Two Solix units simultaneous failure?

[WillsC]

Good morning all,


Hoping someone could help with an issue.




I have two 10" Solix units, one a gen 2 and other a gen 3 that sit side by side on the dash. One unit is about 2 years old and other about a year old. The two units are connected to a hub and also to a trolling motor, one goes to a normal transducer and the other is connected to a 360 transducer at the stern.




Yesterday while fishing had an odd thing happen. We were drifting along in dead calm seas with the engine off. I was thinking of making a move and just as I looked at the two screens both units simultaneously shut off. They did not power down they just blinked off. Tried to restart them and the Gen 2 did nothing, the gen 3 will try to boot but I would say gets 90% of the way through the boot cycle then it just blinks off.






Thanks to information I read here about how to wire the units i am pretty confident it is not a battery problem. I have 3 batteries at the helm, two large deep cycles run in parallel and a third battery that does nothing but start the engine. Each of the Solix units is wired to a different battery directly to the terminals and there is a fuse for each unit. The fuses were fine but swapped them anyway with no change. The two units share no power connections or wiring at all. Those two batteries also run the boats lights, baitwell and bilge pumps but none were running at the time the units blinked off or had even been on all day.




I did not get a low voltage alarm.




Each unit has two cards in it, 3 storage cards and a map card.




I moved the gen 3 unit to a new battery, the motor starting battery but it does the same 90% boot then blinks off.




Any ideas??? The timing could NOT be worse as grouper season starts in less than 2 weeks.

[bobcoy]

More than likely there is a voltage issue. Could be a battery or a wire/connection problem. Sound like whatever the problem is broke something in one unit. There is something in common for both to have both units malfunction together. You said 2 batteries in parallel. That equals one battery(bank) that both units are powered from. That is a common connection point. Your Enet switch is another. Get with HB soon and you might get your repair(if needed, done in less than 2 weeks). JMO Bob

[WillsC]

Bob thanks for the reply.

Yes the bats are in parallel but put the meter on them when I got home and showed 12.2 volts. I did disconnect the units from the hub but it also made no difference. I will call HB today but if one unit can take out the other unit that does not say much for how the units are engineered, or the Hub as that is the only thing I could imagine caused this.

[CatFan]

Bob thanks for the reply.

Yes the bats are in parallel but put the meter on them when I got home and showed 12.2 volts. I did disconnect the units from the hub but it also made no difference. I will call HB today but if one unit can take out the other unit that does not say much for how the units are engineered, or the Hub as that is the only thing I could imagine caused this.

If your batteries were at 12.2V (which is deeply discharged) when you got home, they were likely a good bit lower on the water. Get them charged at see how the units act.

[WillsC]

Catfan and Bob you were right it was the two batteries..... after charging all night the volts came back up. I now know why when I switched the one unit to the cranking battery it would not boot............it did boot BUT the screen was so dim I could not see it in the bright sun. Now that it is backed in to the boat barn it is dark enough to BARELY see the screen. This presents a new issue. If I have night mode off and screen brightness at 10 I can hardly see the screen, it is like the brightness is set to 1. If I turn night mode on and crank it to 10 the screen is normal? Is there a reset I can do to fix the light issue?

I think what caused this is that even though I have a battery switch and religiously turn it off when we leave the water the remote control for the trolling motor does not go through the battery switch and for whatever reason the trolling motor remote constantly keeps turning itself on and off....... I will add that to the bus bar so it turns off.

[bobcoy]

A fishing boat these days can be a pretty complicated beast. A slow logical approach usually quicker when all is said and done. You might still call HB on the brightness situation. Sounds like the Grouper better be careful!