Most people who have a Speedster know that when you leave it standing for a while, the battery drains pretty quickly. I often forget to disconnect the battery. Or, when I do remember it usually turns out that I want to drive it shortly afterwards.

A while ago I ran into the Battery Brain, a device that monitors the battery and when it reaches a specific voltage (11.8V) it disconnects the battery. Intruiged, I decided to order one.

[box-thumb.jpg box.jpg placement-thumb.jpg placement.jpg test-thumb.jpg test.jpg bb-testbench.mp4]

Before trying to fit it to the Speedster, I decided to test it, with the test setup below.

[box-thumb.jpg box.jpg placement-thumb.jpg placement.jpg test-thumb.jpg test.jpg bb-testbench.mp4]

In the video below you can see the blue Watt meter box. That measures the supplied voltage to the Battery Brain. I turn it down to below 11.8V. Then the Battery Brain takes a while before it decides to shut off the supply to the voltmeter. Resetting the Battery Brain by pressing the button restores power.

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To make sure the Battery Brain doesn't shut off the power while driving, it has an input signal which can be linked to a switch 12V source. I used the signal from the fusebox, from fuse 7. This seems to work well.

After moving parts around a while and trying different configurations I ended up with the configuration below.

[box-thumb.jpg box.jpg placement-thumb.jpg placement.jpg test-thumb.jpg test.jpg bb-testbench.mp4]

During a testdrive I didn't run into any problems, everything seems to work well. Now I'll have to wait and see what happens when I leave the car for a couple of weeks :)