Raymarine Ev tiller low battery alarm

[Sardean]

What are the exact model numbers of the tiller pilot and the acu ( grey box ) then I can help you .
Do you have separate engine and house battery banks

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[northoceanbeach]

Tiller is q047. The arm made popular by the st4000.

I really tested it today. I tried to stress it a bit to see if it would shut down from lack of power and it would. If I tried to make it turn really fast or something. Total shutdown of not low battery warning.

[Sardean]

The problem is caused by voltage drop to the st4000 head unit
Wire size is minimum but should be ok I dont beleive it is the problem.
Check the battery terminals, should be no corrosion and no white deposit in terminal. Most common bad connection is the negative wires. I think problem will be between the batteries and the electrical panel as you mentioned new wiring out from panel. The fuse should be 15amp for the autopilot power connectors on st4000 and 5 amp for sea talk power.
I could keep going on and on , the more specific you tell me about your fault finding and system the more acurate I can be.
As mentioned before to prove this is the problem power up directly from battery and problem should dissapear.
To rule out sections of wiring are good or bad you can run a wire from batt neg to neg (we call this wire a fly lead )on control panel see if problem goes.
Next you can disconnect fly lead and connect it to + battery termial and to where the easiest place is to connect to the + wire on output side of fuse.
Just try 1 thing at a time then check for result
Let me know how you go there a many more tests you can do
Good luck Dean










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[northoceanbeach]

Thanks for the help. The batteries are pretty new, I just put the, in a couple weeks ago, like I said, two 100ah gels. The wires to the batteries are not new. I was getting a low battery message to my VHF whenever I pushed the talk button on the mic now that I think about it, I changed some things around and that doesn't do that now.

Let's start on the circuit breaker. I wired the red wire from the control unit that supplies power to the tiller arm to its own circuit, but the black wire I think is sharing a terminal on the circuit panel with something else.

I don't know if it matters or not, but all the black wires from my devices, where they connect on the circuit breaker, there is a separate bar off to the side for all the black wires. I just put the black wires anywhere they would fit and some are sharing. They get screwed in and the black wires are just on any available screw. Could this matter?

I put inline fuses on each red wire for all the devices that said should have one which I think are all. I will check which one has which size fuse. ,wouldn't it just blow the fuse if it was overloaded or could it limit the amount of power to the device instead?

[Sardean]

Black wires sound ok to busbar . Connect a fly lead from negative busbar to negative on battery and if that fixes proble then you will have to trace out the common wire back to batteries and check connections. If not then we can check some + wiring.
Also check that the + & - wires are plugged properly on back of st4000 as sometimes they half miss the connecter. only do one faultfinding item at a time then test autopilot. the vhf playing up tells us that the problem is most probably between circuit breaker panel and batteries

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[Sardean]

Another good test is to disconnect the autopilot and wire in a 12v 150watt ( = 12.5 amps) spotlight.(I made a tester out of two 75w car globes) If light is dull then rattle and move wiring untill it gets bright to find bad connection. If light is bright then rattle wiring see if it changes.
NOTE by drawing constant 12.5
amps it will sometimes find the fault by breaking the bad connection/wire so no power gets through. Or it can fuse the bad connection so problem dissapears for a month or so. Both results are ok as it helps find fault.

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[northoceanbeach]

Is there any way to test the autopilot without taking the boat out and trying to put strain on the autopilot so it has to use a lot of battery?

We are starting to get a little above my head in terms of electronics fixing. Ill do my best. I can start by checking the connections to the batteries.

So you are thinking I have a power problem, that I can get power in small amounts, like to run my lights.

But how am I able to run so many things at once? I can run lights and chartplotter and VHF and ais and its only when I engage the autopilot that there is a low battery indicator?

The VHF when I first installed the Raymarine system would send a low battery signal when I pressed the button to talk, but when I took that off a circuit that had many things on it, that solved that problem., that's why when I put the autopilot on its own circuit I thought it was fixed too, I even thought is got better. It could be my imagination, but I thought it went from saying low battery every time I engaged it, to only some of the times.

Thank you so much for taking the time to help.

