I still think a DC power supply feeding a quality solar controller would come pretty close if they could be made to play nicely together long term.
I once really wanted a good automatic charging source. Now when i have 120Vac available I simply choose one of two base voltages. 14.7 or 13.6v, andchoose when to drop to 13.6v according to how many amps the battery is accepting at 14.7v. It is less effort that dip switches and buttons and attempts to guess how to influence the charging source to do its job. If I am not going to be around to lower voltage, then rapid recharging is not a concern and I will choose a lower voltage.
Garage chargers are designed for getting a starting battery charged enough to start a car. Those of us deep cycling batteries every day, need to hold absorption voltage for longer, perhaps much longer.
Seeing how easy I find manual adjustable voltage power supply to be in my usage, I've given up on any desire for automatic, though my solar controller is.
A note on schumacher chargers, the egg timer algorothms are just a general guess as to how long is required, but Schumachers are known to overvoltage a battery. While they should get to the mid to high 14v range and level off while amps taper, they often will blow right past 15 volts, perhaps 16v at max amperage output, and this is abusive to a battery, but it will certainly charge it, and in some cases of a weak sulfated on its last legs starting battery, actually be good for it for the short lifespan it has left.
I recommend 20 amps minimum per 100Ah of battery capacity, minimum, on a plug in charging source, in Van dwelling. If one plugs in for days at a time when they plug in, then lesser amperage to capacity ratio is acceptable.
But the 'trickle charge everything every time' mantra touted by grandpa as always being best should be thrown out and disregarded with the old wives tales. Not all batteries should always be hit with high charging amperages, especially when time to recharge is not a factor. manufacturer 'ideal' recharge rates are usually 10 to 13%, bit Odyssye claims 40% minimum qhen deeply cycled. All depleted batteries can accept high amperages, whether this is abusive or not to them depends on many factors, and when compared to low and slow recharging or starting next discharge cycle at a lower state of charge due to too little current applied when there was time to apply it.
I sometimes parallel my 25 amp schumacher with my 40 amp meanwell power supply when i want to feed my battery more than 40 amps. They work nicely together for about 20 minutes on my well depleted 90Ah Northstar AGM, but I usually have to bump up (unloaded) Meanwell voltage to over 15 to get full output from it and often the schumacher starts tapering amps before absorption voltage is reached.
The schumacher is always a mystery as to how it will behave, other than than it is predictably unpredictable, and cannot be trusted. but I still use it on my old battery in my workshop as my Meanwell resides on my vans electrical cabinet door 99.9% of the time, leaving only when 'Automatic' charging sources cannot do their job.
