@Lee
I had been intending to contact you regarding the issue of permanent or semi-permanent installs using the aircraft aux. power supply. For quite some time now i have been using the Anker PowerDrive5 plugged into an auxiliary cigar lighter socket controlled through the A/C master switch. This arrangement worked well until fairly recently, (not sure just when or what iteration of the software introduced it,) but I noticed that quite often i would go flying only to find i was not receiving anything from accompanying PAW aircraft. Each time on landing i would find that the TX/RX on the Home Page was Red. I would reboot and get all green lights but the same would happen on the return leg.
I eventually came to the conclusion that it was likely my engine startup procedure that caused this. It always turn the engine over twice for about 5 seconds with throttle/choke closed & switches off, then set choke and switches on for startup.
I decided that this was causing the Rasp.Pi to go through several partial reboots due to voltage drop when the starter was cranking and was causing a glitch in the PAW radio bridge startup. If i unplugged it after starting the engine and allowed ot to boot normally it was fine. The answer was to fit a switch in the power line so that as with other avionics the PAW is not powered until engine is started. I later noticed that our AFI was not showing up on the OGNR when expected and discovers his setup was much like mine and an inline switch also cured his problem.
It was not a problem in the early days but possibly as the software has developed with more processes to load at startup these power interruptions were having a detrimental effect.
It may be worth including something about this in any instructions re units being powered from the a/c auxiliary system.
I would add that my Anker PowerDrive is still through the a/c mains switch so no chance it gets left on.
Regards
Alan
