Autohelm Personal Compass playing up with new batteries

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iainhu

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I have an Autohelm Personal Compass and very good it has proved.

On a recent trip back to the UK from Portugal it started showing 'BAT' and not working and so I got two new CR2025 3v Lithium batteries on my return. After replacing the batteries everything seemed fine, but then on a recent trip in Greece the unit would either not power-on, work perfectly for a while and then stop, or show odd illegal characters on the screen; all elements of the display lit to give 888 BAT etc., or other odd segment combinations showing U or inverted U etc. Clearly not right!

I've now tried a second set of new batteries and the same behaviour. If I swap between the original and new sets of batteries 1 & 2 I can have periods of apparently working, periods of all display segments lit, periods of illegal/meaningless segments lit or no life whatsoever and refusing to power on.

Any ideas of what's going on? The unit hasn't suffered any obvious damage, can work perfectly at times, then not at all at other times, and now two replacement sets of batteries seem to give the same odd behaviour which suggests it's not a bad set of replacement batteries.

I'd be pleased for any advice.

Many thanks.../Iain
 
Connections

I did read sometime that these batteries should not be touched with your fingers, the grease off your skin can prevent a good connection. Try cleaning the surface with "non-oily nail varnish remover". That should get rid of any oil on the surface. Also clean the connections in the compass.
 
Have had mine for years now and never changed batteries. Could it be a polarity problem with batteries in series/parallel giving too high/low a voltage.Just a guess really.

Mine is an early one and does not illuminate the display as I've seen others do.

ianat182
 
Well I've not had problems with these CR2025 batteries in anything else but this seemed worth a try. However, on picking the unit up, it now works - perfectly. Hasn't been touched, no batteries replaced, it's just sat there and now works...obviously knows I've posted a message about it.

Only hang on...a couple of hours later and it's not working. It's now playing completely dead. No sign of life at all. Yet when I put it down, it was working fine. Now it's dead and they way this thing is going, tomorrow morning it will be working again. Now explain that!

So I will try the battery cleaning trick, but it's more than odd that it works, then doesn't, then does all with nothing happening to it but sitting for a few hours untouched!
 
Sadly not...have checked and rechecked that thinking the same. And then we have this 'more than odd' behaviour of not working, then working, then not, then working. Quite quite bizarre!
 
Raymarine are the 'owners' of the product

Well Raymarine are now the owners of Autohelm and I did post this question on the Raymarine site, although looking at what they describe as 'My stuff', I can see no questions asked?!

The real issue is that the unit is no longer produced but it's a shame that it appears to be a perfect undamaged piece of kit, has worked particularly well only started not working and showing 'BAT'...hence the battery change...but since then it's all been downhill.

Have been doing some more trials today and can replace the batteries and have the unit entirely dead, can have it light up all the display elements and stay like that for >2 hours (until removing the batteries), have it start up with UUU, square, square, square and other 'illegal' characters and all kinds.

Often if I remove the batteries and leve it say 5-10 mins and then try again, it will behave differently to the previous attempts, e.g. go from being completely dead and not displaying anything to having all display segments on all the time (and unresponsive to any button), or 'illegal characters' followed by all display segments etc. So it's not even consistent in how it behaves, other than that it behaves inconsistentaly!

Have tried cleaning the battiers (in meths...acetone would 'melt' the plastic of the unit), the 'all on display' would suggest there's no issue with battery power...just the unit doing the right thing with it!

.../Iain
 
oldharry said:
Mines doing just the same since I replaced the batteries.
Click to expand...

What prompted you to change your batteries...or is that a silly question?

On mine, it was working, I took the unit out to Portugal for a return trip and on the trip it wasn't working showing 'BAT'. On my return I changed the batteries and things seemed fine so put the unti away and a few weeks later took it to Greece...where it proceeded not to work most of the time...but did work on other occations.

Since then I've tried a new set of batteirs but the same odd behaviour continues, but at least I've rules out the new batteries being an issue.

I'm wondering whether my initial problem was cause, say, by the unit being taken through an airport security x-ray machine? Is that why it first didn't work rather than really being the batteries? Yet my laptop went through the same x-ray machines without problem?

I'm just trying to work out why it started playing up? If it was only wanting new batteries, why the odd behaviour with the new batteries - both sets? I just can't see what's caused it to malfunction.

.../Iain
 
iainhu said:
What prompted you to change your batteries...or is that a silly question?

