[TG] [TG11] Sounder Supply Voltage Too Low

[ddfour1]

I have three Axiom 9's, left, center right. The center unit is the data master. When I try to run the fish finder on the left unit I get an error message saying that the sounder supply voltage is too low. But if I run the sounder on the center unit I have no issue. I am able to run the chart and radar on the display on the left. All three Axiom's get power from the same house set of batteries. Any thoughts?

By the way, thank you for all of your help over the past couple years getting me to this finished helm mostly on my own!

Dave

[Tom - Raymarine - Moderator]

Hello Dave,

Personally I've not come across any false low-voltage warnings: in my experience, when you see that alarm there is a genuine low-voltage condition, however here are a couple of questions:

• When you say 'try to run the fishfinder': where is the transducer connected? Port, centre, starboard? Do you have more than one transducer? What type(s) of transducer, and what fishfinder channels are you looking at on the two displays?
• What do you get if you run fishfinder on the right-hand display?
  

My guess is that you have a restriction in supply to the port display. It doesn't matter how full the reservoir is, if you have a kink in your garden hose you won't be able to water the plants properly: I think that you might have a large voltage drop across a poor contact somewhere in-line in the power supply between the bus-bar and the port Axiom. Maybe in the yellow fuse-holder, or a mis-crimped ring terminal, a loose connection, something like that.

Regards,
Tom

[ddfour1]

I have a single transducer and it is connected to the center Axiom. The 3 Axiom's are networked together using an Hs5 Network Switch. The transducer is original to the boat (2003) and I believe is an Airmar B45 so its just a 600W 50/200khz ducer.. What I meant by "try to run the fishfinder on the port screen" was simply when I select the fishfinder menu on the port Axiom in an attempt to display the fishfinder module on that display.

Radar and Chart both display fine on the port Axiom. If I had a large voltage drop, wouldn't you expect at least Radar to be unable to display as well?

I have not tried running the fishfinder on the starboard Axiom yet but will do so and report back. I will also inspect the connections and, if necessary, take a voltage reading of the supply getting to the Port Axiom.

Now that I am typing this, is it possible that the conical 50/200khz signal from my transducer is not able to get to the other Axioms via the digital network switch?

The other thing I should note is that the center Axiom is and RV whereas the other two are just plotters. Maybe that fact prevents me from displaying the fishfinder data on the non RV units?

Thanks, Dave

[ddfour1]

Further update--I can confirm that I have had the fishfinder module running on both the port and starboard Axioms so I know they are capable to doing it.

[ddfour1]

Tom,

I checked my voltage and connections to the port Axiom and I don't think there are any issues. I cut and re-spaded the ground to be sure. I measured voltage while plugged in and it was 14.4v at the terminals. The Axiom display (in the product information screen) also shows 14.4 volts when I am plugged into shore power and even at that time the low voltage error was observed on the port fishfinder screen. Both of my other two Axiom's display the fishfinder data no problem.

I did a factory re-set--no joy.

Dave

[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

[ddfour1]

Thanks Tom. I am pretty confident I have a good, clean power supply. Connections are professionally made with individual copper ring terminals and spades. I am viewing voltage (and testing the units) while plugged into shore power with the battery charger running and no other demands on the DC system. Voltage is showing (when I look on the displays) as identical on all three Axioms and at the voltage level expected based on the battery charger output. There are no kinks or other visual issues in the short wiring runs from the circuit breaker/ground bus bar to the units.

I tried moving the deviceNet cable for the Axiom in question to a different open port on the HS5 to see if maybe there was a bad port on the HS5 b but no joy.

1) Could different software versions between the Axiom units cause this issue? I am in the process of trying to update my software across displays but have run into a few issues. Harbor wi-fi is not strong enough to upgrade that way. I then attempted the upgrade with a mSD card that was 64GB (which I recently learned is above the size requirement) and perhaps not formatted correctly--it was exFAT format instead of FAT32 format. I am now waiting for a 32GB mSD card in FAT32 format and will attempt to re-run the software upgrade on the units shortly.

2) Is there anything else you might look at before having the unit serviced? Obviously I would like that to be a last resort.

Thanks again. Dave

[lotharjt]

Suggestion, swap the port and starboard displays, see if the problem follows the display. If it does, then that's further confidence the display is the problem. If the problem stays with the port position, then as Tom suggests, it's a wiring issue.

[ddfour1]

Tom,

Closing the loop on this, I upgraded all three of my Axioms to the latest software version and the Low Voltage alert has gone away.

One question: When I look at My Network on the Axiom9RV that is the Data Master MFD, it only shows that Axiom along with the doppler radar as being in the network.

When I look at My Network on either of the two slave MFDs, they show all three Axiom's as being in the network.

Is this normal?

All three Axioms seem to be able to handle and present all of the different data types (sonar, radar, chart, etc).

Thanks for your help.

Dave

[Tom - Raymarine - Moderator]

Hello Dave,

That's interesting that software resolved that problem. Not one I'd come across before, I'll watch out for it in future.

On the diagnostic page display - we are aware that the diagnostic page does not always display exactly what's in the network at all times, and I believe this is being looked at for improvement in future software. Although what you're seeing is not correct, I would not expect it to have any adverse impact on the rest of the system, however if you wanted to do so, I strongly suspect that a factory reset to all 3 displays would unify the product list. Make sure you back up all of your settings and data before you do a reset though.

Regards,
Tom