you had received a SMS or text message alert, telling you that your server was overheating, that might have saved the day?

Believe us when we say we've heard it all too often. And once upon a time, the same thing happened to us too.

But how do I find out if my server room is overheating when I'm not near my email?

There is an easy solution that can help turn your important email messages (such as temperature alerts from your server room or communications room, to say it's over heating), into a text / SMS message, delivered straight to your Australian mobile telephone.

I'm pretty sure you'd reactive quickly to a SMS saying that your server room had reached 55.3 degrees Celsius (and rising!). So here's what you need to do:

• First get yourself an Ethernet Thermometer (such as the very popular PAPAGO, or TME)
• Next configure the device (login to the web interface at this address: http://192.168.1.254/ )
• Choose and set your alert thresholds in your Ethernet Thermometer. E.g. get email or SMS alerts if the temperature goes below 12.1 degrees C or above 27.4C.
• Set your email alerts address (use a mailing list if you can)*

(Why set lower limits? Well sometimes air conditioners let out a blast of extra-cold air just before they fail... So you might get an early warning of an impending air-conditioner failure).

*: Setting the email address for alerts is really the crucial step. If you can use a mailing list on your mail server, that's even better. We suggest including all the people that need to get the email. But also, you can add an email-to-SMS service, like Utbox.net.

So you can use the web interface of the Ethernet Thermometers we sell, to change the alert thresholds and email addresses. And you can also use the really handy web interface, to just check the current temperature... See example screen shot from a TME in use below:

All an email-to-SMS service does is receive a short email message, and turn it into an SMS sent to your mobile phone(s) of choice. You could use a mailing list to send one SMS to the IT-on-call person, and one SMS to building management. Or to the whole IT team. It's your choice.

So there really is no excuse to not getting notified if your equipment room is getting too hot (or cold). Get yourself a TME or other Ethernet thermometer today and start receiving email and SMS alerts.

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