On mine, it was working, I took the unit out to Portugal for a return trip and on the trip it wasn't working showing 'BAT'. On my return I changed the batteries and things seemed fine so put the unti away and a few weeks later took it to Greece...where it proceeded not to work most of the time...but did work on other occations.

Since then I've tried a new set of batteirs but the same odd behaviour continues, but at least I've rules out the new batteries being an issue.

I'm wondering whether my initial problem was cause, say, by the unit being taken through an airport security x-ray machine? Is that why it first didn't work rather than really being the batteries? Yet my laptop went through the same x-ray machines without problem?

I'm just trying to work out why it started playing up? If it was only wanting new batteries, why the odd behaviour with the new batteries - both sets? I just can't see what's caused it to malfunction.

.../Iain
Click to expand...

New season, compass almost dead, so new batteries. Occasionally works for a few minutes then reverts to fault mode as described. Tried all the usual cleaning batteries, contacts etc, but doeswnt make any difference almost as though it has been de-programmed by the battery running down.
 
Might it be worth trying yet another pair of batteries? I can't believe that many smaller shops actively manage their stock.

Reading this thread yesterday prompted me to dig mine out. Sure enough, flattery battery. New ones working fine for me - sorry!
 
I don't know the systems, but is there any form of 'reset' button to go back to manufacturer's defaults settings ? Sometimes, there's a tiny pin hole...
 
Discharge any capacitors? I've had devices that 'forget' stuff when no power is connected for long periods, even though they have no apparent 'holdover' battery. If you're resetting the bios of a pc the recommended method is to remove the coin cells, and then move a jumper from pins 1&2 to 2&3 and back again. Isn't this to discharge something? I had assumed so.

Happy to be corrected.
 
ah, I see, short the connectors in the unit. For a moment I thought you were suggesting to short the batteries. My ooops !
 
Well my compass suddenly worked this evening. All batteires had been out all day, replaced the old batteries and everything was working...6 bearings taken successfully. TRying the light worked but meant the display faded to almost nothing suggesting the batteries are low. Then within about a minute...odd 'illegal' display of nonsense characters followed by power down.

So obviously the unit is working...it did before dying. So put in new batteries...both sets (one after the other!) and the unit plays completely dead!

Still no reply from Raymarine :-(
 
Well like the 'short the terminals' idea as the unit does seem to (sometimes) respond if simply left for several hours implying a slow self discharge.

Have wondered about the batteries, which is why I have two sets, from two different stores, and both dont' work!

Shorting terminals and using new battery set 1 gave an illegal display but that was a change on no display at all. Then no luck even after re-shorting.

Then tried with new battery set 2, and re-shorting, and after several 'no life at all' starts now have U:UU cc! The U are half an 8 missing the top, so instead of 000 [degree] 0, the zeroed bearing are the 'half U charachters' and the little degree circle and 0 for the bearing number are both little c. And it's staying like this too!

Remove and reinsert the batteries and I now have ooo ++ where 'o' is the top of an 8 with the cross segment and + is a kind of T falled to the right plus BAT is now lit, although the entire display is very feint and can only be seen by looking along the unit.

So next move was to check the batteries. Results are:

Original batteries: 4.5V
New batteries set 1: 3V or less!
New batteries set 2: 5.8V

Whether new set 1 were that dead on purchase will be harder to prove, but it would seem they're not worth using, however, the unit worked happily easier (albeit for a short while) on the old set (4.5V) so you might have expected it to work on new set 2 (5.8V) as they are close to the 2x 3V you'd expect from new batteries.

From this I'm not sure a third set of batteries is worthwhile and so far the internal short hasn't worked so...???
 
There's your problem then.

Set 3 (on my lap) are 6.6 Volts.

Buy 'em from ebay, they're miles cheaper. I have used the ebay shop 'batteries4you' several times. Purchases seem to appear on the doormat just before you click 'confirm'!

ps. cr2025s are nominal 3V.

pps. seems that my hypothesis on 'local shop' batteries is working nicely.
 
Last edited:
Thanks fopr the note about your 2x CR2025 being 6.6V.

2x CR2025 on their way from batteries4you.co.uk at the pincely sum on £0.99 each with free P&P. Not bad considering the previous presumed 'bad' batteries were £2.99 each!

Here's really hoping this is the solution :-) I will report back!

Thx.../Iain
 
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