The echo charger siphons charge from the house bank to the starting battery, up to 15A. It follows the voltage of the charging source, and cuts the circuit whenever it is below ~13V (a one-way valve to keep the starting battery from draining, and charged up).
We have a Xantrex Freedom 20 inverter/charger that has a built-in echo charger. After we installed the starting battery a year ago I wired this up to the starting battery. However, at some point it stopped working, and it would cost more to pull out the large unit and ship it off to be fixed than to buy a new echo charge ($120).
I mounted the new stand-alone echo charge above the batteries in the engine room; so far it is working as it should.
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