Explain “Searching” on a Inverter/Charger?

Question:

We took our boat to Kitimat last week and everything worked great. The only thing that happened, which I didn’t understand, was the inverter would say “searching” when it wasn’t being used? I would have to go to the remote and turn it off, and then back on to get it working again. Any idea of what is causing this? Also, with our Garmin GPSMap, are there any updates we should be doing? Are there updated charts we should be using? Everything is working well, just wondering about updates?

Answer:

Searching means that the inverter is on, but that it doesn't see any loads, hence "searching" for a reason to turn itself from standby to full power. There is a feature in the inverter where it only turns itself on if the inverter sees a minimum of 50W or so. Perhaps the load you were using was less than 50W.

Yes, you should update you software once a year. You can download the software from the Garmin website and install it on a SD card and then install it on your chartplotter.  Of course, the newer Garmin chartplotters have WiFi built-in so you can update the software whenever you have access to the internet.