Sudden electrical gremlin
Out of the blue and for no apparent reason, this has just started happening.
Anyone got any clues?
Mine has been doing that for ages. Makes it difficult sometimes to check whether the throttle calibration is correct.
I've no idea what is causing it, but normal operation of the bike doesn't seem to be affected.
Mine has been doing that for 1,5 year now. It is even worse on my machine. I am 99% sure that it has to do with humidity / moisture on the temperature sensors or in the connectors towards the sensors. If it gets really bad your bike will refuse to charge until the humidity drops.
I've been dealing with these gremlins for years. They just hang around, they don't affect the behaviour of the Vectrix. Don't worry.
Small tip.
If your dashboard is rebooting after checking the temperature at a traffic light, you don't have to wait for the dashboard to finish rebooting but can enable the GO during the reboot and drive away.
Aircon
Other than an outright failure of something on the dash circuit, the only thing that resets the dash is a loss of 12V power to the dash. Since nothing else seems to lose power, like the headlites etc, I suspect that the main 12V is fine. The 12V to the dash is fused with a re settable fuse on the ICM. The dash is not affected by any other component (like the temp sensors) and is not needed at all for the scoot to run. You can disconnect the dash and the scoot will operate normally. If the current draw on the faulty dashes is a little higher than normal it could cause the fuse to open. Or perhaps the wires to the dash are routed such that they are rubbing on something and intermittently shorting out. I'd be curious to see what happens if you put a meter on the dash 12V while this is happening.
Aircon
Other than an outright failure of something on the dash circuit, the only thing that resets the dash is a loss of 12V power to the dash. Since nothing else seems to lose power, like the headlites etc, I suspect that the main 12V is fine. The 12V to the dash is fused with a re settable fuse on the ICM. The dash is not affected by any other component (like the temp sensors) and is not needed at all for the scoot to run. You can disconnect the dash and the scoot will operate normally. If the current draw on the faulty dashes is a little higher than normal it could cause the fuse to open. Or perhaps the wires to the dash are routed such that they are rubbing on something and intermittently shorting out. I'd be curious to see what happens if you put a meter on the dash 12V while this is happening.
This phenomenon only occurs when you put the kill switch in the off position and pull the left brake. This means it cannot be a short circuit or any other 12V issue because it can be reproduced and only occurs in very specific circumstances.
The reason I suspect the temp sensors is that when you pull the left brake the display needs to display the temperature and volt reading. On my bike the volt reading usually displays fine but the temperature does not and then it reboots. This also happens on the initial plug-in to the mains. When the humidity is high (which is often in my country) the problem is worse. Last summer we had a really dry period and very low humidity in the air and the problem went away completely!
As soon as I have the guts to open up this baby and install the quiet fans and Lairds firmware I will also clean the temperature boards and connectors and see if it kills this gremlin.
There is no real connection between the dash and the temp sensors except thru the CANbus. The dash has 12V, gnd,CANhi,and CANlo signals going to it. The display info comes over the CAnbus so the dash doesnt care what it is displaying.
Older SW did have a bug in it that made the speedo go nuts when the key was turned on and the charger plugged in and in delay mode. It looks similar to this problem except the back lighting doesnt turn off.
It could be that the dash is also failing when the humidity is high, so it looks like the temp sensors are causing it.
KC
if you could measure a few things we could narrow this down. Let me know and I can walk you thru it.
Sure but I was planning to do work on the bike when the weather improves. I have no indoor space to work on it unfortunately.
As my warranty expired a few months ago I was planning to install the Laird's firmware with quiet fans before it gets warm over here. But I need to buy a CAN cable first. So it may be another month before I open up my Vectrix.
I was able to reliably reproduce the problem on mine and capture the CAnbus data during the reboot. It seems like it is some kind of dash HW or dash SW related issue. The dash icons are normally controlled by data on specific PGNs (CAN addresses), or by hardware (ie the clock). However, the control can be overridden by writing the secret password on a specific PGN. The data of this PGN can control individual segments on the dash. A different password is asserted to release the override. When the Kill switch/left lever sequence is invoked this backdoor control occurs to display the voltage and temps. Its during the release that something funny seems to occur. Normally there is continuous CAN activity from the dash, but when this problem occurs, there is a long delay (2-10 seconds) before activity resumes. Its like the dash SW hangs and watchdog timer expires and resets the dash SW. More to come.
I bet that it will come back as soon as the weather changes (humidity)
I just plugged it in for a bit of a recharge and it rebooted twice before settling into a normal charge. I'm a bit nervous about this.