When to recharge the internal battery?

[alpinelakespilot20]

I've searched and have been unable to find an answer to this exact question.

I've had my D180 for about a year and am now unable to turn the unit on using the backup battery.  It worked at least until early last fall (the last time I powered it up).  I'm sure it's the time I had it on originally combined with the time since and the cold weather that killed whatever power was left.  

Should I wait until all Dynon harnesses and sensors are fully connected and powered to try to get the internal battery to recharge or should I do something in advance of that? (It may be another couple months until I can get it powered up if all sensors wires have to be connected.)

Related, is letting it stay completely drained hurting the future long-term life of the battery?

Thanks for any help,
Steve

 

[gianmarko]

lithium batteries dont like to stay discharged, therefore connect the D180 to a power source and recharge the internal battery. a long time in discharge state can very well kill the battery

 

[alpinelakespilot20]

Thanks.  Does that mean I should go ahead and fabricate a harness with just the one main power and one main ground wire installed and plug it in without all of the other harnesses attached?  (I ask because the D180 manual seems to imply that you shouldn't turn on the unit without all of the regular harness wires attached to their respective sensors.)

Thanks again for the help.

Steve

 

[gianmarko]

yes thats my opinion.

Thanks.  Does that mean I should go ahead and fabricate a harness with just the one main power and one main ground wire installed and plug it in without all of the other harnesses attached?  (I ask because the D180 manual seems to imply that you shouldn't turn on the unit without all of the regular harness wires attached to their respective sensors.)

Thanks again for the help.

Steve

 

[dynonsupport]

I suspect that if you bring up the EFIS INFO item voltmeter, the "I" line-item (which is the battery) will say 0.0V. This means the battery is not being seen by the system, and means that you probably don' t have 5.0 installed. So, the first thing you should do to remedy this is to update the unit to 5.0 (which has improved battery handling/charging routines), and then see if the battery reports a non-zero voltage when on master power.

Then, leave the EFIS hooked up to a power supply (aircraft battery, regulated power supply, a charger WITH a battery connected) for a day to fully recharge the battery.