Antigravity Batteries Bluetooth Battery Tracker PLUS Review

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Credit: Antigravity Batteries https://antigravitybatteries.com/pro...tooth-tracker/



Introduction:

In this product review I will be taking a look at the Antigravity Batteries Bluetooth Battery Tracker PLUS, and show all of the nice little features it has that help you to keep your car and battery in peak condition. It is also a nice device to have especially if you have a lithium battery in your car, as it helps you keep a watchful eye on your lithium battery to ensure you can maximize its life expectancy and optimize your investment!

So if you’re interested in purchasing this product, here’s a link to do so: https://antigravitybatteries.com/pro...tooth-tracker/



Disclaimer:

Damage/Injury Disclaimer: Any information, guidance, technical advice, coding advice, tuning advice, datalogging advice, installation instruction, calculation, experiment, safety information, or product installation demonstrated in my reviews is to be consumed/read/understood/followed and or done at your own risk. I will not be responsible/held liable for personal injuries, injuries to others or any living being, or any damage to your car, or any property damage.

Monetary disclaimer: I do not make commission, or profits or any kind of monetary gain from the sale of the Antigravity Batteries Bluetooth Battery Tracker PLUS.

Sponsorship disclaimer: The way my reviews work is that I determine what product that I want to buy and actually use on my own car, and during this process the product that I end up choosing is what I believe is the best option on the market. I then reach out to the company offering the product and ask them if they would be willing to sponsor me in a review, if the answer is yes then I write a review, if the answer is no I would end up buying the product (sometimes at a later date) but I wouldn’t complete a detailed review about it (I might write something, but not to the same extent as my standard reviews). But the critical thing is that I reach out for a sponsorship and not the other way around, this means that the products I am reviewing are actually things I believe in and would use on my own car. This also means that I am not being paid to review something I do not care about. Would I do a review if a sponsor reached out to me? The answer would depend on if I believed in the product, and I would make it clear in my review if this were the case. But at the time of writing this review, such an interaction has not occurred yet.


Time of writing disclaimer: everything I am writing about in this review is described at the time of writing and may not be updated in the future, so there is a potential that things are no longer accurate in my comparisons as parts are changed and upgraded as time passes.


Bias and comparison disclaimer: Throughout this review I will attempt to be as unbiased as possible while drawing comparisons to other products.


Mistakes and Inaccuracies Disclaimer: Throughout my review I will try to be as factually accurate as possible, but there are always chances that I make mistakes and write things that are incorrect/false. If this is the case please point it out to me and if indeed it is true that I am incorrect, I will correct these mistakes and apologize for them. Afterall I am only human, so mistakes can and will inevitably happen.


Subjective Disclaimer: Please note, these reviews are also written in my own opinion, so when I am comparing different products to determine what I see as the best, there are many factors that I go through to form this opinion. Obviously there will be disagreements between people, so I will do my best to objectively determine what I deem to be the best, but at the end of the day it is still just my own opinion whether it be right or wrong. Take whatever I say in my reviews with a grain of salt.


Information Disclaimer: I read a lot of material over the years just out of sheer interest or to make these reviews. I also accumulated a lot of knowledge over my many years of education that are really relevant to cars (Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics). That being said, my reviews are mostly based on this accumulated knowledge and I cannot always cite these sources due to the original source material possibly being lost to time, or there being so much knowledge compiled to make a single point. So, when possible I will cite my source(s) (for example data on tensile strength of a metal, or peer reviewed research). There are cases when I get information from blog posts, youtube videos, or forum posts I may not cite it, because I go through a lot of these sources only to use the gained knowledge in a small section of my review and it is not feasible to list them all. So pretty much what I am trying to say is I am not citing “common knowledge” - I will cite peer reviewed research and photos though (if applicable or used), or really explicit user experiences (if applicable or used).



Image Credits:

Images and videos used in this review are all property of their rightful owners as credited below each image, I am just using them for the purpose of this review but if you (the owner of the image) would like them removed please let me know via pm. Otherwise thanks to the respective image owners (I made sure to credit your online name and link where I found the photo) of the photos, without you this review would be so much more bland.



Review Disclaimer:

First and foremost I would like to thank Antigravity Batteries for agreeing to sponsor me for this review. Despite this I will remain as unbiased as possible during the review. Please note, the dynamics of this relationship was that I reached out for a sponsorship review and not the other way around.


