TBM 900 - Battery always dead when returning to sim...

[David Snyder]

Seen this on all version up to and including 1.13 so I assume I am doing something wrong...

 

Start with full operation plane, complete some flight.  Then I do a full shutdown of the aircraft, and exit X-Plane.

When I come back a week later (don't get to fly enough, I know), my battery is ALWAYS dead.  A charge will not help either.  I go to the X-Plane failures menu and select "Fix all systems" and it goes back to normal.  While this work-around is not horribly painful, I would really like to know what I am doing wrong, or if this is a known bug?

By the way, I can access the electrical from the maintenance menu, and test the battery and it shows everything is fine.

 

However, see attached picture of what my MFD shows...

 

Please advise.

Thanks.

Dave Snyder

 

 

Edited April 25, 2021 by David Snyder
Added information

[Goran_M]

Do you have any hardware that may be drawing power from the battery, that you are unaware of?

[David Snyder]

8 hours ago, Goran_M said:

Do you have any hardware that may be drawing power from the battery, that you are unaware of?

The crash bar is down (and battery switch is off), so not sure what would still have the ability to draw from the battery.

 

 

 

[Goran_M]

I meant did you have any external hardware hooked up to the sim, with a rogue switch assigned to some kind of power dataref that is keeping it on?  We've seen this happen before.

[David Snyder]

15 hours ago, Goran_M said:

I meant did you have any external hardware hooked up to the sim, with a rogue switch assigned to some kind of power dataref that is keeping it on?  We've seen this happen before.

Ahh.  Got it - Fair Question.  I do have a home-built G1000/GCU 475, but they are all momentary pushbutton and rotary encoder based.  I had this problem since before I built it as well, so don't think it would be related.  Other than that, just a joystick.

Appreciate the suggestion.

 

Dave

[Goran_M]

Could you post your TBM900log.txt file.  That'll tell me more about the panel state of the aircraft.  Maybe something in there will tell me about something staying on.

[David Snyder]

Will do tomorrow - thank you so much for the help!

 

[David Snyder]

Sorry for the huge delay... life...

 

I could not find the logfile - assume I have to turn that on somewhere?  Please advise.

 

Some additional info.  From the maintenance hanger, I checked the battery (and under load as well) and it shows that it is good.

However, this is what I get when first power up the plane...

 

[Cameron]

18 minutes ago, David Snyder said:

I could not find the logfile - assume I have to turn that on somewhere?  Please advise.

It's a file called log.txt located in your X-Plane application folder.

 

You'll need to attach it to a post here only after you have just ran the TBM.

[Goran_M]

Looking at your last screenshot, I can say something in your external hardware is definitely messing with your avionics, and in all probability, the battery, too.  

Can you try disconnecting all hardware, except the mouse, and reload the sim, then post back what happens.

[David Snyder]

Log Files attached. 

Will try with joystick disconnected.

 

What is interesting is that from maintenance menu, battery shows good, even battery test shows good.

 

But going into the sim, it is dead with the MFD showing engine info red Xd

 

I will run again w/ joystick disconnected and SimVim disconnected and report back...

Thanks again for looking at this!!

 

Dave Snyder

 

Log.txt TBM900_Log.txt

[David Snyder]

Updated Log Files attached. 

This is with everything but the mouse disconnected.

I had repaired everything and had good battery.  Then shutdown and left for a couple of days...

But going into the sim, it is dead with the MFD showing engine info red Xs

 

Thanks again for looking at this!!

 

Dave Snyder

 

Log.txt TBM900_Log.txt

[Goran_M]

I can see some failures getting tripped in the default X-Plane menu.  There are also 2 cases of the generators going online.  So SOMETHING is drawing power, but the log doesn't say what.

Do you have any lua scripts controlling anything?

Can you post a screenshot of the Main panel and overhead panel after you shut everything down?

 

[David Snyder]

I can confirm that I didn't add any LUA scripts.

 

 

 

[Goran_M]

Remove all the contents of the X-Plane 11/Output/TBM900/state folder, and put them seomewhere on your drive, outside of X-Plane.  Make sure X-Plane is shut down when you do this.

Re-start X-Plane and load the TBM, then do whatever you do that shows battery wear.

Does the problem persist?

[David Snyder]

Done.

 

I went back into the sim, did a "Fix all Systems" (So that my battery isn't broken), powered up the plane, and did a shut down and then exited X-Plane.

I will now leave the sim for the day to see if the battery "breaks" again, and will try again tonight to see what happens.

 

Does it matter that I am exiting the sim before the 4 minutes it takes for the standby horizon/altimeter instrument to power down?

For this test, I will make sure that it shuts off before I exit, but am just curious, not sure if I always wait for that.

Thanks again.

 

 

 

 

 

[Goran_M]

7 hours ago, David Snyder said:

Does it matter that I am exiting the sim before the 4 minutes it takes for the standby horizon/altimeter instrument to power down?

Hmmm, it SHOULDN'T matter.  It's on a timer, and with the sim shut down, it should take it into consideration.  I would have to check with Saso.

Regardless, it's definitely a good idea to let it count down for this test.  Might be a bug.

[David Snyder]

Loaded it back up tonight and back to dead battery. 

 

I was certain I let the standby instrument shut down, so I don't think that is the culprit.

 

 

[Goran_M]

Very bizarre.  I'll look deeper into this and try to replicate.  If I find anything, I'll post back.

[David Snyder]

Think I have this solved!

Dumb user error (and a potential area of improvement on X-Plane)

It turns out, that in some of the X-Plane failures sub items, some sensors/electronics were FAIELD.  That was saved in my default situation, so it would immediately fail the items on startup causing the errors above.

IT would be nice if the failures menu would auto-open (expand) the subcategories that had failures, and also on the top of the failures dialog, show if ANY systems are in failure state.  I had to go into each one separately and browse through the list and found a few of the subsystems were failed.  How they got in that state to begin with, I have no idea, but that is what happened.

I fixed all of the items failed and then re-saved the situation file, and now it works properly each time.

Thanks for your help.  Hopefully someday, someone else may make the same mistake as me and find the answer here!

 

Take care.

 

 

 

[Aleksandr_]

Hi everyone! 

I have a problem with TBM900, The safety handle, which protects the battery switch, He dies constantly, he doesn't get up. I can't turn on the battery(

Thanks. 

 

[David Snyder]

Related to my posts on this thread regarding the airplane being loaded with a bunch of failures.  While I thought my above explanation was the root cause, it actually covered up the real issue.  I believe the real root cause is that if you save a flight (.sit) file, but then CHANGE TO ANOTHER TBM AIRFRAME, and then load a saved flight (.sit file) you can get the failures on startup like I was reporting.  The fix to that is to RESAVE the flight (.sit file) with the new airframe and then the problem will not re-appear).  Just posting here in case someone else runs into this issue.