poor support from B & G

[wotayottie]

Got a radar problem after only 3 years service - the plotter insists there is no scanner then for a few days it finds the scanner, then it stops finding it again. So a call to B&G technical to try and get some guidance on which bit of the system might be the culprit and which needs to be sent back for repair.

In fact two phone calls so far with messages left on the individuals mail box. No response at all.

Likely they think that as a private individual I should deal with the box shifter who sold me the kit. What do you think his understanding of networks will be like?

 

[mlthomas]

I have had the same from the support line, however, the agent in Hull was absolutely fantastic.

 

[Lucky Duck]

I'm still waiting a response on how to get a software update undertaken on my VHF as it is not user serviceable and no one local has expressed any interest in helping

 

[Seven Spades]

I have had some really interesting conversations with installers and the story is always the same. B&G is good kit until you need service and they have some unique feature's. However Raymarine offer world wide quibble free support and they all say get Raymarine.

My issue with Raymarine is that every new generation of Raymarine equipment is not backwards compatible and I think that there is no excuse for that. With all the brains at Raymarine their engineers out to be able to devise a protocol where everything is future proof and that all future plotters can talk to previous generations of radar for example. Raymarine orphans equipment which means if one item goes wrong it can be very expenive to fix because you cannot spot change nor upgrade. That is where I think it is costing Raymarine lost sales, people cannot upgrade by stealth a bit each year and each upgrade adding new functionality etc. Instead you have to comit to changing a lot of kit which people don't have the budget for some they stick with old equipment.

 

[Giblets]

Do B&G have a Twitter account were you could raise the question of poor support service?

 

[[2068]]

I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect the new Raymarine MFD’s to support old analog Radars, as an example.
It would add weight, complexity, power consumption, and cost more.

 

[prv]

My issue with Raymarine is that every new generation of Raymarine equipment is not backwards compatible and I think that there is no excuse for that. With all the brains at Raymarine their engineers out to be able to devise a protocol where everything is future proof and that all future plotters can talk to previous generations of radar for example.

I don't think that's true. Yes, there was a jump in radars when they went from sending an analogue video signal and various pulses on individual wires, to sending UDP packets over ethernet - that's a fundamental shift in technology and it's not really sensible to support both methods in one product. But either side of that jump, they had and have several generations of compatibility between plotters and radars. They also had a jump from the original SeaTalk (fully compatible from 1989 to the present day (current range of autopilot remotes still use it)) to SeaTalkNG/N2K, but in this case they offered an active converter to connect both ways between the two. I'm still on Raymarine now largely because their 2017 plotter (brand new this spring) talks perfectly to my late-90s and early-2000s instruments. I was all set to give the Navico brands a try, but Raymarine backward-compatibility meant that just didn't make sense.

Pete

 

[Seven Spades]

It is not just radars that suffer. Some plotters can't talk to each other. So only one will talk to the auto-pilot in some cases. For example if you mix an RL and an A series, the A series will always command the autopilot not the RL. I think that this is a software design problem that should not happen. I agree about the radar that is not a good example, but all plotters should talk to each other with new plotters supporting extra features. Now that everything seems to have standardised on NEMA2000, I really don't understand why this isn't happening.

 

[DuncanHall]

I don't think that's true. Yes, there was a jump in radars when they went from sending an analogue video signal and various pulses on individual wires, to sending UDP packets over ethernet - that's a fundamental shift in technology and it's not really sensible to support both methods in one product. But either side of that jump, they had and have several generations of compatibility between plotters and radars. They also had a jump from the original SeaTalk (fully compatible from 1989 to the present day (current range of autopilot remotes still use it)) to SeaTalkNG/N2K, but in this case they offered an active converter to connect both ways between the two. I'm still on Raymarine now largely because their 2017 plotter (brand new this spring) talks perfectly to my late-90s and early-2000s instruments. I was all set to give the Navico brands a try, but Raymarine backward-compatibility meant that just didn't make sense.

Pete

I concur

I have a system with original 2002 instruments and autocontrol plus a new e-series plotter and quantum radar. The autopilot works fine and data are converted from seatalk to seatalk NG. It also interfaces with the Simrad standalone AIS via NMEA 183.

 

[horatio_nelson]

Tweet them @BandG - seems to be the modern world's most effective way in prompting responses from corporate entities in situations like this

 

[Skylark]

B&G is a Navico brand. My boat came fitted with Simrad, also a Navico brand.

I had a lot of warranty issues with my electronics. The boat manufacturer had absolutely no interest in the issues and told me to contact Simrad directly. Their service people proved to be somewhat elusive. I “googled” “who is the ceo of Navico”. I had a few attempts at guessing his email address and dropped him a very polite and courteous note along the lines that I thought he’d appreciate knowing that I was not receiving the standards of customer satisfaction doubtless established by him.

I had a phone call from Simrad service within half an hour. It still took more than 6 months and several visits to fix the issues, though.

 

[lpdsn]

Now that everything seems to have standardised on NEMA2000, I really don't understand why this isn't happening.

NMEA2000 really isn't suited for transferring significant amounts of data. For a start it is only 250 Kilo bit and it is extremely inefficient at using that for anything other than very small packets. The Data field is a maximum of 8 bytes per frame. The overhead of sending data across multiple frames is very high.

 

[Martin_J]

Wotayottie

You have not said what Radome you have nor what plotter (forgive me if I've missed something) so not easy to diagnose.. Also - You don't say if you have the RI10 interface module (i.e. the bit that does the power switching and connects the RJ45 ethernet interface from the radome to the Lowrance style yellow ethernet connector).

Assuming you have the 3G radome and the RI10 interface box, then have you checked the firmware version of the RI10.

There was an update to v1.4.0 for this interface box to correct the 'No Radar' fault.

RI10-New-Software-1-4-0-and-1-4-1/

 

[prv]

NMEA2000 really isn't suited for transferring significant amounts of data. For a start it is only 250 Kilo bit and it is extremely inefficient at using that for anything other than very small packets. The Data field is a maximum of 8 bytes per frame. The overhead of sending data across multiple frames is very high.

Yep. When you connect Maretron's N2kAnalyzer software to an N2k system, it downloads the configuration from their various instruments in order to display it. This can't be a vast amount of data, but it still takes an appreciable time to trickle through. Trying to convey a radar picture or share chart data over such a link would not be sensible, hence the various manifestations of ethernet used for those purposes.

In the OP's shoes I'd be inserting a switch with traffic mirroring into the link to the radar, and plugging in a laptop with Wireshark to see what's going on when it works and doesn't work. But I realise that not everybody is equipped to do this kind of thing

Pete

 

[Sybarite]

However Raymarine offer world wide quibble free support and they all say get Raymarine..

As with my autopilot.... !!

Two months out of warranty and the pilot gives up the ghost. The concessionnaire's estimate to repair was more than the new cost...

 

[laika]

Yes, there was a jump in radars when they went from sending an analogue video signal and various pulses on individual wires, to sending UDP packets over ethernet - that's a fundamental shift in technology and it's not really sensible to support both methods in one product.

The quantum radar won't work with my C90W which I think was discontinued in 2013 and supports all the digital radar which was current at that time. On the other hand my C90W works perfectly well with ST50s which were probably new with the boat in 1991. Raymarine were pretty good about keeping seatalk 1 support for a long time after it was essentially obsolete but I wouldn't rely on any software updates for discontinued products.