Blue Sea systems monitor

    

Blue Sea Systems the well known and respected boat and yacht electrical people bought this systems monitor out a while ago but it has taken me this long to get around to writing about it. Called the VSM 422 this is a marvelous piece of kit that should be a boon to many boat owners. The display can be customized by the use of simple easy to follow drop down menus but what makes this unit unique is that it is capable of monitoring fuel and water tanks, AC and DC electrics and bilge pumps and alarms all in the same unit. It connects to sender units that may already be fitted to tanks or you can buy sender units from Blue Sea which run to about an extra $75 each. The monitor itself retails for around the $450 level but the neat thing is that it will replace a plethora of other monitors for battery condition and so on. This I find very appealing because by installing the SM 422 it frees up a ton of space at the helm or nav area as it will obviously now be only necessary to fit one monitor instead of perhaps 3 or 4 as was the case previously.

The unit ships with the shunts necessary for battery monitoring but the battery temperature sensor is an extra cost option which you may or may not need depending on the charging configuration fitted to the boat. For instance the Bomar charger and external regulator has that already built in so in this case the external temperature sensor would not be needed. There is a ton of technical information on the Blue Sea website including the owners installation instructions and operating manual.

Comments

[David Johnson]

Dear Mark,

We appreciated the review of the Vessel Systems Monitor VSM 422 and are happy that you found it “a marvelous piece of kit”! As you so aptly described, it is an excellent replacement for multiple monitors, and at a savings of both space and cost.

The only point that we wanted to clarify is that the battery temperature sensor is actually included and not "an extra-cost option". These products are under such a long development cycle that earlier communication could have suggested that it was an option.