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Battery wise, just go with the largest leisure battery you can fit.

Split charge, a simple VSR is perfectly adequate and much cheaper than the t-max systems! Mine has a victron cyrix.

achuakh wrote:

It all depends on how much you want to spend and what size of batteries you want to put in.

I am using a redarc vsr and it works flawlessly for years and it has the emergency jump start function where you can jump start off your aux battery if needed.

I do have both batteries around the same size and capacity which helps when they are charging. If you have one battery that's 50AH and another that's 150AH, the 150AH will never realise its full potential as when the 50AH is full, the charge voltage does actually drop and then 150AH will take a long time to charge up. not a real issue on a long trip but if you use the car daily for short trips, then the 150AH battery will suffer.

Next, you can consider DC-DC chargers, so this charger sits in place of the VSR as mentioned earlier and manages the charging of the AUX battery. this works better when your batteries' capacities are pretty much different so that the above scenario doesn't happen. You are very likely to encounter a ground loop if your audio system head unit is on the main battery and your amps are on the aux in this scenario.

The more advanced ones have solar panel input and can charge the battery or maintain it, again this is where it starts to cost $$$.