Raymarine forum

Hi,

I'm in the process of installing an ACU-300 (for solenoids) with rudder sensor, P70Rs and Tiller.

I have a hard time finding a decent connection for the ground pin. The documentation states, it should be connected to ship's ground (which is the steel hull, to which I don't have access at the location where the ACU is mounted) or directly to batterie's minus pole with a thick cable (wich is very complicated because the batteries are located somewhere else and there is no space to route a thick cable).

At the moment I've connected ground to minus of the ACU's power terminal. So ground is connected to batterie's minus (2,5qmm2 cable in 24V system), but not with a dedicated, direct cable.

Q1: Can you explain what's the reason the ACU has a ground pin in the first place?

Q2: What consequence could occur when Ground is simply connected to minus of ACU's power terminal?

Thanks!

Hi JBuss,
Thank you for your enquiry.

The ground connection is provided to meet EMC requirements, more information about this can befound when you click here , normally the ground is connected to the RF ground of the boat - which is something like a dynaplate, ( a sperate plate on the outside of the hull underwater specifically for this purpose - but not all boats have them)

To be honest, if you do not experience RF interference, ( typified by unstable data, erratic performance, vhf 'noise'), then the ground is not required.

regards

Derek,

thank you very much for the answer, it's really helpful!

Hi JBuss,
you're welcome!

Thanks