On the subject of battery chargers used on gensets - it's not a matter of them not working. It's a problem of not working well. There is NO good way to find out before buying (that I know of) except by "word of mouth" from people who have tested and verified.
The general rule-of-thumb before there were portable DC inverter generators was . . . if it's portable and cost less then $2000 it won't work well. If it's a permanent mount household type "standy" unit, it probably WILL work OK. Same with most 1/2 speed RV generators. But there are exceptions.
So far, all the portable inverter generators I've tested work great.
I've tested a few, but I can't buy them all to test. Many good marine and solar equipment dealers have also tested and given their results.
I ran a simple test awhile back on a Shumacher 30 amp battery charger. Nothing special or high-end. I had a test battery that had the same level of discharge with each test.
Hooked to grid power -it started charging at 28 amps.
Hooked to my 17 KW PTO generator, it did the same at 28 amps.
Hooked to my Coleman 1850 watt gas generator is only charged 9 amps.
Hooked to a Honda 3000 watt gas generator is only charged 10 amps.
Hooked to my Chinese ETQ inverter 1800 watt gas generator - it charged 27 amps.
Hooked to my Honeywell 2000i inverter 2000 watt gas generator - it charged 25 amps.
Hooked to my Homelite 4400 amp gas generator and it only charged 10 amps.
Other people have made tests with one cheap AC generator and many type of chargers. Huge difference. Most shop-type battery chargers worked poorly (like my test). Same with all portable tool battery chargers and cell phone chargers. They oftgen took 2X-4X as long to charge a battery as they did on grid-power.
That ad I posted for the Xantrex Truecharge was tested by a solar equipment dealer - and he's got a great reputation. Not cheap though.
If you mostly use shore power, there are many great chargers sold by marine dealers. I've got two made by Guest that are rock-solid. But as I said previously, a charger with all the features you cited is not common as a stand-alone unit. One slight problem with marine stuff is the extra cost, usually due to the marine environment they are used in.
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Today's Featured Article - Listening to Your Tractor - by Curtis Von Fange. Years ago there was a TV show about a talking car. Unless you are from another planet, physically or otherwise, I don’t think our internal combustion buddies will talk and tell us their problems. But, on the other hand, there is a secret language that our mechanical companions readily do speak. It is an interesting form of communication that involves all the senses of the listener. In this series we are going to investigate and learn the basic rudimentary skills of understanding this lingo.
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