Antigravity Batteries Bluetooth Battery Tracker PLUS:


Why?

To begin, the most appropriate question to ask is: Why is a device like this even necessary? Or more specifically, why might you want one?

The first and most important reason is if you own a lithium-ion car battery — like myself (I use an Antigravity H8-80 RS), or if you're an F8X M3/M4 owner with the factory BMW lithium-ion battery, or anyone running an aftermarket lithium-ion battery (such as Antigravity, Braille, etc.). This is because lithium ion batteries need to be maintained properly to ensure they last their entire rated life time and optimize the investment you put into your battery. For instance if you let your battery get drained to the point of the BMS cutting the battery off over and over again, your battery won’t last as long as it could - which isn’t ideal for your wallet as these things are not cheap. So having a device to track battery state and let you know when it's time to charge can be handy especially if you do not have a Lithium ion specific battery tender. Furthermore, lithium ion batteries are temperature sensitive - meaning if they get too cold they can freeze and you shouldn’t attempt to charge it at those temperatures as it can cause the battery to crack, fail, and in worse case scenarios blow up. A good battery will have a BMS system to prevent charging (like antigravity), but having a sensor to track battery temperatures and let you know when to charge a battery or not is ideal (for instance if you notice your battery is getting low and the temperatures are warm enough for charging you should charge the battery before any temperature drops occur. Then when temps get too low you can disconnect your tender/charger just as a precaution - this is only really a concern if you store your car in really cold environments - uninsulated garage etc, and have a battery without temperature protection - IIRC Braille batteries for instance do not have a very sophisticated BMS because they try to optimize weight reduction and simplicity). The opposite is also true, if you are storing your car in the extreme heat, you should also not charge the battery if it is exceeding its upper temperature threshold. So having a device like the antigravity battery tracker to notify you of your battery state is a useful feature to have and it’s always nice to have additional data in case you want it.


Otherwise if you own a lead acid battery this device can just let you know what your battery state is so you can keep an eye on it and start your car when the battery gets low. This ensures you never have a dead battery and is useful for anyone without a battery tender.


So overall having this battery tracking will give you an abundance of data and battery monitoring capabilities regardless of the battery you have, and this can be a handy tool to any car enthusiast - making it a nice little device to have, especially since it is quite affordable.


Unboxing:

Now onto some unboxing images so you know what you’ll get:


Credit: F87Source




Credit: F87Source




Credit: F87Source




Credit: F87Source




Credit: F87Source




Credit: F87Source




Credit: F87Source




Credit: F87Source




Credit: F87Source





Credit: F87Source




Credit: F87Source



Features:

Ok now let's discuss the features of this battery tracker:

1) Battery State of Charge: The battery tracker features a real time state of charge indicator where it will tell you what percentage of charge your battery is at. It will also give you a general battery status of “ok”, “charging”, and “low power” for a more simple and easy to interpret readout - alongside the percentage. This way you will know exactly what percentage your battery is at, and what this means.

2) Real time voltage reading: the tracker will also be able to give you a real time voltage readout for your battery - meaning no multimeter is needed to check your battery, and it is able to graph this voltage over a 5 minute time span so you can track battery discharge or recharge rate.

3) Real Time Temperature: the tracker also has a built in temperature sensor capable of tracking the ambient temperature around the tracker itself. This means if you mount the tracker to the battery you will get a fairly accurate reading of the battery temperature, allowing you to monitor your battery. This is useful for lithium ion batteries which cannot be charged below freezing temperatures, so you will be able to monitor this and unplug any chargers if your battery gets too cold (this is useful if your lithium battery doesn’t have a BMS).

4) Tests: The tracker has a built-in cranking test feature to test how well your battery is able to start your car and if it is able to sustain voltage while cranking your engine (CCA). it is able to do this automatically upon each start of your vehicle and send it to your phone. The tracker is also test charging of your battery via the alternator (this has an idle speed test, high speed test, and a diode ripple test), this allows you to see if your alternator is working properly. Further details about these tests can be found on Antigravity’s site: https://antigravitybatteries.com/pro...tooth-tracker/

5) GPS location feature: this feature allows the tracker to log the last location of your vehicle after it is parked and turned off, so you can see a log of its location history. It also tells you what exact times you drove your car, how long you drove your car for, when your battery was charging or parked. Now something to note is that I think this is phone dependent because it uses your phone’s GPS sensors to get all the location data.

