G5 shutdown weirdness

[PT20J]

Anyone seen anything like this?

I was running the G5 and G3X in the hangar (master switch on, batteryMinder connected, bus voltage 25.2V at 2A). I was off doing other things and later noticed the G5 went dark though the G3X was still operating. Tried pushing G5 power button, cycling master switch. Still dead. Turned off master and went home. Came back next day, turned master on and G3X lit up but G5 was dark and pushing power button and cycling power had no effect. Turned off master before going home. Came back next day, turned master on and G3X and G5 booted. G5 showed battery capacity 0%. Ran several hours until battery showed 100% and turned off master. It’s been working fine ever since. I never forced the G5 to run off battery. 

Skip

[ArtVandelay]

Probably not an easy thing to do, but next time I would pull the battery and reseat it to insure it’s connection is solid.
Edit: I would also update the software if it’s old.

[201Mooniac]

Skip, I've never seen that but I'm told that a long press on the power button (I was told 10 seconds but I don't know that for sure) will cause a forced shutdown and then allow the device to boot up normally.  Did you have an SD card in the slot?  If so, get the data to your installer for diagnostics.

[PT20J]

It’s only a week old, so software is up to date.  Good idea about the card. I’ll put one in tomorrow. I did try the long press when it was dead to no effect. 

[N201MKTurbo]

I imagine it is necessary to remove ships power and remove the battery to truly power cycle it.
It sounds like it crashed, it could be crashed and the firmware could still be looping and sucking down the battery until the battery was dead. This allowed it to cold boot the next time ships power was applied. That explains the dead battery. I imagine the buttons are all soft buttons and could stop responding if the software is deadlocked somewhere.

The upside is it can probably be fixed with a software update. You can only hope it happens to enough people that Garmin puts the time in to fix it. I would report it to Garmin. The more reports the faster it gets fixed.

[LANCECASPER]

1 hour ago, PT20J said:

Anyone seen anything like this?

I was running the G5 and G3X in the hangar (master switch on, batteryMinder connected, bus voltage 25.2V at 2A). I was off doing other things and later noticed the G5 went dark though the G3X was still operating. Tried pushing G5 power button, cycling master switch. Still dead. Turned off master and went home. Came back next day, turned master on and G3X lit up but G5 was dark and pushing power button and cycling power had no effect. Turned off master before going home. Came back next day, turned master on and G3X and G5 booted. G5 showed battery capacity 0%. Ran several hours until battery showed 100% and turned off master. It’s been working fine ever since. I never forced the G5 to run off battery. 

Skip

No matter what you were told on the phone, Battery Minder's website still says: IMPORTANT: This harness is designed only for maintenance battery charging, not for supplying ground power for airframe operations. Disconnect the charger before turning on airframe electrical power. Reconnect the charger after turning airframe electrical power off to recharge and then maintain/desulfate the battery.

(https://www.batteryminders.com/faa-installation-information/)

[PT20J]

6 minutes ago, LANCECASPER said:

No matter what you were told on the phone, Battery Minder's website still says: IMPORTANT: This harness is designed only for maintenance battery charging, not for supplying ground power for airframe operations. Disconnect the charger before turning on airframe electrical power. Reconnect the charger after turning airframe electrical power off to recharge and then maintain/desulfate the battery.

(https://www.batteryminders.com/faa-installation-information/)

Thanks.  I discussed this at length with them. The issue is that this particular harness is not designed for high current. They sell a different cable for that. However, my new panel only draws 4A with everything on and 2A with only the G3X and G5 powered. This is well under the rating for the standard cable.
 

Skip

[Ragsf15e]

It sure seems that the G5 battery was dead.  When you initially used it was it 100%?  Was it definitely on ships power during your g3x session?

Are you sure it ever charged while you were playing around the first time?

 I bet once you fly it and ensure a full charge it works normally.

[PT20J]

The battery was at 100% and showed charging symbol (lightning bolt) when I last looked at it before it quit. It appears that it switched to battery power and ran the battery down. I don't understand why it would switch to battery power because when I normally turn off the master switch is puts up a splash screen that gives you 45 seconds to manually switch to battery power or it just shuts down. Also, it's a mystery why it wouldn't power back up afterwards on ship's power for a day and then mysteriously started working again. It took a couple of hours to recharge the battery. The internal battery test shown good. I ran it on the battery yesterday and it initially showed 5+ hours capacity. I ran it for two hours and recharged it. Seems to be working fine for the time being.

