Patent ID: 8437908

Claim:
A battery monitoring system for electrically engaging a wiring harness of a vehicle, said wiring harness electrically coupled to a terminal of said battery via a power supply line, said battery monitoring system comprising: a conductor attachable to a wire of said wiring harness inside an operator compartment of said vehicle, said wire delivering power from said wiring harness to an accessory of said vehicle; a voltage sensor coupled to sense a voltage on said conductor and being operative to generate voltage data indicative of a voltage on said wire; memory operative to provide storage for said voltage data generated by said voltage sensor and for storing algorithms that, when executed, cause battery health data to be generated by comparing newly acquired voltage data with stored voltage data previously acquired from said voltage sensor; a processing unit coupled to receive said newly acquired voltage data, said stored voltage data, and said algorithms and being operative to execute said algorithms to generate said battery health data; a timer operative to provide time data; and a temperature sensor operative to provide temperature data; and wherein said memory is further operative to store said time data and said temperature data; said processing unit is coupled to receive newly acquired time data and newly acquired temperature data each associated with said newly acquired voltage data and to receive stored time data and stored temperature data each associated with said stored voltage data; and said algorithms, when executed by said processing unit, cause said battery health data to be generated based solely on said newly acquired voltage data, said time data associated with said newly acquired voltage data, said temperature data associated with said newly acquired voltage data, said stored voltage data, said stored time data, and said stored temperature data.