Blue sea systems oled ammeter

And shunt.. @caribe makaira or all other electrical gurus. What all does an ammeter need to be connected to in a truck to measure whole systems amperage? I’ve got the bigger top post going to my negative battery lug and the other big top post of shunt going to the main negative of my blue sea split fuse box. The positive is going into the positive side of fuse box into a 2 amp switched circuit and another going into a ground on the fuse block. I would like to be able to measure the whole trucks amperage under load when turned on or switched on. This is the diagram and I’m thinking the only thing I need to do now is possibly run a jumper wire to the positive of alternator? Currently the most current I get with truck on and everything on is 2.4 amp draw and I know that’s not right bc I’ve got several led lights and a 1300 watt audio system in the truck. It does show a discharge rate of .9 when i put the smart charger to the battery last night just to kind of try and get some response from it. I didn’t wanna tinker around with alternator positive though not knowing exactly if needed a wire on it or not Tbh. That makes me nervous

 

Thanks a lot for any help and hopefully technical chat is where this belongs

 

There is not one spot to be able to monitor total loads since the alternator will be supplying the juice when the vehicle is running. What I'd recommend is you could install two meters, one at the alternator output, and one between the battery negative of the battery and chassis ground. You could then sum those together to get the total current draw on the system if desired since some current would be flowing to charge the battery and some to supply the loads. There are some loads that are fused by the 140 amp bolted in to the main box under the hood, while it also splits out several other loads between the battery and alternator, as circled in the red. The current flowing at that point could be positive or negative depending on what circuits were being used and the state of charge of the battery.



Below describes more detail on how to monitor currents in the system.

https://www.bluesea.com/support/articles/Metering/550/Strategies_for_Monitoring_DC_Current

 

Thank you for your response and sharing the article. Wish I’d seen this before I pulled all the ammeter wiring from truck earlier lol