5volt not working on power distribution board

Technical Technical Discussion
1

So we were trying to rig up our never before used axis camera from last year so we could take an attempt at tracking. We connected the wires to the 5v slot on the power distribution board from 2011. The problem we’re having is the camera receives no power and the 5volt light on the power distribution board doesn’t even light up. Our battery is fully charged and we double checked this via volt meter. Its a 12volt battery. the 12v and 24v slots on the PD board light up and everything that is supposed to be powered works fine and is effectively powered. We haven’t made any recent changes to the electrical system.

Any insight on this is welcome and I believe I put in all the info I could think of

2

This happened to us last year. The lack of the light on the 5V tells the story.
I’m thinking the 5v regulator on your Power Distribution board is gone. Use your multimeter to measure the voltage on the camera terminals to verify this.

3

Ok, what numbers would indicate that this is true? and our camera doesn’t turn on either as an added detail.

4

Set your multimeter to read volts (20 max would work) and put the two probes into the two terminals on the 5V connector (red is negative, black is positive). If the multimeter shows 5V, then your PDB is okay. If not, you have a problem.

5

If you probe the voltage of the 5v supply on the PD board with a multimeter and it shows 0v, then the 5v supply is dead.

I had this issue on our mule vehicle, and just got 5v from the DSC’s sensor power bus. I don’t know the current source limit of the DSC’s 5v bus, but it’s enough to power one camera (with nothing else on 5v power). There is no rule prohibiting this arrangement, although it’s sub optimal if you have a lot of sensors and stuff and overload the 5v bus.

6

Alright so since I’m not at our school right now I’ll have to test this tommorrow but other than using a different PDB is there another fix if this is indeed the situation?

7

This?

This?

Or not use the 5V connector, providing everything else works and you’re not breaking any rules in the process

8

Looks right, and one of the seniors said that you need to plugin the axis camera to the 5volt so yeah

9

I don’t think the camera is required to be in the regulated 5V terminal. Can you point to the rule that says so. The closest I can find is:

and I don’t see anything regarding the camera’s power source. Now, it’s highly recommended that you use the regulated power supply for the camera, since this will keep outputting 5 volts even as the battery fluctuates (which can’t be said for the unregulated terminals). You can run the camera off of something else (as long as all applicable rules are satisfied and the camera gets the 5 V-DC that it needs), but you’ll get better/more consistent results with the dedicated 5V supply.

Honestly, if your PDB is broken, the best thing to do is just buy a new one - it’ll save you a lot of trouble in the long run.

10

If replacing the Power Distribution board doesn’t resolve the problem then I would look at the possibility of a short either in the wiring to the camera or inside the camera itself. You can check this possibility by:

  1. disconnecting power to the power distribution board
  2. disconnecting the camera connector from the power distribution board
  3. reconnecting power to the power distribution board
    If after doing these steps, the 5V LED lights up then that would indicate the presence of a short somewhere.