[Sardean]

It is difficult to find a loose or poor connection or other reason for voltage drop.
Here is a way to get your autopilot reliable again or it will narrow the problem down and make it easier to find.
Run 2 new 10 awg wire from the battery + and - to the new wires that go to the st4000 ( connect to these wires wherever is easiest or even go direct to st4000 if you have nice access). If this works then happy boating, if not then its easier for us to find problem.
Note . Put a 15 amp fuse at battery end of + wire.
You can wire this in temporary as a test or permanent. If permant you should have the + wire go through a switch somwhere.
It should still alarm at dock if you have shore power disconnected and turn on a couple of lights to get the voltage down a bit. ( all lights on for half an hour should do the trick)
Get the voltage down a bit with lights untill problem starts to occur at the dock , then change over to the wiring direct from battery.
Note on your auto pilot you can press "+1" and "+10" at same time it will do a tack wich uses more power ,

I am happy to help , I am off work at moment with injury so this also helps me and I love cruisers forum there is so much information that helps me with my yacht. I dont know what time zone you are in I am in Australia so its morning here.

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[northoceanbeach]

Originally Posted by Sardean

It is difficult to find a loose or poor connection or other reason for voltage drop.
Here is a way to get your autopilot reliable again or it will narrow the problem down and make it easier to find.
Run 2 new 10 awg wire from the battery + and - to the new wires that go to the st4000 ( connect to these wires wherever is easiest or even go direct to st4000 if you have nice access). If this works then happy boating, if not then its easier for us to find problem.
Note . Put a 15 amp fuse at battery end of + wire.
You can wire this in temporary as a test or permanent. If permant you should have the + wire go through a switch somwhere.
It should still alarm at dock if you have shore power disconnected and turn on a couple of lights to get the voltage down a bit. ( all lights on for half an hour should do the trick)
Get the voltage down a bit with lights untill problem starts to occur at the dock , then change over to the wiring direct from battery.
Note on your auto pilot you can press "+1" and "+10" at same time it will do a tack wich uses more power ,

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I have good access to both the arm and the computer head. Which one should I wire direct to batteries? For a permanent solution it would be easier to wire to the arm.

I am going to do this right now. I don't have 10 gauge wire but I have 12. Let me make sure I have this straight. You want me to run these wires, with an inline fuse, 15a fuse, direct from one of the batteries to the back of the tiller arm socket?

The tiller arm socket is attached in the cockpit and is a plus in like a house plug in, but tinier holes. On the back where it is cut into the fiberglass of the cockpit there are three holes. I don't know what the third one is for and the manual doesn't say. The top two are what is run to the computer. Should I leave these wires in there and run the additional two new ones to the battery alongside?

[northoceanbeach]

The new news is that I turned a lot of things on at dock, unplugged.

Cabin LED lights
2 chartplotters
Ais transmitter box
VHF

The VHF says low battery and when I press the button to talk it briefly shuts itself off and turns itself back on.

I don't think I have a wiring to the autopilot problem, I have some sort of wiring problem in general.

[Sardean]

Yes you have a bad connection in the common wiring from panel to batteries.




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[Sardean]

No . The way it should be wired is to the st4000 head unit. There are separate terminals that the wires go from to the tillerpilot. Do you want a diagram

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[Sardean]

It seems like the tiller may be wired wrong , I will try to get you a diagram

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[northoceanbeach]

No, I wrote that too confusingly. I have the tiller arm wired correctly to the head unit and the head unit wired correctly to the circuit panel.

You're right, I have a bad connection from the batteries.

Another thing is when I start my engine to get back to the slip it shuts off my chartplotter.

So I think the tiller pilot is wired fine. It's a general low voltage problem for my whole electronics. I wired something wrong when I took the previous owners lead acid batteries out and put my gels in and added these electronics.

[Sardean]

On the back of the st4000 head unit there are two terminals marked drive , A + & - wire should go from there to the plug for tiller , nothing else.

On the back of the st4000 head unit there are two terminals marked 12v you connect these direct to battery.

Dont worry to much about your loose connection , one day it will get worse then it will be easier to fix

12 awg wire is ok

I need more info on your batter bank set up, it sounds like you may have left off a negative common wire that links both banks negatives together ( thats if you have start and house banks)

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