MikeyDale

MikeyDale

Well Known Member
I am having a problem getting confirmation that my AKC E-04 ELT is getting a GPS fix. I have dual Dynon 10" Sky Veiws with the SV GPS-250. I have the ELT connected as per directions. Mini din connector pin 1 is 12v from VPX, pin 2 is test wire connected to my test lead with the resistor and LED, pin 3 is ground, pin 4 is connected to serial port #1 Tx from SV (Brown with orange stripe from both SV's). SV is booted and GPS has a fix. Serial Port #1 set up on SV reads as follows;
Serial in Device; General Aviation
Serial in Function; None
In/Out baud Rate; 9600
Serial in/out device; NMEA Out (Basic)
Tx Counter; 10,060
Rx Counter; 0
Sentence Errors; 0
Good Sentences; 0
Group Errors; 143
Navigation Data; 151

LED will not blink while testing per the instructions. I disconnected the ELT mini din connector and hooked my test lead up to the Data line on pin 4 coming from SV serial port TX and the other end of the test lead to ground pin 3 and the LED blinks once per second. The default Baud rate on the ELT is 9600 and I havnt changed anything. I have double checked my wiring several times. It is weekend and I have no one to call. Does anyone know what I may be doing wrong? Thanks in advance!
 
Typically the out to the elt needs to be Aviaton1 format for the elt to understand. From above it looks like your is nmea. Do you have an option to change this?
 
I just did this today on my G3X (I know, different setup) I had to change signal from "fast" to "normal" in order to get a blink, which is every two seconds.

For other G3X users... I used MFD RS232 Out #1, under settings I switched it to NMEA Out, which is 4800 baud, (can't change the baud here) so I dabbed a bit of solder where indicated on the ELT to drop its Baud to 4800. Then I had to switch from fast to normal as mentioned above to get a signal. That darn little din connector was a pain.

I guess before doing all this I should have tried the Aviation1 in lieu of NMEA, as waffles noted above.
 
Last edited:
Dbro172 said:
That darn little din connector was a pain.
Click to expand...

I broke 3 of the solder "cups" off when I opened it up to double check my wiring. I called ACK to order a new one and they sent one out that day at no charge! This post is timely as I am configuring my G3X and have also been having issues with the test light. I'm going to try this tomorrow. Thanks.
 
My choices are;

None
Dynon Converter
Icarus Altitude 100 ft
Icarus Altitude 10 ft
Garmin SL70
TIS Out (330 Format)
NMEA Out (Basic)
NMEA Out (Full)
Dynon EMS
Dynon ADAHRS
Dynon System
Dynon ADAHRS + System
Dynon ADAHRS + EMS
Dynon ADAHRS + System + EMS


I have tried NMEA Out (Full) and (Basic)
 
The ACK E-04 ELT requires NMEA 0183 data, at a configurable baud rate of either 1200, 2400, 4800 or 9600 (Chapter 6, para 1 of the installation manual).

To verify what baud rate it is expecting, you'll need to remove the battery pack and open up the front panel, and cross reference the position of the jumper on the J1/J2 socket, and then assign that same baud rate to the SkyView. The default setting is 9600.

Presumably, you have the ELT connected to both displays, not just one? IIRC, it was from Version 5 that SkyView required serial connections to be wired in parallel to all displays where more than one display was installed.
 
Baud rate on SV is set at 9600. Both serial port #1 TX wires are wired in parallel out to the ELT. The ELT is in default 9600 baud rate with no jumpers installed.
 
Your settings seem to be exactly the same as mine, and I can verify that it should be working for you. Have you checked continuity between pin 2 of the connector and the test line? Is it possible that you have a solder bridge at the connector where 2 wires are inadvertently touching? For me, this seemed like the easiest part to mess up.

I also had to re-solder wires as I'd mis-interpreted the pin out for the mini DIN connector on page 8 of the manual. I had initially made a mirror image.
 
Does the GPS signal have to come from the Skyview? Has anyone wired the ELT GPS signal input directly to an RS-232 output on a GTN-650 unit? I was going to wire mine to P1001-6 RS232-3 TX on the GTN.
 
MikeyDale said:
LED will not blink while testing per the instructions.
Click to expand...

When it does blink, it is a very very faint blinking BTW. One more thing, when you say the LED isn't blinking, is it staying ON/lit? Just saw this happen with another builder, the LED had the resister and power leads switched when the test harness was made. You could double check that the resister is on the + lead of the LED.
 
Your settings seem to be exactly the same as mine, and I can verify that it should be working for you. Have you checked continuity between pin 2 of the connector and the test line? Is it possible that you have a solder bridge at the connector where 2 wires are inadvertently touching? For me, this seemed like the easiest part to mess up.

I also had to re-solder wires as I'd mis-interpreted the pin out for the mini DIN connector on page 8 of the manual. I had initially made a mirror image.
Click to expand...

I have no continuity between the test wire and any other wires in the mini din plug.

When it does blink, it is a very very faint blinking BTW. One more thing, when you say the LED isn't blinking, is it staying ON/lit? Just saw this happen with another builder, the LED had the resister and power leads switched when the test harness was made. You could double check that the resister is on the + lead of the LED.
Click to expand...

The LED does not light up or blink when connected to the test wire and ELT is connected....It does blink and I can see it well when it is connected to the serial out and ground directly from the SV with the ELT unplugged.
 
Problem Solved

I finally got back to working on this issue last week and resolved it. After getting no help from the Dynon forums I tried one last thing and it worked. I changed the baud rate from Skyview to 4800 and then installed the jumper in the ELT changing it to 4800 and low and behold, the ELT is now getting the GPS fix! Verified with the test LED. I just thought I would post this to help anyone else that might stumble into this problem.
 
I configured the 04 to receive a 9600 baud serial Aviation 1 format from a new GTN-650. At first I thought the interface was failing because I used a 2-way LED I had laying around (it showed red when -5v was applied and should show green with +5v). No green was observed, so I had a problem.

I called Bob at ACK and he said I should follow instructions better and use a 1-way LED because the test output is only a single character that is output once per sec. and it is very hard to see. Lo and behold, I was able to see a faint flick after visiting Radio Shack a second time.

Lessons learned/confirmed:
1. 9 times out of 10 it's an operator configuration error (not a hardware problem)
2. I had assumed that the ELT serial out would give me a strong flash (because the serial in did), but this assumption was wrong
3. Engineering test solutions (like a single character being output) sometimes make their way to the end-user without any usability testing. The engineer who did this could have output 100 characters to make this test easy, but he just didn't think of it.

I have a feeling that Mike had a good 9600 baud test but that it was so faint he couldn't pick it out (a dark environment is necessary to see the little flicks of light). Calling it a "blink" or even a "flicker" might imply it's more obvious than it actually is. I'm thinking the 4800 baud test was observable because of the longer duration of the signal.

Bob seemed a little exasperated that I called in because I think this is a common tech support issue for them and they don't know how to get the word out. So here it is!
 
Just to add my experience to this thread for anyone in the future.
I have my E-04 wired to a G3X. It requires NMEA and the E04 is defaulted to 9600. The G3X will only output as high as 4800. This requires a jumper in the E04 to change it's configuration. This little bridge jumper can be bought at RS in a pack for very little money. Easier than solder.
The blink is very dim and you will need to be receiving a GPS signal. This means that the GPS antenna must see the sky. Took me a while to realize I needed to move the thing out of the garage.
 
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