Glitches and Twitches

Interesting.... and not too unexpected. I used to run an Oregon 650 on internal power off road. It would freeze or power off occasionally. Not every ride. A buddy has the older Montana and it dropped power serval times per ride. I always figured it was powering off due to the connection between the Montana and the mount dropping with off road vibrations.  

I saw on my Montana 700i that you can configure what happens when external power is lost. I have mine set to "stay on" for both street and dirt rides. This might help. With the default "ask" setting, I know on my dirt bike I never look down often enough to see the message before it shuts down.

I must have gotten lucky with my Montana 680t. I had it in 4 different mounts and never had a power off or freeze up. Just the annoying phantom pins.

I had one more power off on yesterday’s ride but didn’t catch it in the act. Just now I mounted the 700i & let it boot. When I pulled it out of the mount it screamed at me & prompted a response. I put it back in the mount and it screamed again and went back to normal map screen I had it on. I don’t think it’s a power hiccup from the mount. I thought maybe the 700i battery might cause it but I just mounted it minus the battery and it boots right up and warns you InReach won’t work without it but the GPS still works.

I changed that setting to stay on, thanks. Maybe it will make a difference.

I wondered why I never had the unprovoked power off in my test rides before the Utah trip. The firmware update is suspect since it never happened until then. Today, riding in Arizona I had 2 power offs. The first one happened while I was taking a break, ATV off for 15 minutes. I had been glancing at it while comparing my track to Google Maps on my phone. I looked back at the 700i and it was off. No noises from the unit or I’d have heard it. No vibration to induce a power interruption.

Anyone else have unwanted power offs?

You were viewing a track on the map when it crashed?

No, the 700i was on the map screen and I never touched it after pulling over. I was just looking at the snail trail squiggle I’d just left and trying to pick out which dirt road/wash (out of many) I was on with satellite view Google maps.

All instances of the unit powering off occurred while on the map screen without any input from me. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t on the same zoom level every time it happened. World Basemap, Public Lands and Topo Southwest 24K are enabled. That last episode while just standing next to the ATV threw my power interruption or map re-draw conflict theories out the window.

Last 3 rides I had no issues. Last night I went up the hill 10 miles to stargaze and noticed no Temperature reading from the Tempe. I tried turning it on in the Sensors menu but it wouldn’t connect. Then I tried to turn it off, then on. When I pressed the Off bar the unit crashed instantly. When I powered the 700i back up everything was back to normal and remained so thereafter.

I am having a problem with my amps connector.  I too shortened the wire between the converter and cradle.  I have the red wire, black wire. and grey wire connected.  I do not seem to have power out of the converter.  I have 12 volts at the fuse.  Check power at the splice between converter and cradle and 0 volts.  An ideas?

Before I shortened the cable I heard the voltage was converted to 5V and the grey wire had to be included (unlike all my AMPS mounts for the 600 series). I connected the input wires to the battery and: GPS removed, looking into the cradle, left to right, only Pin 3 had voltage on it (4.3V). On advrider.com forum, I learned which wires corresponded to the pins 1-6: Blue, Yellow, Grey, Red, Black, Purple

Power removed: Pin 5 ohmed straight to the converter input black wire. I chopped the cable open between the converter and cradle and with 700i mounted and input power and ground connected, I tried twisting just the red and black ends back together. No power to the unit and no voltage measured from red to black. I still had 4.3V on the converter side of the disconnected grey wire. When I twisted the greys together the 700i powered up and I now measured 5.2V on red and 0V on grey. I figure the grey wire (Pin 3) goes low when the GPS is mounted, activates a relay which sends the juice on the red wire to Pin 4.

That’s as much as I know and I hope it helps you chase it down. Those tiny wires are easy to nick while chopping thru insulation. Did you test it before shortening the cable? If the converter was defective out of the box that would make for some head scratching troubleshooting!

Thank you for getting back to me. When I checked at the pins on the cradle I only had a very low voltage 1.3 or something like that on one pin, do not remember which one. Rechecked all my connections etc.  Nothing,  Had come to the conclusion that I must have a bad converter.  I reinstalled the cradle on my machine and hooked up every thing and thought I will just use it as mount and run off USB power.  Well guess what when i mounted  the Montana, bingo power was there.  I have no idea why it started working.  We will see how it does when i take it for a ride. Again thanks for the info 

Nice write up. I too shortened the AMPS mount cable. Red, black and grey are connected. I get 5v on PIN 4, being the red wire. Montana setting set to ‘charge’ on external power.

700i not charging when mounted.

Any ideas? It seems as though the 700i doesn’t recognise it is mounted!