Equinox Spontanteous Restart Issue

[GB_Amateur]

Has anyone experienced either of the following with his/her Equinox:

1) unpredictable, spontaneous restart after the unit has been turned on and has been operating for at least several minutes?  (I did notice that any change of settings I had made post turn-on and prior to this unexpected restart were not saved),

2) trouble starting up -- unit restarts itself during its startup procedure?  (I've seen this do the recycle loop anywhere from just once to maybe 4 or 5 times, but usually it heals itself.  Other times I've physically turned it off and back on).

I've operated my Eqx 800 well over 500 hours on between 150 and 200 hunts.  Prior to yesterday I'd seen each of these about half dozen times or less.  Yesterday in my back yard, doing some air testing with the Eqx stationary, #1 happened between 5 and 10 times in about a 20 minute period.

 

[Jeff McClendon]

That does not sound good. I have never experienced that. I have had my 800 overheat, lockup and display the triangular caution icon in the top left corner of the display but it was 103 F that day and I was overheating too. Unless you are operating your Nox on extremely low battery levels........ it looks  like you will be getting a new control head.      
 

Jeff

[Steve Herschbach]

Nope, never had it happen on any of my three Equinox.

[EL NINO77]

GB Amater .. in the summer darkened my display from high temperature in the summer above 40 degrees Celsius in Spain, because I left the detector in the field in the sun for quite a long time lying ..... But everything returned quickly to normal ... after a slight lowering the detector temperature in the shade.

Regarding a recurring reset at Equinox ... I would try to connect the detector to a powerbank ... and test the Equinox Stability like that ..

If there is a connection error at the detector coil itself ... then the detector should turn itself off ...

[GB_Amateur]

Thanks for the replies.  Sounds like I get to use the warranty....  Probably no better time than right now.  My only concern is the intermittant nature of this problem.  I just gotta hope they believe me.

1 hour ago, EL NINO77 said:

If there is a connection error at the detector coil itself ... then the detector should turn itself off ...

Interestingly, as I was putting the detector away for the day I decided to check the battery level.  This was after I disconnected the coil!  Not thinking about that (absentmindedly), I turned it on and got a 'C d' (coil defect?) message in the middle of the screen.  Turned it off, attached the coil, came back on with max (three bars) on the battery indicator.

I have wondered if somehow EMI messes with the control unit, causing it to freak out.  I do have quite a bit of EMI in & around my house.  But this is the first time it's acted up when I've been running it either in the house or in the back yard (as yesterday).

 

[Steve Herschbach]

[nordic]

Perhaps worth trying to reset and reflash the unit?

Also, phones behave similarly when battery ages...

[Mark Gillespie]

My F75 will reboot when the batteries get to low

 

[GB_Amateur]

On 4/1/2020 at 5:59 PM, nordic said:

Perhaps worth trying to reset and reflash the unit?

I was getting ready to do that (writing down my settings first) when I decided to give it another chance.  About 15 minutes with my test-stand and it didn't act up.

There was one detail I left out previously -- I didn't have the coil attached to the shaft but rather sitting off to the side to make it easier to see the screen while air testing.  The reason I left that info out is because previously when this happened in the field the coil was attached normally.  I suppose it could be an issue, but I don't see why.

I'm still holding off doing a factory reset at least until it happens again.  Ditto on sending it in for warranty service.  (I still have almost a year on the warranty.)

 

[Steve Herschbach]

I’d have done a factory reset in a heartbeat. If you’ve not done that way too early to be even thinking about a return for service. Far from holding off on resets mine gets reset fairly often, just about every time I make a major location change or even just change coils. I have no real evidence to back this up, but in my opinion the longer you go without a full reset, the better the chances of a glitch occurring. Especially for people that fiddle with the settings a lot.