BCDC 1225D and Solar Power - 7 Blinking LEDs! (3 Viewers)

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Oct 29, 2018
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Herndon VA
Yesterday I got the motivation to create some Y-cables to facilitate plugging in two 160W flexible solar panels into the BCDC when ever we go camping. I have been using the BCDC for a few months now and never had any issues. However, for whatever reason when I removed the AUX battery ground to install the Solar Panel Ground the BCDC started flashing all 7 LEDs... Looking through the manual this is not a condition covered by the trouble shooting guide. The funny thing was when I ungrounded the AUX battery the 7 LEDs would stop flashing and only LED A would blink... as normal.

I regrounded everything, and the 7 LEDS started flashing again... measuring voltagaes when the car was running indicated only 12.5V was coming from the BCDC unit and it was not charging the battery. After some more head scratching I decided to call REDARC to get some advice.

They indicated connecting those cables to the solar should not kick any error codes (especially with no panel plugged in) and the recommended reseting the micro controller in side the unit. I was amazed that i didnt think to do that... i forget how complicated those things are.

So the bottom line: 7 LEDs I think indicates a reverse polarity condition (How it got there in the first place i have no idea)... in some cases the controller on the BCDC gets stuck in that error.. and no amount of fussing with it will fix it. So disconnecting the power wire going in and coming out of the BCDC forces the unit to reset.

Low and behold the reset solved the problem. I connected the panels and everything worked just fine. Figured I would post here because there really is not a lot of information out there. REDARC support was very helpful even at 6am AUS CENT Standard time.. which is about 1630 on the east coast!

The only thing left to solve is why when connected to solar... LEDs displaying normal... the BCDC only pushes 12.58V to the AUX battery... I havent tried charging the battery just off solar yet.. as I just finished the project.. something to play with this weekend!
 
All seven LEDs will flash when there is an error code. The error code is the number of times the LEDs blink before there is a short pause and then they will blink again. This will typically happens when the negative is disconnected and then reconnected.

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