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?

[Polwart]

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.

[Polwart]

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?

[Polwart]

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.