A/P Servo Wiring

Again, you may have read in a previous post that I was having trouble with my auto pilot (A/P) install. The VP-X was telling me the servo's were powered up and drawing 0.1 amps, which is exactly what I would expect. The SkyView (SV) however, was not seeing them in the network. Doing a "configure" command yielded nothing as far as servo's. I had called service support at Dynon and told him my dilemma, he asked a few questions and then concluded that I should send them in for evaluation. He gave me two RMA numbers, one for each servo.

 

Now, knowing that I would be stuck with the shipping bill and not to mention the time to remove them and shipping time back and forth, I didn't want to give up without a fight. So, I started doing continuity testing on all of the network cables (even the ones I bought from Dynon). I had pretty much gone through all of them and they looked good and was ready to give up and just package them for shipping when I had a breakthrough moment. You gotta love those!

 

Working off the system planning diagram that Dynon provides in their installation manual. I had bought the two splitters and a 3' network cable from Dynon. What I didn't buy from them was the SV-NET-CHG cable. It is a simple gender change cable. Its a "female-to-female" cable. Shoot I thought, that's easy to make instead of buying one. I wired it up, nothing to it. Or at least that's what I thought.

 

As I was doing the continuity testing on the splitter from Dynon, I noticed that when I checked the "female-to-female" ends on that cable, the pin1 wasn't in the same location as the pin1 on the corresponding connector. That's when the lightbulb went off.

 

I had wired my gender change cable visually because it seemed so simple, I didn't actually look at the pin numbers...and it intuitively looks like the pin1 should match up with the same geographic location on the other connector. Nope, its mirrored. It actually switches over...I was unknowingly wiring pin1 to pin5! D'oh! 

 

Just check each connector if you do this yourself...follow the markings on the connector and you'll be fine. Just a simple thing that can trip you up if you aren't paying attention and have never done this before.

 

Needless to say, the network now "found" the servos and consequently updated their software. This was a HUGE relief...it saved me the time and money to send them back to Dynon, only to have them inform me they were good. Dodged a bullet there.

 

So, over the holiday weekend, if you are keeping score, I had two big breakthroughs on my wiring challenges. The PMags and now this. I am now working on my backup circuitry, in case the VP-X takes a dump...more on this in the next post.