Raymarine C70 display and satnav sensor

Bodach na mara

Bodach na mara

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I have the Raymarine Satnav sensor (round squashed bun thing mounted on deck) connected to the C70 display to provide location to the chart plotter. The display is operating OK and the chart plotter worked last year but it is not getting a fix this year since I reconnected the system. I have cleaned the connector but the sensor is displaying a flashing red light which the instructions say means "updating or re-booting." I know that Satnavs can take a while to reboot particularly is they have been off for a while, but I left it on for nearly an hour with no joy. All suggestions welcome.

A second possibly related question is how to get a Satnav signal to the VHF radio as it keeps beeping at intervals, which is annoying. Can this same sensor be used? If so, how?
 
The battery inside the squashed bun is flat. It's a CR2032 but how easy it is to change depends on whether your mushroom is an RS120 (rather tricky) or RS125 ( just fiddly).

Do a search on the forum for CR2032 and RS125 and you should get plenty of info as many of us have been through this process. :)

The same sensor can be used by taking an NMEA0183 output from the plotter. I'm surprised that it is not already connected unless you have something else using the NMEA0183 port on the back of the plotter. Once again, plenty of link available.

Richard
 
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Thanks Richard, I do not know which sensor it is but will find out when next at the boat. All the information is very useful.

When I got the boat in 2016, the VHF radio had no link to nay Sat Nav. The display on the radio ceased to work last year and I replaced it.

There is a lot of electronic equipment on the boat and all the manuals, but I have found before that if I did not install something, I have difficulty in sorting out problems. Even tracing power supply leads through the spaghetti of wiring is an off-putting task, although the previous owner did attach stick-on labels to many cables.
 
Bodach na mara said:
Thanks Richard, I do not know which sensor it is but will find out when next at the boat. All the information is very useful.

When I got the boat in 2016, the VHF radio had no link to nay Sat Nav. The display on the radio ceased to work last year and I replaced it.

There is a lot of electronic equipment on the boat and all the manuals, but I have found before that if I did not install something, I have difficulty in sorting out problems. Even tracing power supply leads through the spaghetti of wiring is an off-putting task, although the previous owner did attach stick-on labels to many cables.
Click to expand...

I understand Ken. The radio you replaced was a plain VHF and your new radio is a DSC VHF. :)

You need to look at the back of plotter and see if the NMEA0183 5-pin socket (bottom right corner from the back) is being used for anything. It is has a plug and cable in it but the cable is not in use then it's easy to lead that cable into the back of the radio, extended as necessary.

If the cable is in use you need to find where it goes to.

If it's just an empty socket then the problem is that it is difficult/expensive to find that Raymarine cable and it might be easier to pursue another route using a second GPS receiver to get the data into your DSC. Once again, depending upon what you find, there is plenty of experience on this forum as it has been a very common problem in recent years as the Raymarine cable goes AWOL .... do a search for R08004 and cable.

Richard
 
Once again thanks Richard. I have a Garmin 235 plotter/sounder with a GPS antenna on the push-pit so I may be able to get a connection from that, although neither the Garmin nor the Raymarine unit is anywhere the radio. The Garmin unit works well as a position finder except that the chips that I have for it are for the south coats and the Yorkshire to Kent areas. It is the depth function on it tat has a constant reading of zero. I suspect that the transducer mount is not brilliant. It is bedded on a blob of grease. I tried replacing the grease, but intend to experiment with wallpaper paste to find a good spot

I see from another thread that someone mentioned a USB dongle as a position source. I will look into whether one of those could be made to work with the radio. Or the Raymarine display.
 
Update:- I could not get to the underside of the mushroom to get it off, so decided to let things lie for a while. I have position from a Garmin 235 plotter/sounder even if the only chart cards I have are for the south and south-east coasts and the sounder is not listening to the sensor.

But today I found that the Raymarine was turned on by mistake. And after about an hour of showing "No Fix" I found it displaying the right position on the chart and the magic word "FIX" had appeared. On another thread it did say that the RS120 will be slow to get a fix on start-up if the battery is low. Obviously just a bit slower than the 15 minutes I have been giving it.
 
