Batboard

I have a functional VHF Orion installed with a SS2000-ERCSN1 and SVR-200U in my vehicle. Everything is powered from a Blue Sea 6 circuit fuse panel, fed with 6ga from the battery. Everything worked A-ok until I installed a Sho-Me signal stick and tried to power it from the SmartSiren. I assigned a siren/light button on the control head to power the B+ lead of the arrow stick controller.

When I hit the button to activate it, the arrow comes on but Orion resets itself like I turned it off and back on. I took the arrow stick control box apart and found a 40/60A relay, a decent sized capacitor and a large diode run between the negative lead and incoming positive, with current flow from - to +.

My thought is this control box when it powers up is causing enough of a voltage drop to make the Orion reset. I can't understand why Sho-Me has all this high current hardware in a controller of an LED arrow stick that draws 4 amps.

Thoughts?

Siren and lights should be sepetate battery feeds from the radio.
Make sure the small power lead to the radio control head come directly from the battery as any voltage drop can reset the radio.

If I read this correctly... the control lead from the button on the control head should switch on the power relay in the Arrow Stick control box.

The Orion seems to be sensitive to some RFI and voltage issues.

For awhile, turning my MW800 on would reset the radio. I moved the CPU and some cables around (dual radio setup) which seemed to help. The CPU was on the same fuse panel as the radios. Also seemed to do it more in cold weather than warm weather.

Something else at one time was also reseting the radio, but don't remember what it was.

My guess is that some of the GE cables were not manufactured with the best of shielding.

Your issues shed some light on the problem, PJ.

I guess I need to move some cables around and try again. After looking into this some more, I noticed the Orion is getting some RFI from the SmartSiren, which it never did in the last vehicle this setup was installed in. My guess is the cable bundle that I have in this vehicle, and the proximity of the gear to the antennas is causing the problem. I did install NMO mounts with dual shielded coax in anticipation of such issues, but that's apparently not enough.