[TG] [TG11] Sounder Supply Voltage Too Low

[Tom - Raymarine - Moderator]

Hello Dave,

To confirm for anyone else reading this, when Axioms are networked together it doesn't matter whether the display you're looking at is a standard Axiom, an Axiom DV or RV (or a Pro S or Pro RVX for that matter.) All of the displays share the same capabilities through the network. If you had a network problem you'd see a different error message.

Voltage readings taken with a multimeter or looking at the display's own information are a good part of the story but not conclusive: unfortunately vessel power supplies don't tend to be a stable 12V (nominal) but in fact fluctuate depending on the loads, the cabling and the charging source. Very often we see problems that are caused by a supply which looks fine on a multimeter but in fact has large spikes or dips which a multimeter is simply too slow to pick up. In one notable case that I dealt with, a new 45' boat with 27V at the batteries was powering a sounder through a good-quality, 24-12VDC convertor that was rated at 25A, and on a Fluke multimeter its output looked like a perfect 13.7V. Measuring with an oscilloscope however showed that the supply was periodically being pulled down to around 9V by large, brief current demands that the convertor wasn't fast enough to be able to cope with. These dips were only around 10-20 milliseconds long, would never show up on a standard voltmeter, but were enough to brown out the sounder's processor and cause it to reboot.

It sounds like you're pretty confident that it's a problem with that display. If so, it will need to be looked at by one of our service centres or service dealers. Based on my experience I'm still leaning towards something constricting the supply, but you're in front of the system and I'm a lot of timezones away so you're the person in the best place to confirm this. If you feel it's the display, I'd get it checked out.

Regards,
Tom