Helix 7 Chirp GPS G2N Not Powering On

So I had an issue with my Helix 7 this morning that left me kinda scratching my head. I drilled a hole, dropped the ducer in the hole and showed 11.9-12.4 feet – there were multiple fish in the bottom two feet of the column so the unsteady bottom didn’t worry me at all. I left and punched 25 holes or so, came back and the unit was powered off. I attempted to turn it back on and it will not turn back on.

I’m running a brand new DL 12v10ah battery with a full charge, and all connections are clean and tight.

Anyone else have similar issues, and if so how did you rectify them?

There’s not much to check, but if you have a multi-meter it would be helpful.

First check the battery voltage, make sure it’s reading 13.x with a full charge and after a rest.

Next, pull the power plug out of the back of the unit and test for power at the plug.

Hopefully you have nothing there and it’s a blown fuse (if you have one), a bad wire, or a bad crimp.

If you have power at the plug, inspect the male prongs coming out of the back of the unit. If they aren’t bent/broken/corroded, it’s time to contact customer service and probably have to send the unit in.

Hope this helps

Not unusual to get a bad battery I have had several new batteries that only lasted a month or two.

I know this is stupid and obvious but nearly got me so…. Power connection to the back of the head unit? check that and maybe reset it?

I have had similar issues with a LiFePO. First thing to do is switch out the power source and test it again.

Even a fully charged LiFePO can be flakey. They have a battery management system which will switch the power off under load if it senses a problem. Simply testing voltage will not detect this failure mode.

J

Bring the unit to a local store that has Hummingbird Helix Ice models on display and plug it into their power source using their plug. You’ll quickly see it’s the unit or the battery/cable.

Thanks for all of the responses. As soon as I got home I ran to the hardware store and picked up a multimeter. The battery showed 5.8 volts, so either the unit got turned on in the carrying case or the brand new DL 12v10ah is bad. I charged the battery back up, and adjusted the head unit so there’s no pressure on the power button. The battery has been off the charger for 6 hours now and is holding strong at 13.5 volts. I’ll be headed to the lake in the morning to give it a good test and I’ll report back.

mine gets turned on accidentally often , so to prevent it I got into the habit of disconnecting the power when putting it away

The saga continues… last weekend I took this unit out on the lake and the battery performed flawlessly for the little bit of use it got. I took Cheers’ advice and voltage stayed right at 13.6.

The issue I had this trip was that the transducer wouldn’t pick anything up – I was in 30’ of water so I manually set my max depth at 33’ but the depth kept flashing 0.0 and never picked up my jig. My son also has a Helix 7 (his is a G3, mine is a G2), his worked perfectly. I was running 2 year old software, he was running the software from last year (factory installed). Rather than try messing with it on the ice, I used one of my old Marcum backups for the day.

Once I got home, the first thing I did was a factory reset. The second was the software update, and immediately I could hear the transducer start pinging after the update. I’m going to try and get out this week, I’ll keep everyone posted.

Tight lines!