N546RV
Well Known Member
Wondering what people have used/are using for testing out their panels. I finished all my ground terminations today and decided it was time to try powering everything up. After double-checking all the plugs, in particular making sure the only pins getting 12VDC were the ones that were supposed to, it was time to give it a try.
My test plan was to connect the power supply to the main bus fuse block, and power up the Skyview displays and other peripherals. The supply I bought a while back is supposed to be good for 12A, which should be plenty to run the avionics - by the book, I should be drawing around 6.5A.
Well, I got a flicker from a couple panels, and a brief splash screen on one HDX, then nothing, then a repeat of this. Seemed a whole lot like a periodic voltage drop to me. Measuring across the power supply terminals, sure enough, I could see a little dip from time to time (though hard to pick this up on a digital multimeter).
So I started weeding out things on the bus. Eventually I weeded it down to just the two HDX displays, which only ought to draw 4.8A. Still no joy, same behavior. I tried my other, cheaper 10A power supply - same thing.
Finally, I powered each HDX display on individually from the original (12A) power supply. In this way, I was at least able to get each screen to boot up, but even then after boot the screen would flicker sporadically like the output still wasn't steady.
It seems clear to me that the power supply I have isn't up to the task, though it ought to be based on the stated output. And yet I see elsewhere on the forums people saying that a 10-15A power supply ought to be just fine.
Did I just buy a clunker/Chinesium POS? I did, after all, come from Amazon.
I guess my next step is to see if maybe my neighbor has a better supply I can borrow - he's got a hangar full of every device imaginable.
On the one hand, I'm bummed I didn't have my weekend culminate with the whole panel lighting up, but on the other hand, this is nothing compared to my worst nightmare of letting out the magic smoke...
My test plan was to connect the power supply to the main bus fuse block, and power up the Skyview displays and other peripherals. The supply I bought a while back is supposed to be good for 12A, which should be plenty to run the avionics - by the book, I should be drawing around 6.5A.
Well, I got a flicker from a couple panels, and a brief splash screen on one HDX, then nothing, then a repeat of this. Seemed a whole lot like a periodic voltage drop to me. Measuring across the power supply terminals, sure enough, I could see a little dip from time to time (though hard to pick this up on a digital multimeter).
So I started weeding out things on the bus. Eventually I weeded it down to just the two HDX displays, which only ought to draw 4.8A. Still no joy, same behavior. I tried my other, cheaper 10A power supply - same thing.
Finally, I powered each HDX display on individually from the original (12A) power supply. In this way, I was at least able to get each screen to boot up, but even then after boot the screen would flicker sporadically like the output still wasn't steady.
It seems clear to me that the power supply I have isn't up to the task, though it ought to be based on the stated output. And yet I see elsewhere on the forums people saying that a 10-15A power supply ought to be just fine.
Did I just buy a clunker/Chinesium POS? I did, after all, come from Amazon.
I guess my next step is to see if maybe my neighbor has a better supply I can borrow - he's got a hangar full of every device imaginable.
On the one hand, I'm bummed I didn't have my weekend culminate with the whole panel lighting up, but on the other hand, this is nothing compared to my worst nightmare of letting out the magic smoke...