Have a friend who has a full HB setup. Solid 15, solix 12, solix 10, helix 15, mega 360, mega live, two Ethernet hubs, heading sensor, gps puck. Have other friends with complex setup and have not heard of this. All gauge wire is 12 ga or better and the distance from the battery to units is 7ft max. Battery is in a rod locker.

Problem we are seeing, symptoms seen: 1. All of a sudden one random unit backlight quits, and it has to be sent back for repair. 2. A unit powers up but the colors are way off normal (purple colors, and unit slow) and also would have to be sent back.

Both of these symptoms occur on power up only, not during the day.

Dedicated 125ah ionic goes 8 inches to a main 40 amp breaker, which then goes to a fuse block so each unit has its own fuse.

I work in electronic/mechanical repair in the semiconductor industry 30 yrs so I was thinking that it appeared to be a surge on power on the system (breaker), or something boogered up in the wires somewhere is not allowing good current flow. Ionic showing expected current when system is on, but I have not checked each individual power lead current with my meter yet. I think we should pull everything and go thru all of the wiring to see what is going on. I have not trouble shot the system, and would like to find the assignable cause.

Second idea was possibly related to the SD cards. If there was an existing firmware file left on the SD card after updating a unit could the unit possibly be trying to (re-update) and corrupt the device. Say, you had a update file for a helix update file on a SD card and inserted it into a solix SD card slot. Just trying to scratch my brain on possible assignable causes for something like this.

No fuses have blown, and all are the correct values. Only thing I was considering is adding individual switches so after main breaker switch is turned on, we could turn on each graph power individually to ease the initial power on surge.

If you have any input, would greatly appreciate the info. I didn't do the install, but I'm pretty sure everything was soldered. The only thing that was not soldered was the connector which was attached to the fuse block.

I was thinking about helping him pull it all out and redo it as I used to do installation of home theater, car audio, and building stuff for ham radio projects.


If I'm in the wrong thread let me know, I didn't see one for stuff like this and I think the best crowd is you guys for knowledge..


Brent Prosise

Have you tried powering up the devices in a different sequence? Maybe one unit is acting like a mother to the others and until this unit is fully booted, the others have issues?

This one is quite weird for sure.

Just wait for Wayne P, he can help

Thanks, will not change anything until we get some feedback. Playing it safe

So the electronics battery is stand alone, not connected to any thing else in the boat?
I wouldn't think that a battery could cause a 'surge' in a system. The units will only draw as much current as they need unless there is some kind of internal faiilure that would cause them to draw more current. I would also think that the voltage would be pretty consistent, at least not going up, but only going down. If the voltage dropped, that might cause some kind of glitch in the units but I don't think it would cause damage to the units. Lose connections could cause a voltage drop on startup, make sure everything is tight.

BD

Yes 125ah ionic only supplies electronics and nothing else is connected. No difference of potential with other batteries. I have not trouble shot anything yet. Just wanted to throw this out and see if anything rings a bell with anyone. No hurry, to do it right we need to cover all our bases. Don't want to shotgun parts, too expensive to test this way. But I have all the means to test everything but the sonars themselves. Thought about adding a digilent analog logic analyzer with a current shunt and install some fixed loads on each power cable. Something like a 3 amp draw on each depth finder power cord, 100ma on the pucks, and 1amp on the 360. This will allow me a specific current which I could graph over time with the analyzer. Then we would drive the boat around the neighborhood on the trailer to see if any vibration would show a possible wiring issue. This isn't my boat, so I'm just trying to help my fishing buddy. In my profession root cause failure trouble shooting is my specialty.

Not working for HB, I doubt you will be able to troubleshoot their root cause failures, but I do wish you luck
Also, I am wondering which generations the graphs are.
What does 1 random unit backlight quits mean? Is this a diff unit each time?
Issue number 2 I had on one just before it quit displaying
Its hard to state my opinion on my birds without coming off as a hater.
I have had a helix 12 gen 2, helix 12 gen 3, and helix 9 gen 2
All 3 have different quirks and my 12 gen 2 quit displaying, though it would still boot up.
With low voltage my 12 gen 3 has lines across the screen
In less than 2 ft of water for long periods of time they quit reading depth
I am not a fan of the hub. It is a great idea for quick disconnect, but it seems weak and my helix 12 gen 3 had the tab break off the back of the graph where the hub clamps to. This was due to vibration and bumps while on the water.
I would love to know what percentage of returns the graph companies get. I bet it is way higher than most people would find acceptable

Wayne P. Much appreciate the info.. That's some solid info..