That's the right symptoms for a flat battery. I think that even if the battery is removed, the RS120 and RS125 will both get a fix eventually but it just takes a while.

My RS125 takes about 10 minutes once the battery is flat so it could well be that the RS120, being an older design, takes a long longer.

The battery usually lasts 7 or 8 years so it's worth changing.

Richard
 
Thanks Richard, I will, once I can work out how to get the mushroom off and how to open it up. It is mounted on the hatch garage just out of reach of my hands through the hole left when I remove the instrument displays. From reading around, it may be less trouble to simply cut it out of the system and fit a new receiver mushroom. The only problem there is tracing the weird wiring. The cable from the mushroom does not go directly to the C70 display as I thought it would, but disappears through the deck and behind the head-lining.

Maybe the display was originally down below at the chart table and whoever moved it to the cockpit simply ran another cable from there back up to the new mount on the raised breakwater where the spray hood is mounted.

The immediate problem now however is finding out why turning on the switch for the autopilot or the plotter turns on both. This did not happen last season!
 
I had a similar issue at the beginning of last season. My system has a Raystar 120 mushroom antenna. As far as I remember you open two allen screws at the bottom to get the top of the mushroom off. The battery is the common and cheap CR2032. I got them from Maplin . The issue was attaching them. The original had connectors welded to its case and them soldered to the PCB. I tried braising and soldering on similar connectors with no joy.
I then tried making a small flat spiral of fairly stiff copper wire , one spiral for each pole of the battery. the end of each spiral is straight for a couple of cms and acts as a connection lead to the PCB. Then I tightly taped the spirals to the battery using Electrical Insulating tape. So you end up with the Battery tightly bound in insulation tape and a +Ve and N Ve leads protruding that can now easily be soldered to the PCB. Snip off the origianl batter connections and solder in your modified version. This doesn't sound that reliable but mine is working perfectly since the beginning of last season.

Good luck with it , Kinsale 373.
 
Thanks Kinsale. Getting at these Allen screws will be the problem as I cannot get access to the studs holding the mushroom on the hatch garage in the first place. However I will try again once laid up again because I tried it again today and it got a fix in under 3 minutes, so problem resolved. For now.
 
Bodach na mara said:
once I can work out how to get the mushroom off and how to open it up. It is mounted on the hatch garage just out of reach of my hands
Click to expand...

How easy would it be to remove the hatch garage? On some boats they’re bonded or even glassed in place, on others it’s just a few screws. In the latter case the GPS was probably fitted with the garage loose, and could be removed the same way.

Pete
 
Kinsale373 said:
I had a similar issue at the beginning of last season. My system has a Raystar 120 mushroom antenna. As far as I remember you open two allen screws at the bottom to get the top of the mushroom off. The battery is the common and cheap CR2032. I got them from Maplin . The issue was attaching them. The original had connectors welded to its case and them soldered to the PCB. I tried braising and soldering on similar connectors with no joy.
I then tried making a small flat spiral of fairly stiff copper wire , one spiral for each pole of the battery. the end of each spiral is straight for a couple of cms and acts as a connection lead to the PCB. Then I tightly taped the spirals to the battery using Electrical Insulating tape. So you end up with the Battery tightly bound in insulation tape and a +Ve and N Ve leads protruding that can now easily be soldered to the PCB. Snip off the origianl batter connections and solder in your modified version. This doesn't sound that reliable but mine is working perfectly since the beginning of last season.

Good luck with it , Kinsale 373.
Click to expand...

It's not difficult to buy one with tags on, alternatively you can get battery holders and solder one of those on then slip the battery into it (subject to space available).
e.g.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LAPTOP-C...202524?hash=item43c7e0ba1c:g:Y7YAAOSwrklVeWZ2
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CR2032-C...284784&hash=item2cc8f27cce:g:zBUAAOSwGHJadL7N
(There are different leg configurations.)
 
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