Projecta
Be warned. This unit appears to forget your battery chemistry when the power has been disconnected. It reverts to AGM so will damage a lithium battery unless you notice the fault and reconfigure it. Very amateur design / firmware.
Projecta Pro-Charge Battery Charger - 12V 8A - PC800 – I bought one it's expensive so it does better but instead it has burned 3 batteries now. I didn't know why 3 of them had their cells burnt, each… Read more
battery had one cell burnt it's just after my 4th battery i worked out this stupid charger is a dude it's burning all my batteries. So people be careful your's might be doing the same thing if it is it's the charger.
Projecta
I purchased this unit before Christmas to work as a 12v power supply for my Caravan, as my deep cycle battery had recently died. I was looking for an… Read more
option that could power my van without a battery and thought I had purchased a reputable brand. I was not looking to monitor anything, and wanting to keep costs down, I confirmed with the manual that the unit would work as required and purchased the base unit. I received a documented fault code from the unit when I powered it up, and when seeking advice was asked where the screen was, and that it would not work without one. So, it was only after I connected the unit to my van and contacted support, that I found out that the manual was misleading and the unit would not work as intended. The Projecta rep, made me feel st^pid for not understanding this, and that automatically is not what I had thought and I needed to manually turn the unit on with an external screen, which I would need to purchase separately along with a cable. I am still trying to get a refund for my unit that had been falsely advertised. Ensure you do your research before purchasing any of their products, as support is none existent and poorly written manuals could lead to hours of wasted time and an expensive paperweight.
Unreliable rubbish, typical Projecta quality!! – I bought a new caravan and this rubbish Projecta PM355J was already installed (no surprises Jayco put rubbish in their caravans). To date (3 months… Read more
ownership) I have already had one unit exhibit an electrical arcing sound when using the internally built AC-DC charger, as well as the built in MPPT charger being inconsistent.
The MPPT charger is not consistent a d is honestly rubbish.
I'm sorry Brown & Watson but you sell absolute crap products for a ridiculous price. Just because you have been around for many years does not justify the price for your products.
You always sold expensive JUNK and other than being around for many years, nothing else has changed.
Projecta IDC45 caught fire and wrote off our Toyota Landcruiser – Purchased a IDC45 Projecta, professionally installed by qualified Auto electricians, had running in the vehicle for 12 months working perfectly, woke… Read more
one morning to find our HDJ100 Landcruiser up in flames. Vehicle was written off. Failure analysis carried out by insurance assessment team determined the IDC45 was the culprit. Never again. Regret not spending the extra and buying a Redarc.
Projecta IP2000 warranty service – In 2018 I purchased the IP2000 as an upgrade to the IP1000 model. It has worked well until 2 days ago when it failed dramatically, the inverter was 3… Read more
years old. Whilst my Inverter warranty had expired by 12 months Projecta contacted me and offered to replace the damaged unit. As I have had a few battles with companies who were not willing to honour warranty whilst within the warranty period, I was pleasantly surprised. As such my Review reflects the action by Projecta to stand by their product.
Lithium charger – After a not so good experience with Projectas IDC25 DC to DC lead acid battery charger I gave them the benefit of the doubt because of their… Read more
excellent customer service.The move over to Lithium has been costly but IMO a worthwhile one for my usage. I have just finished testing the IDC25L lithium charger and it works extremely well, boosting the amperage coming in from the solar panels. I tested the input current from the solar panel against the battery charge meter on my camper and was happily seeing plenty of current keeping up (and exceeding the current draw) with the draw from my 60lt fridge on freeze. Certainly would not get that with a lead acid battery set up with the solar panels I have. *** *** After testing for a couple of weeks testing the unit I find out that it won't properly charge my lithium battery because it has an internal battery management system (like most 12v lithium batterys) the charger sends out a test charge to detect what state the battery is in and seems to think that the battery is fully charged when it is not.
Perfect for what we needed easy to use and stores nicely behind the drivers seat and the cargo rack can be placed anywhere to get the most of the sun’s rays
Overpriced cheap generic charger with limitations – I have been using this 35amp charger for a few months now every week & can safely say it is overpriced for what it is & has bugs/flaws & is overall… Read more
limited to serious outdoor campers. Projecta never reply to my emails about the chargers's bugs and come off as an Un-australian company selling cheap Chinese junk.
Problems:
They are using around 10GA wire for 35amps & is a sign they are not made for permanent installations. And are simply trying to get away with the cheapest wire. Should be at least 8GA. The wires actually get quite warm in free air. So any installation in carpeted area, or next to wires or in split tubing will on a warm day will get alot warmer. The wires are hard wired into unit instead of a terminal.
They actually put the voltage sense wires inside the 10ga wire itself instead of doing it properly & have them separate, which makes for a permanent installation difficult & may result in inaccurate voltage readings unless you can somehow "magically" get those sense wires close to battery terminals. But the design is by cheap skates.
Sometimes the charger will show an error on screen for no obvious reason, the manual just says something like contact the manufacture or send back to.
The display back lighting turns off after time which is so annoying and a sign the makers have no clue. Should always stay on.
The buttons are not backlite so you don't know what you are pressing most times & is infuriating. The buttons are hard to press
and sometimes don't register because they used the most awful cheap buttons they could.
The charger lacks any ability to finely adjust the current charge rate (to within 5amps) instead giving generic settings (8,16,32 etc) that are far too broad for proper AGM charging. Proper AGM charging is getting close to the AGM's C/4 charge rate to minimize charge times while burning vital fuel with generator. Also this setting will change with a load on battery so it is very dynamic.
Misc Issues:
Quite noisy to.
Over complicated charging nonsense, eg: soft start.
This charger will maintain absorption stage (high voltage) even after the battery is topped up when there is any decent load running off battery itself as it's not smart enough to register a load cycling on like a fridge & switch to float. So it's recommended to switch to power supply mode in late absorption.
To conclude it lacks crucial features like button backliting, separate voltage sense cables, ability to set charge rate to any value. Projecta need to pick their game up & make better chargers, I see their Lithium chargers are the same generic stuff.
Failed in 8 months – Bought this brand new. Always kept inside the car, in a padded area with my electronics. Only ever used in a well ventilated area to charge my laptop… Read more
and camera batteries maybe 8 times - well within the inverters capacity. Without warning, one of the copper coils came off the circuit board rendering the item useless. Once it was swapped out for a new one, Projecta would not renew the warranty, only carrying on from the original purchase date! Very disappointed they wouldn’t stand behind their product. Very poor form and disappointing that this item would fail like this.