Fault finding a non working Simrad TP10 tiller pilot

Okay, I have now tried it connected to a car battery, rather than my bench power supply. It now remains in auto, moving in our out in response to you rotating it suggesting it is trying to correct a course. This thing really really does not like small transient voltage drops.

So will try it on the boat, hopefully later this week.
 
So it is not as "fixed" as I thought.

Tried it again this aftenoon. It would hold a course if nothing much happened, the rod moving in and out just a little to keep her straight, but if a big disturbance happened, a gust of wind, wake from a passing boat etc, it gets confused and then just keeps slowly extending the rod taking the boat further and further off course seeming not to realise it is turning more and more off course and not correcting.

It was so much so that at one point I thought it had it port / starboard mounting side configured wrong, so I double checked that.

I then tried the compass calibration routine, at the end of our sail, sails down and motoring around in a slow circle as described in the manual. I think we tried 3 times and each time it failed the calibration. It lets you know as you are going by flashing either the port or starboard light if your turn is too quick or too slow. We tried different speeds and rates of turn, but each time it would flash one light on part of the turn suggesting you are turning too quick, then on another part of the turn, flash the other light suggesting you are turning too slow. The thing is, this too tight / too shallow was entirely repeatable each turn, so the compass must be working in some way?

Surely it can't be that this calibration requires to be done in a completely windless dead flat millpond? It was reasonably calm but there was a tide running and a light wind, so perhaps that was making our turn not entirely constant and even?

I am out of ideas now, how to properly test the operation of the compass?
 
When calibrating my own tiller pilot, I do it by holding the unit and rotating it 'by hand' at the appropriate rate with the boat alongside.
 
ProDave said:
If I switch it to auto, it hunts in and out for a few seconds and then switches back to standby. I don't know if this is normal with no movement?
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In my experience that always indicated low voltage due to corroded plugs. I ended up replacing the plug annually as a dodgy autopilot is worse than no autopilot on a small boat when solo!
 
So yesterday was calm and we tried again calibrating the compass. Still no luck, so after we had motored around in circles for 10 minutes we went for a sail.

We tried the AP holding course again, and found if we set a roughly east or west course, it seemed to hold course, but if we set a roughly north or south course, it would creep round to about east or west then hold that course.

This was just screaming to me, the compass is not working. So I brought it home and took it apart again.

I don't know much about fluxgate compasses, but I was surprised to find no moving parts (was expecting and hoping to find a stuck compass needle inside)

Looking at the circuit diagram it has one exitation coil and a sine and cosine output coil. One of the output coils was reading half a megohm compared to the other reading 7 ohms. These are fine enamelled copper wires that are soldered onto a 5 pin header and then a blob of silicon stuck on top. Silicon removed and the broken wire soldered back, and the others re soldered for good measure.

All i can say is it now behaves differently on the bench to what it did, the operation of the port and starboard lights during calibration is definitely different, though I failed to get it to calibrate at home by slowly rotating it, I don't think I could get the slow rotation even enough by hand, hot helped by the short power cable gradually winding itself up.

So it's wait again until next on the boat, probably Saturday to try it again.
 
Saturday was far too wild to try the TP10. But today was calm so got to try it again.

This thing is nothing but frustration. This time it went though the compass calibration routine without flashing either light suggesting it was happy with the rate of turn throughout the calibration procedure, but it still gave a long beep at the end suggesting it had failed.

Never mind, lets try it. Well it does seem to be holding course but it tended to wander a bit side to side, so I tried adjusting one of the tuning parameters and that seems to have improved it. We left it holding course under sail for some time without issue, then later used it to hold course under motor whilst tidying up the boat on the way back to the harbour.

With something like this which is clearly second hand, and we don't know what settings the previous owner might have set correctly or incorrectly, I wish there was a "return to factory defaults" option.
 
I guess that the easiest way is to contact the manufacturer about the default option.
By the way, I saw you coming past 'The Point' yesterday pm; the boat looked good and I was jealous of you sailing. (y)
 
jamie N said:
By the way, I saw you coming past 'The Point' yesterday pm; the boat looked good and I was jealous of you sailing. (y)
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Probably not many more sailing days this year, we crane out on October 14th. Weather next week looks pants.

Boat looks good from a distance but Jib needs new UV strip and a damned good clean.

We had to finish early yesterday as I had to be taxi for my daughter, otherwise we would have stayed out later until tide for getting into the harbour dictated we finish.

Then we have the list of winter jobs, which includes fixing the two known leaks in the boat, neither of which can be done while afloat. Cleaning and new UV strip on jib, new stac pack. fix toilet flush and fix / replace VHF radio.
 
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