Hummingbird power surge?

[reelguy]

Lately, when I start my boat engine, my hummingbird sonar/gps mounted on my bow, gets a blank screen and freezes up. I hooked it up to the power wires that came ran up there from the manufacturer and have a fuse (5 amp). Why might it be doing this? I put the unit on last spring and it worked fine initially and had an issue a couple times last year and now it did it again first time out this year. Could my starter battery be bad and for some reason surging? My Lowrance on the dash doesn't have any problems.

[Whoaru99]

Not a surge, more likely a low voltage drop out. Have you checked all the connections for corrosion?

Regardless of anything else I'd probably run a dedicated circuit up there directly from the battery (put an inline fuse first thing off the battery).

[h8go4s]

Read the thread just below yours. This topic has been beaten to death many times.

[reelguy]

I see this now. Thanks!

[90bison]

I'm having the same issue. Have you found the problem?

[delcecchi]

A summary.

The device shuts off when the voltage drops too low. The current draw from the starter causes the voltage to drop, but not normally enough to cause problems. Aggravating factors can be...

Starting battery going bad, too small, or partially discharged.

solution... bigger new battery and charge before going fishing.

voltage drop in wiring from battery to console where device is.

solution.... run dedicated wire from battery. don't forget fuse.

In general, battery doesn't get enough charge from big motor to make up for what is used up during the day.

I think that about covers it.

[CaptainMusky]

Del you did great.

[yoppdk]

I can also verify the low voltage issue ... happened go me last year and I ultimately found my starting battery (to which my sonar is connected) had drained too low. Charging it back up fixed the problem with the sonar dropping out.

[BartmanMN]

Happened to me once coming off the lake, probably ran the radio to much without much driving around afterwards.

[reelguy]

90bison, I had ,my battery checked and is fine, checked connections and they seem fine. The battery had been charged prior to going out fishing and we were only out for a short time so I doubt I drew a lot of power. I assume the battery is too small for having two units and radio hooked up. I may either run a dedicated line and try that or buy a new battery. Probably start with a dedicated line because that it cheaper and easy to try before snaking it through the boat.

[delcecchi]

Thanks. It seemed to be coming up fairly frequently recently.

[CaptainMusky]

I too, was having my GPS at the console shut off when starting my big motor. I had a size 24 marine starting battery back there so I figured going to a size 27 dual purpose I would be good to go and not have the GPS turn off when starting the big motor. NOPE! Major bummer.

So, plan B was to order a new power cable and wire a dedicated line from the console to the battery. Tested it out this weekend and no more issues.

The nice thing is I have two power cords at the console now so clearly I need to buy another unit to mount there. :-)

[Kyhl]

I added more electronics to my dash this spring and recorded a 1.2v drop at the dash versus the battery. This caused the same issue, dropping voltage too low when starting the motor.

The solution was running heavy wire up to the dash and adding a second fuse block. My depth finders now run off the new fuse block, relieving the draw from the original fuse block and they all play nice again with the same voltage at the dash and at the battery.