Skip

[Skates97]

19 hours ago, 201Mooniac said:

Skip, I've never seen that but I'm told that a long press on the power button (I was told 10 seconds but I don't know that for sure) will cause a forced shutdown and then allow the device to boot up normally.  Did you have an SD card in the slot?  If so, get the data to your installer for diagnostics.

This is a handy bit of advice to keep in mind if you have G5's installed. I had an instance when we took a flight, got back in the plane after a couple of hours and the AI did not power back up. I couldn't figure out what was going on, pushing the power and cycling the power off had no effect. The DG still worked fine. It was a beautiful day so I switched the DG over to an AI and just flew back home and pushed it in the hangar. With it in the dark hangar I was able to see that when I turned the power on there was faint light around the power button on the G5 telling me it had power, the screen was just not powering up. A little research online and I read about the long press, tried it, and it booted right up. I have only had it happen one other time and the long press fixed it. From what I read it is a bug that happens sometimes.

[Brian E.]

I too had a dark G5 once shortly after being installed.  To add to @Skates97feedback the sequence was: master off, hold G5 power button, master on, release G5 power.  I know it's a nuance but was the only sequence that worked.  

[KB4]

8 hours ago, PT20J said:

The battery was at 100% and showed charging symbol (lightning bolt) when I last looked at it before it quit. It appears that it switched to battery power and ran the battery down. I don't understand why it would switch to battery power because when I normally turn off the master switch is puts up a splash screen that gives you 45 seconds to manually switch to battery power or it just shuts down. Also, it's a mystery why it wouldn't power back up afterwards on ship's power for a day and then mysteriously started working again. It took a couple of hours to recharge the battery. The internal battery test shown good. I ran it on the battery yesterday and it initially showed 5+ hours capacity. I ran it for two hours and recharged it. Seems to be working fine for the time being.

Skip

You sure the G5 didn’t dim its screen all the way down so it looks off?  Happens.  If happens again try theses—covering light sensor on front of G5, long press power, cycle breaker, cycle master.  If software is current one or combo of above will work.  

[PT20J]

I did a long press but it might not have been long enough. I tried shining a light at the photocell to no effect. I did not try pressing right knob while powering up to see if it would boot into config mode.

[ZuluZulu]

12 hours ago, Skates97 said:

This is a handy bit of advice to keep in mind if you have G5's installed. I had an instance when we took a flight, got back in the plane after a couple of hours and the AI did not power back up. I couldn't figure out what was going on, pushing the power and cycling the power off had no effect. The DG still worked fine. It was a beautiful day so I switched the DG over to an AI and just flew back home and pushed it in the hangar. With it in the dark hangar I was able to see that when I turned the power on there was faint light around the power button on the G5 telling me it had power, the screen was just not powering up. A little research online and I read about the long press, tried it, and it booted right up. I have only had it happen one other time and the long press fixed it. From what I read it is a bug that happens sometimes.

 

8 hours ago, Brian E. said:

I too had a dark G5 once shortly after being installed.  To add to @Skates97feedback the sequence was: master off, hold G5 power button, master on, release G5 power.  I know it's a nuance but was the only sequence that worked.  

Thanks for sharing this, guys.  After 13 months and almost 200 hours on my G5s, haven't seen this once.  But now I'll know what I do!

[IFLYIFR]

I have had the same behavior of my G5 AI once in three years. My avionics shop told me to press the power button for several seconds just like Skates97 described. The shop told me it was a known bug and Garmin had already (in 2019) issue a software update to fix it.


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[IFLYIFR]

Skip, I had two G5s installed in January 2018. The avionics shop connected the G5 AI to the radio master switch, not the Master switch. Every time I turned on the Master switch during the preflight (to check the stall warning buzzer for example), I noticed the G5 AI powered on. When I turned the Master switch off, the G5 AI stayed on. I had to manually power off the G5 after already turning the Master switch off.

The avionics shop fixed this. The shop told me that Garmin told them that in Mooneys the Master switch “somehow” momentarily turns on the G5 (a momentary voltage spike) and then the G5 switches to battery mode as soon as it “realized” it was not receiving power from the Radio Master bus. The shop re-wired G5 AI to the Master and the problem was fixed.

You might want to confirm both G5s are wired to the Master switch in your new panel.


