Dangling Dongles

[rswalden]

Smoke billowing out from under the panel while taxiing for takeoff in friend's RV-9..... Returned to hangar to troubleshoot.

Found a very fried metal-cased USB flash drive in a Dynon data dongle that had bumped against a hot 12Volt buss terminal behind the panel. The longer than necessary USB cable wasn't secured properly. When the metal flash drive contacted the 12V buss, the entire dongle cable went up in smoke and fried all of the data & power wires inside the Skyview HDX 10" display's 37-pin DB shell. It also fried the USB Wifi adapter plugged into the unit's built in USB socket. Fortunately, the actual Skyview unit survived without damage.

Lesson learned: Secure your wire bundles and data cables behind the panel and never use a METAL-cased flash drive near a hot voltage source.

 

[RVDan]

Lesson learned: don’t leave you dongles dangle.

 

[kellym]

Lesson learned: don’t leave you dongles dangle.

Make a remote port on your panel, hard mounted, so you don't have anything connected behind panel. Then get a SanDisk Ultrafit stick...looks more like a cap to the port. They have plastic case, don't stick out enough to put any dents in your forehead, etc.

 

[preid]

Lesson learned: don’t leave you dongles dangle.

have had my dangle for 10 years without an issue- the real lesson learned is placement of anything loose near something that can cause an issue.
In this case its not the USB drive but the 12v buss that was exposed to the drive, or anything that touches it for that matter.

 

[rswalden]

have had my dangle for 10 years without an issue- the real lesson learned is placement of anything loose near something that can cause an issue.
In this case its not the USB drive but the 12v buss that was exposed to the drive, or anything that touches it for that matter.

It is my understanding that the USB drive shipped with the Dynon HDX unit has an all metal casing. Is that correct? If so, all the more reason to not have it dangling from a dongle behind the panel. And yes, I agree with you about not having an exposed 12V buss strip (per the Vans Aircraft plans).

 

[Dynon]

Is that correct? I

Yes, it's basically this design.