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Old April 8th 20, 05:52 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Dave Nadler
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Posts: 1,610
Default Battery switching without tears

On Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 12:00:15 PM UTC-4, wrote:
... the venerable SN10B, it does not reset and continues right where it
left off, Thanks YO!


Yes, I designed SN10 this way decades ago, because, Big Surprise!!
....glider instruments see power interruptions !!!
The SN10 has an internal short-term backup supply.
When the power is interrupted, it does a smooth shut-down (OS I wrote).
SN10 memory has a long-term backup battery, and next time power is applied,
the SN10 resumes wherever it left off. SN10s never do a hard reboot unless
new software is installed.

Of course, we have had SN10s damaged when customers added a capacitor
to their logger (powered thru SN10), and the inrush current eventually
blew up the SN10 power switch. Also some loggers had giant internal caps
to try prevent corruption, however...

Sensible design dictates avionics have internal short-term supplies
with power-interrupt sensing and implement smooth shutdown, especially
where they write to flash for logging, saving configuration, etc.
Otherwise things like SD cards or internal flash get corrupted with
data loss when power is interrupted during a write operation.
Of course, lots of design out there is not sensible...

Hope that helps clear some of the confusion,
Best Regards, Dave