Powering up chartplotter at home,battery high message..

[ciaranp]

Powering up a Raymarine A65 Chartplotter at home with maplin power unit http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?moduleno=231.

When power on chartplotter met with Alarm and on screen message saying battery high and counts down in secs and powers off.
Any ideas??

[geoffs]

The power supply either has a bad ripple that is tripping the alarm or the load the plotter is presenting is not loading the supply enough to bring it down a 12v battery equivalent i.e. under 15 volts.

Either way, take it back and ask them to exchange it.

I use a similar maplin one on the bench when I am repairing stuff and have no problems with that.

I reckon if you put a meter on it that it will come up with a higher that 13.2v value.

[ciaranp]

Originally Posted by geoffs

The power supply either has a bad ripple that is tripping the alarm or the load the plotter is presenting is not loading the supply enough to bring it down a 12v battery equivalent i.e. under 15 volts.

Either way, take it back and ask them to exchange it.

I use a similar maplin one on the bench when I am repairing stuff and have no problems with that.

I reckon if you put a meter on it that it will come up with a higher that 13.2v value.

ok will exchange power supply

[ciaranp]

any other ideas?

[ciaranp]

maybe i need to connect something else to the power supply as well as chartplotter to put load on it?

[Poly]

have you put a multimeter on it?

[ciaranp]

Originally Posted by Polwart

have you put a multimeter on it?

no don't have one.

thought it would be just a straight forward connect it up and work away.

[Poly]

Originally Posted by ciaranp

no don't have one.

thought it would be just a straight forward connect it up and work away.

I think its a fairly essential item for debugging any boat electrics (even when "at home") and you can pick one up for less than a tenner. I doubt anyone can help you more than Geoff has without actually having some real information.

The plotter is reporting an error of too high a voltage. This can only be one of two things: (i) the voltage IS too high (ii) the voltage is fine but the plotter has an error. If the voltage is wrong - the product is not doing what it says "on the box" - so if its new get it replaced. You could try adding a load - but its masking the problem not fixing it, and without a multimeter you'll have no idea what voltage you're putting through both the load and the plotter so risking damaging them.

[ciaranp]

Originally Posted by Polwart

I think its a fairly essential item for debugging any boat electrics (even when "at home") and you can pick one up for less than a tenner. I doubt anyone can help you more than Geoff has without actually having some real information.

The plotter is reporting an error of too high a voltage. This can only be one of two things: (i) the voltage IS too high (ii) the voltage is fine but the plotter has an error. If the voltage is wrong - the product is not doing what it says "on the box" - so if its new get it replaced. You could try adding a load - but its masking the problem not fixing it, and without a multimeter you'll have no idea what voltage you're putting through both the load and the plotter so risking damaging them.

if i put a multimeter on it what should the voltage be 13.8 or 12v?

[Poly]

Originally Posted by ciaranp

if i put a multimeter on it what should the voltage be 13.8 or 12v?

A 13.8 V regulated supply should be putting out 13.8 V. Allowing a reasonable error for both the multimeter and the power supply that could maybe show as high as 14 V.

12.0 V would essentially be a flat battery
12.7 V would be a full charged battery.
13.8 V is probably what your electrics sit at when the engine is running with a fully charged battery (keeping them 'topped up')
14.4 V is when batteries start to get a bit unhappy.

So electrics designed for a 12 V system actually need to be able to cope with something like the 12-14.4 V range of input power, and most will do wider than that, e.g. The spec for the A65 says is requires a supply voltage of: 10.7 - 18.0 V d.c.

I can't see any reason why a supposedly regulated 13.8 V power supply should be delivering > 18V unless it is faulty / badly made. Your plotter will be drawing something like 0.5 Amps - which seems like the sort of load (neither low nor high) a device clearly intended for running car type electrics should be able to support.

[willk]

No help with this issue I know, but when you get to fitting the A65, wire it to your "house" or backup battery, not the starter battery. The A65 will likely turn off when you start the motor - irritating when you are doing a stop start day as your VHF will start peeping for co-ords.

May not be an issue if you're not using a sounder module - they pull a lot of power.

[ciaranp]

Went to maplin this morning and asked the guy to power up this DC supply and put a multimeteron it.
Lets just say i was astonished to see it gave a rather unexpected higher voltage than he or i had expected.
He got another display one from the shelf and with the mulitmeter it read 12.5 volts.

He has ordered another one for me and this time i have requested it be tested before i purchase.

I have sent Maplin Customer care an email explaining my case.

I'm lucky that the chartplotter didn't blow. even though i have a quick blow 4amp fuse on the live wire and it didn't blow!!

a feature of the raymarine a65 i have found out is if the voltage is high and higher than expected it powers down rather than blowing!!

[Leapy]

Originally Posted by ciaranp

Lets just say i was astonished to see it gave a rather unexpected higher voltage than he or i had expected.

[ciaranp]

ye.

[geoffs]

High voltage does not blow fuses, only high current.

Duff regulators in off the shelf PSU are not uncommon.