Battery Monitor & Alternator Regulator

     Link 2000R from Cruising Equipment

This system monitors the energy being removed from the batteries while monitoring charging and regulating the alternator. As an added bonus the Link 2000R also provides control of the Heart Freedom 20 inverter.

Cruising Equipment has been taken over by Xantrex who have a very nice web presence with a product description online versions of the manuals and technical specifications

I have cached the Link 2000 user guide, the Link 2000R user guide, and the Link 2000/2000R Data sheets here.

Most of the settings and adjustments are self explanatory, however, entering into equalization mode is a bit tricky, the steps are as follows:
     Ensure batteries are fully charged before equalizing
     Press Setup Until it begins to flash
     Release the Setup Button
     Press Volts & Amp Hours buttons at the same time for 5 seconds (until the red "charge" LED comes on and the "E" on the display goes away). The red LED should be blinking at this point.

Note that the battery type MUST be set correctly as excessive voltage can damage various types of batteries. For wet cell batteries the type is "0", for wet cells the charger may go to 17 volts which can damage sensitive electronics. 

The equalization cycle for wet cell batteries lasts for 8 hours, applies a current which is 4% of the declared capacity (660AH * 0.04 = 26.4 amps) until the battery reaches 16.3 volts where the current will be tapered back until the end of the 8 hour cycle. If charging using the engines alternator the maximum voltage is limited to 16.0 volts.

Equalization will terminate after 8 hours


Battery monitor and Alternator Regulator