6) History: the tracker logs 72 days of voltage, state of charge, temperature data etc. For you to view, you will have a history of your battery’s performance over a period of ~ two and a half months. This data can be downloaded and exported for your record as well.

7) Notifications: You can set the tracker to send you daily notifications on your battery’s power status and you can set the number of hours between each notification as well. This allows you to get a daily update on your battery’s health while your car is in storage. Or you can disable this if you find it annoying. The tracker also features an alarm setting where it will send you a notification if the battery charge percentage (state of charge) falls into a percentage range you set for the alarm. You can also set 2 percentages to have 2 separate warning alarms, so for instance you can set one at maybe 70% to remind you that you should probably charge now and another one at 50% to be a final alert if you forget. This will help you keep an eye on your battery, if you don’t have a battery tender and need to periodically start your car or plug in a charger.

8) Etc: The tracker also allows you to track mileage, and determine cost data by inputting a currency, fuel price, and fuel consumption. This could be helpful if you use your car for uber or lyft. Or you can just use it to keep track of cost per mile for whatever reason. Finally, the app allows multiple trackers to be connected to it (4 max iirc), so you can use one app to monitor multiple batteries installed on all your cars, bikes, atv's, snow mobiles, mowers etc.

9) Battery compatibility: One last thing to note is that this device works on both AGM and Lithium ION batteries, so you can use this on pretty much any type of automotive or power sport battery in existence.


So these are the nice features that the Antigravity Battery Tracker provides, feel free to let me know if you have any questions. Now onto the installation!



Installation:

Installation of this battery tracker is insanely simple, all you need to do is attach the positive cable to the positive terminal of your battery and the negative cable to the negative terminal of your battery. If you have an antigravity battery just utilize the bolts and washers included with your battery to attach it to the top of your battery terminals - which are pre-threaded. Or you can slot these terminals into the nuts on your battery cables. If your battery doesn’t support a direct connection or you cannot attach the tracker to your battery cables, you can attach this device to the underhood positive terminal and a nearby ground source (this is how BMW recommends charging your car or jump starting it - the tracker’s cables are pretty long so it should reach with ease (I estimate the length from the ground terminal to the positive terminal to be around 30 cm).


Afterwards just download the app and connect it to your battery tracker. There are instructions on the packaging to direct you to an install link and how to connect everything.



Installed Images:

Here are images of the battery tracker fully installed (I used the threaded terminal directly on the antigravity battery for the ground connection, and I slot the power connection on the factory positive cable since the plastic cover prevents me from using the threaded terminal):


Credit: F87Source




Credit: F87Source




Credit: F87Source



Impressions:

Now I will wrap this review up with my impressions on the device, it will be fairly short since the device is very simple and self explanatory in nature:

1) The installation of this battery tracker was very simple and straightforward, it took less than 5 minutes to complete.
2) The tracker is a very useful little tool to have, it provides me with voltage data, charge state data, and temperature data of the battery compartment allowing me to make useful decisions. For instance if I get an alert at my specifically chosen battery percentage, then I know to go outside and plug my car into the tender. This means I don’t always have to connect the car to my battery tender if I do not want to. If I check and get an alert that temperatures are getting too low I know to start my garage heater to keep everything warm (you can also use a battery heater pad if you want, make sure you get a lithium ion specific heater pad with a built in thermostat - note this is only if you store your car in the extreme cold, most of you guys living in warmer weather like Australia, Hawaii, Florida, etc likely do not need to worry).

3) I also really like the location logging feature, because it allows me to tell if anyone has driven my car and where it was driven to. This helps when I bring it into a shop, so I know if they have taken it out and where they went.

4) Finally, the history graph is a nice feature to have as it lets me evaluate the parasitic drain of all the equipment I have in my car, and lets me predict when I should plug the car in for charging ahead of time before I head out for trips.



Summary:

Overall I must say this Antigravity Battery Tracker Plus is a really nice cheap gadget that helps me keep an eye on my expensive Antigravity lithium ion battery and it's a nice mod to have for anyone like me who loves having extra data.


So if you’re interested in purchasing this product, here’s a link to do so: https://antigravitybatteries.com/pro...tooth-tracker/

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