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Battery Brain
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Vendor Commercial
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ASOTVI Review
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May 23, 2008
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 What is it? A device that disconnects a vehicle battery when its voltage drops below a safe level to ensure the vehicle will start.
Major Claims
- Ensures the vehicle will always start
- Saves the driver and passengers from being stranded
- Saves wasted time and unnecessary towing / repair costs
- Prevents damage to the battery and extends its life, saving money
If you’ve ever left your headlights on, or a car door isn’t completely closed that allows a dome light to stay on, then you’ve probably experienced coming back to your car only to find a dead battery, and thus unable to start your car. Of course Murphy’s Law then ensures that if this happens to you, it will almost always happens at night, in bad weather, in the middle of nowhere. This particular product was designed to prevent this from occurring, and in turn, keep you from being stranded. Also, allowing your battery to completely discharge is the fastest way to damage its cells and dramatically reduce the life of your battery.
The Battery Brain is basically a “smart” switch that is installed in line with your vehicle’s primary positive battery cable. It continually monitors your battery’s voltage, and if that voltage level ever drops below what is needed to crank your engine, it disconnects the battery to prevent it from discharging any further. So, for example, if you leave your headlights on, at the point the battery drains below the product’s trigger threshold, the battery is disconnected and remains disconnected until you switch it back on, thus preserving the battery’s remaining power. When you come back to your vehicle and discover no power, you just turn the Battery Brain back on, and you have full starting power.
The units we evaluated, both a car unit and a marine unit for boats, work pretty much the same. The car unit had the distinction of coming with a keychain remote, for both reengaging the unit should it have to provide its protection, but also can function as a security device. That is, you can use the remote to manually disconnect your battery as an anti-theft device while you’re not using your vehicle. If someone breaks into your car and tries to hotwire it, they are foiled. Most car thefts occur in a matter of seconds, and a thief is not going to invest the time to climb under your hood and troubleshoot why your car won’t start. He’ll move on to the next one.
This product can be installed by the user, but only if you are comfortable with working on cars, specifically having expertise in working with car wiring. If you’re not comfortable doing that, then seek professional assistance. This is because the product requires not only the installation of the main unit in line with the primary battery cables, which is pretty straightforward and easy, but you also have to install one mandatory additional connection, and one optional one.
The mandatory connection is an “Engine On” wire. This is a wire that needs to be connected to an electrical circuit within the car that has power when the engine is on (or the key turned to the ON position) and has no power when the key is off. Some items in a car such as headlights, interior lights, seat adjustments, etc. are powered all the time, whether the engine is running or not. The best choice for a wire to connect the Engine On wire to would be an ignition wire itself.
The importance of this Engine On wire is to disable the Battery Brain while the motor is running, so that momentary drops in battery voltage, which can occur due to electrical surges from auxiliary items such as stereos, and having many things on at once, won’t activate the product and thus disengage the batteries. If this were to happen, you car would continue to run, but its alternator would no longer be able to charge the battery, and this could lead to a discharged battery unable to start your car the next time you attempted to do so.
If you are not familiar with the wiring inside your car, you have two choices: either 1) to take your car to a professional mechanic or to a car stereo store that regularly wires in various items, or 2) take advantage of the “Vibration Sensor” option.
The Vibration Sensor is an optional device that attaches to a part of the engine that isn’t hot, such as the housing on your radiator fan. It has the ability to detect the vibration of the engine running and performs the same function as the Engine On wire, but with no special wiring required. It’s actually quite easy to install. It just sticks to a flat clean surface with adhesive tape (included), and then connects to the Battery Brain.
The second optional wire on the Battery Brain is a bypass wire for items that you never want disconnected from the battery, even if the Battery Brain has to do its job. This would be things like your radio, which some lose their preset stations if they ever lose power completely. Again, if you’re not trained in doing this kind of wiring, please seek professional help. As a cautionary note, if you do try to install the bypass wire yourself, do not merely splice it into a factory wire and “share it” in a “T” fashion – rather it needs to be a dedicated connection from the Battery Brain to the item you wish to have continuous power. Otherwise, you might be inadvertently supplying power back through the original factory connection to the whole electrical system on a wire not big enough to support it. That could create a potential fire hazard. To repeat: if you are not trained to do this type of work, please have it done by a professional.
All in all, we observed this product to work exactly as advertised. If you have a car with a battery that tends to run down frequently and necessitates getting a jump often, or just wish to avoid the possibility of leaving something on and running down your battery and getting stranded, this product can provide you that protection.
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Product: Battery Brain
Available From: Smart Energy Solutions
Summary:
- Ensures the vehicle will always start
- Saves the driver and passengers from being stranded
- Saves wasted time and unnecessary towing / repair costs
- Prevents damage to the battery and extends its life, saving money
$52.95 - $129.00 + S&H
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