Problems with the internal battery

[dballen2007]

I have been having the following experiences with my D-180 which I believe incriminates the internal battery.
1. The info block on the EFIS screen sometimes shows the internal battery voltage at 14+ volts and sometimes 0.00 volts
2. With the master switch off, the unit will sometimes boot up by pushing button one -- but usually it won't. This also happens with the D-180 unit out of the plane.
3. When turning off the master switch, the D-180 will sometimes switch to the internal battery but usually will just go off.
4. The clock runs for a while and then changes to the wrong time.
Thinking this points to a bad connection to the internal battery, I removed it and checked the connection by wiring around it -- no help.
Then I put a voltmeter directly on battery -- sometimes shows 14+ volts, but usually 0.00. I have concluded that the battery is intermittently failing somewhere internally.
Anyone else have this happen?
Dave Allen

 

[dynonsupport]

The internal battery has a protection circuit in it. Below 14V, it turns off the output to prevent any damage to the battery. So seeing 14 sometimes and 0 others is pretty consistent.

What all of this says to me is that the battery is not charging for some reason, and clearly your battery is totally discharged. The most simple reason may be that you're not letting it charge- it can takes more than 24 hours to charge a dead battery. But with a unit turned on, it should go from 14 to 15 pretty quick, and then much slower from 15 up to the 16s.

If leaving it turned on for 1/2 hour doesn't get you up near the 15V range, I'd guess the D180 has an issue more than the battery. If it does get you to 15, I'd say you just need to leave the unit on for a day somehow to get the battery charged up.

Do you have keep alive connected to the unit? We've had issues with that in the past messing with charging.

 

[dballen2007]

Thanks for the quick response - I appreciate this because this problem is keeping me from flying my phase one test program -- I know I could just fly without the internal battery but on my ship its a big effort to remove/replace the D180.
I put a meter on the battery a few minutes ago and saw a reading of .03, then .02 and .01. This tells me that you are correct that its completely discharged. I don't see how it "hasn't had a chance to charge" when the D180 has been in the plane and working for the past several weeks - always with a strong Odyssey battery hooked up.
Are you saying that the internal battery only gets charged when the Master switch is on AND the D180 is turned on? I assumed it would charge anytime the D180 had power to it.
Regarding the always on feature -- I had it hooked up briefly several months ago but its been disconnected ever since.
OK, I'll go ahead and follow your advise -- I'll put the battery on a charger, leave the master switch on and leave the D180 on for at least a half hour and see what the voltage does. If it goes to the 15V range, I'll let it cook overnight. I'll let you know what happens.
Thanks again, Dave Allen

 

[dynonsupport]

It will charge any time the 180 has power, but this has to mean your master is on, right?

If you really want to turn the D180 off while it charges, you need to turn the master on, let the D180 boot, then hold the left button and turn it off. If the D180 doesn't boot, it will never charge the battery, because it doesn't have power.

 

[dballen2007]

OK, I'm heading to the airport now -- will leave master on for at least 30 minutes and see what the voltage is on the internal battery. If it comes up to around 15V, will leave it on overnight.
Will let you know.

By the way my internal battery says:
On front side
Internal Li-Ion Backup Battery
[0208]
100096-000

On back side:
HUNGSANG BATTERY PACK
ICR 18650 16.8V 2200MAH
P/N: 10096000
2008-01-07

Seems like its a little old considering that I bought it from Dynon in April of 2009.
Dave

 

[dynonsupport]

We buy lots of parts in larqe quantities so that we can get price breaks and save on shipping, so it's not surprising that we may have items that are in our warehouse for over a year. Lean manufacturing is nice when you build 10,000 widgets a day, but not as great when you build 50 a day.

Let us know how the testing goes. We'll replace anything that turns out to be malfunctioning.

 

[dballen2007]

At your suggestion, I left the Master switch on a full 24 hours of charging (after hooking up a battery charger to the plane's battery).

The internal battery went from 14.2 to 16.2 volts and all functions seemed to work normally. The D180 would start up and shutdown on its own battery or via the master switch. When turning off the master switch, the D180 would go into backup mode and stay up on the internal battery as expected.

I shut everything down and waited another 24 hours and tested again.
This time, the D180 would NOT start up on its own battery but did start OK on the master switch -- after coming up, the D180 showed the internal battery voltage at 16.0. Once up, the D180 would revert to internal power and stay up after turning off the master as expected.

I could live with this if I could be sure I would have a backup in flight in the event of failure of ship's power. What do you make of this?

Dave Allen
cell = 314.363.3157

 

[dynonsupport]

This is actually known/expected behavior with the D180. It won't always start on a battery since the startup current can be too high, and the internal protection circuit can kick in. It's a real edge case, sometimes it will work, sometimes it will not.

It will always catch the power going offline, and should you have a power failure in flight, it will always back you up. Overall, it sounds like your D180 and battery are operating as expected, and you can have faith in them in flight.

 

[dballen2007]

OK, I guess I can live with this tho its less than ideal for my situation.
The D180 is all I have in the panel for EFIS and EMS -- no other backups for my normal VFR operations.

Here's a scenario I fear -- loss of ship's power midway thru a 3 hour cross country flight -- didn't notice the D180 warning that its going down in 30 seconds -- or I take it down to save the battery for use in the arrival phase which is 1.5 hours away -- In either case the D180 would go down with no way to get it back up.

Is there any way I can avoid this possibility?

Dave Allen

 

[skysailor]

Hi Dave,

I know Dynon Support will chime in with their response but let me add my two cents. I think your diagnosis has shown your D180 will switch to it's battery as planned when the main charging unit goes down and the battery has drained below the threshold it looks for. I know you can set a warning for Low Voltage and this should display as a red flag on the display so you should discover it in fairly short order even if you get all the way to this point having not done so.

That said, I would strongly advise against shutting the D180 down and continuing the flight. You are losing the complete "six pack" of aerodynamic performance instruments as well as all of your engine monitoring capability. My choice in this situation would be to let the D180 go to internal battery power and find a place to land right away. It is my personal plan to ensure landing within no more than 20 minutes so the D180 will continue to function until the aircraft is safely on the ground. The ground will be the best place to troubleshoot the charging system problem.

Maj

 

[N439AT]

I need to charge my D180 battery and have read this thread with interest.  The charging procedure seems clear, except my regulated battery charger starts out at about 14.5 volts and tapers off to about 13.5 volts as the AC main battery becomes fully charged.  If I boot the D180 and then power it down, will the backup battery somehow power up to 16.2 volts after an overnight on the charger?  I guess I don't know much about batteries, or does the D180 accomplish this through electronics?
Tony

 

[dynonsupport]

The D180 will take anything between 10-30V and convert it internally to charge the internal battery to 16+V.

 

[JR]

I had a poor connection inside plug for backup battery, caused similar symptoms in a D180
Showed fully charged then flat 2 min later, sometimes shut down on master, sometimes ran on. Kept loosing Baro and time on shutdown.
Didnt become repeatable until I had a main bus problem.
I slightly bent small male pins in plug and had no trouble since

Ive had the same issue in products we service with similar plug/socket setup
Maybe this helps