e7 chartplotter - does yours do this?

[skyflyer]

Our Raymarine e7 turns itself off whenever the engine is started. (19 times out of 20).

The installer tells me (IIRC) that this is because it is quite voltage sensitive and there is a temporary voltage drop when the starter motor draws quite a large current, so it rolls over and plays dead!

As it usually takes about a minute to re-boot, this can be quite inconvenient as often the point when you start the engine can sometimes be at a stage where a working plotter is quite handy! (But, yes, of course I have a backup pilotage plan etc handy at all times!)

We have a dual battery electrical system but they are not isolated, i.e. whichever battery is selected supplies the entire boat electrical system. It is not possible therefore to run the nav kit from the 'leisure' battery and the starter from the 'engine' battery as far as I can see.

I would like to know if anyone else has had this problem and any suggestions as to how it could be resolved without a major re-wire!

Thanks

 

[FWB]

Hi G, my Lowrance plotter did that until I replaced the ships batteries. Nice expensive Rolls batteries now and no problems.

 

[skyflyer]

Hi Steve - thanks for the info. Had a nasty feeling that could be the 'solution'!! I was hoping it wasnt the only one though!

 

[johnalison]

I think you have answered your own question. You are either going to have to beef up your batteries or preferably arrange them to ensure separating engine from service batteries. This has other advantages anyway. I don't have this problem with my e7 but used to with my Decca some time in the last century. That used to take about 20 minutes to find itself again.

 

[seadog30]

Hi

Instruments are best run off a different battery to the engine starter as the starter motor can create damaging spikes for sensitive instruments. This is one of the reasons that most boats have two battery systems.

If you don't have two batteries install a small ( motorcycle size ) battery to run the instruments and put an issolating diode between the main battery and this will allow the small battery to charge but not discharge from your main system.


good luck

 

[PCUK]

Hi

Instruments are best run off a different battery to the engine starter as the starter motor can create damaging spikes for sensitive instruments. This is one of the reasons that most boats have two battery systems.

If you don't have two batteries install a small ( motorcycle size ) battery to run the instruments and put an issolating diode between the main battery and this will allow the small battery to charge but not discharge from your main system.


good luck

Excellent advice.

 

[skyflyer]

Slightly confused as I have only ever owned this one boat and others I have used, I never delved into the details of the electrical circuit set up!

We have two batteries - two bloody great 190AH batteries! The feeds from the batteries go to a selector switch that supplies either battery (or both) to a busbar behind the switch panel which means that if I turn on the instruments or the lights or anything else it comes from whichever battery is selected.

It would be relatively simple - I suppose - to connect the starter motor supply directly to the No1 battery through a separate isolating switch so that no matter what battery was selected to the panel, the engine would always start on no1.

However, I assume the boat was designed and built this way so that either battery would be available for either purpose if ever required. If you isolate the two systems entirely (part from a charging circuit) then an inadvertent draining of one battery leaves you with a second charged but unusable battery (without a lot of swapping terminal connections etc!)

It sounds to me that what I need is the equivalent in the instrument supply of an accumulator in a water supply to smooth out the bumps and mainatin a constant presssure (voltage). Perhaps like the devices designed to reduce voltage spikes for computers?

 

[macd]

The OP is not alone. Heaps of threads on this over the years. See post #10 in this one:
http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?210846

 

[FWB]

Well my boat only has two batteries, no separate starter battery. I just accepted the plotter dropping out as annoying. Then after renewing the ships batteries the problem went away, should have done it sooner.

 

[Cardo]

+1 for having two isolated battery systems. We have a regular car battery that does nothing but engine starting, and a separate, pretty large battery bank for domestic stuff, including our own e7 plotter. This way we have the security of knowing that even if we were to run down the domestic bank, we would still be able to start the engine from its own battery.

As an extra backup, we can parallel the domestic bank to the engine battery just in case the engine battery goes belly up.

Friends of ours with the usual 1/2/Both switch who aren't particularly leccy savvy managed to flatten both their batteries just the other day. Couldn't even start the engine! Luckily one of the other boats around us had a portable generator they were able to borrow to charge them up.

 

[aquaholic]

My e7 was doing a similar thing but not just when the engine started, it would reboot suddenly for no real reason, sometimes when motoring but also with the engine off, tried all the software updates but nothing worked so I contacted Raymarine who advised me to return the unit, they bench tested it for 8 hrs with no problems but said they would replace the unit anyway as it was an intermittent fault and was still within warranty. Guess what.....the new one doesn't do it at all

 

[johnalison]

My e7 has crashed once or twice. On the last occasion I was trying to do something at a scale the chart wouldn't support, so I suppose that was its way of getting cross with me.