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[PT20J]

My single G5 is a backup for the G3X and it us wired to the master along with the G3X. It’s new and had the latest software installed.

The glitch on the avionics bus is real though because the way the avionics master controls the avionics relay requires the master to be on to turn the avionics bus off and there is a moment where the avionics bus gets powered when the master is turned on until the relay closes. You can see how this works if you pull the Aux Bus breaker with the avionics master off and the master on — all the radios will power up.

Skip

[N201MKTurbo]

You need to get rid of all that fancy new stuff and get you one of these!

I just pulled it out of the Cessna.

 

[EricJ]

2 hours ago, N201MKTurbo said:

You need to get rid of all that fancy new stuff and get you one of these!

I just pulled it out of the Cessna.

 

Lookin' good!

[81X]

11 hours ago, IFLYIFR said:

Skip, I had two G5s installed in January 2018. The avionics shop connected the G5 AI to the radio master switch, not the Master switch. Every time I turned on the Master switch during the preflight (to check the stall warning buzzer for example), I noticed the G5 AI powered on. When I turned the Master switch off, the G5 AI stayed on. I had to manually power off the G5 after already turning the Master switch off.

The avionics shop fixed this. The shop told me that Garmin told them that in Mooneys the Master switch “somehow” momentarily turns on the G5 (a momentary voltage spike) and then the G5 switches to battery mode as soon as it “realized” it was not receiving power from the Radio Master bus. The shop re-wired G5 AI to the Master and the problem was fixed.

You might want to confirm both G5s are wired to the Master switch in your new panel.


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This “somehow” you mention is probably because your avionics master is a “normally closed” relay, and it needs power to open (master on, avionics master off situation). Since electrons flowing are typically faster than a mechanical device opening contacts, the avionics bus will ever so briefly get power while the relay is opening.  For devices that have batteries onboard to power them up fully after this, such as a G5, it senses this power and fires up. 
 

 

[IFLYIFR]

Thanks for your explanation of “somehow”. I have always assumed that the radio master switch in my M20J is a simple SPST “switch”, not a SPST switch that activates a separate relay. If it activates a relay, your explanation makes perfect sense. By the way, why would Mooney design a relay into to the radio master rather than a simple switch alone? It seems to me to that this approach inserts a second failure mode versus a switch alone.


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[PT20J]

1 hour ago, IFLYIFR said:

Thanks for your explanation of “somehow”. I have always assumed that the radio master switch in my M20J is a simple SPST “switch”, not a SPST switch that activates a separate relay. If it activates a relay, your explanation makes perfect sense. By the way, why would Mooney design a relay into to the radio master rather than a simple switch alone? It seems to me to that this approach inserts a second failure mode versus a switch alone.


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Older equipment drew more current than a reasonably sized switch could handle, so a relay with heavier contacts is necessary. The way Mooney designed it, if the switch, wiring, or relay coil fail, the contacts will close and power the radios.

Skip

[Ragsf15e]

23 hours ago, IFLYIFR said:

Thanks for your explanation of “somehow”. I have always assumed that the radio master switch in my M20J is a simple SPST “switch”, not a SPST switch that activates a separate relay. If it activates a relay, your explanation makes perfect sense. By the way, why would Mooney design a relay into to the radio master rather than a simple switch alone? It seems to me to that this approach inserts a second failure mode versus a switch alone.


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As Skip describes above, it fails to “avionics on” so the radios will have power.  Other aircraft have similar setups but not all.

[carusoam]

On 10/29/2021 at 9:27 PM, IFLYIFR said:

Thanks for your explanation of “somehow”. I have always assumed that the radio master switch in my M20J is a simple SPST “switch”, not a SPST switch that activates a separate relay. If it activates a relay, your explanation makes perfect sense. By the way, why would Mooney design a relay into to the radio master rather than a simple switch alone? It seems to me to that this approach inserts a second failure mode versus a switch alone.


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Mooneys got a fail proof system design for their avionics switch….

If you use a simple switch to power your avionics bus… a simple failure of that switch causes big problems…

There are plenty of descriptions of how this system works…

There is an update that is required for planes in Europe to cover another type of failure that keeps power from getting to the avionics bus….

Nothing is that simple when flying in IMC…

If a simple switch failure allows all of your avionics to fail….  That would define unacceptable risk…. Since everything in the panel fails at some point during our ownership…

PP thoughts only, not an avionics guru… 

Best regards,

-a-