One for the Raymarine Experts!

[howardclark]

Had a Raymarine AIS transceiver fitted a few years ago - worked absolutely fine displaying targets on on old C80 plotter.
this season it has stopped working ie no display but the transceiver shows a green light indicating it thinks it is OK. A few AIS error messages appear on the display referencing no position sensor, anRx problem and a sync problem.
So I got the computer out and plugged it in to the transceiver- immediately the whole system starts working! Lots of targets and our boat appearing on
Marine View - an app. Diagnostics show all OK.
Disconnect the computer and it stops working!
What on earth is happening ?

 

[howardclark]

I’ve double checked the power supply- it definitely has a feed - hence the green light

 

[laika]

To state the obvious, if it's a transceiver and there's an error saying no position sensor, perhaps the issue is with the attached GPS antenna. Why did it work when you plugged the computer in? Just a guess but...does the computer receive GPS from another sensor and was the connection you made to the AIS unit bi-directional? I thought my AIS 500 only used the dedicated GPS for position but maybe it (or other raymarine transceivers) will take position from a USB connection if the dedicated GPS is non-functional.

 

[[164147]]

It's possible your NMEA bus on the C80 has failed or the baud setting changed.

 

[howardclark]

Baud settings look OK- the computer is not attached to anything else and doesn’t have GPS. The error messages look like a string which is saying’ I’m seeing an AIS link but not getting data from it.’ All the sensors are fine and except from the AIS the whole Raymarine system is working fine.

 

[[164147]]

You can see the NMEA 0183 sentences on the C80 through the diagnostics menu. If there aren't any then the AIS NMEA output or C80 input has failed. Presumably you've checked the connections are sound?

 

[howardclark]

Yes - when attached to the computer the sentences look right and all targets on the screen are normal. The green LED at this point is brighter so it looks to me as if the main circuit board or part of it is not powering up via the principal power supply. Time to call an engineer in!