Raymarine Ray 60 VHF not accepting position data from 0183 to STNG converter

Irish Rover

Irish Rover

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I have Axiom 9 and Axiom 7 MFDs and a Ray 60 VHF. I recently fitted a 0183 to STNG converter to integrate an Onwa AIS into the network. The Onwa has a separate external GPS antenna. Previously the VHF was getting its position data from the A9 or the A7 internal GPS. However both are now taking their GPS signal from the converter as default and I don't seem to be able to change the default setting manually. Unfortunately the Ray 60 is not accepting this GPS source and I'm getting a no position data alarm. Has anyone else on the forum experienced this issue and found a solution?
 
My son has found a solution to this issue by changing the settings on the 0183 to STNG converter to stop it sending position to the Raymarine network. It works but it's obviously not ideal - we have an external GPS antenna feeding position to the AIS but the network is not getting the benefit of this alternative source. This is disappointing as there are many reports of the Axiom internal GPS failing and on mine it sometimes takes 5 or more minutes for them to get a fix.
I'd still be very interested to hear if anyone knows a way to get the Ray 60 to accept the position from the converter.
 
You have a few options:

Disable GPS broadcast from the AIS in the settings if yours supports it.
Disable GPS broadcast from the STNG converter.
Change the GPS data source on the Axioms to use internal on the master as priority over the STNG converter via Home->Settings->Network->Data Sources->GPS.

The Ray60 has a menu setting for which network (SeatalkNG / NMEA0183) it connects to so check that.
 
Irish Rover said:
I have Axiom 9 and Axiom 7 MFDs and a Ray 60 VHF. I recently fitted a 0183 to STNG converter to integrate an Onwa AIS into the network. The Onwa has a separate external GPS antenna. Previously the VHF was getting its position data from the A9 or the A7 internal GPS. However both are now taking their GPS signal from the converter as default and I don't seem to be able to change the default setting manually. Unfortunately the Ray 60 is not accepting this GPS source and I'm getting a no position data alarm. Has anyone else on the forum experienced this issue and found a solution?
Click to expand...
Which model of Onwa AIS ?
 
Irish Rover said:
KS200A
Click to expand...
OK, so NMEA 0183 output only @38,400. The Ray 60 can be set to NMEA 0183 high, which is 38,400. From page 51 of the manual :

From the Main menu:
1. Select Set-up.
2. Select Network output.
The following network types are available:
• NMEA 2000 (default)
• 0183 High speed
• 0183 Std speed

You can then connect the output of the AIS to the VHF and the Axioms in parallel, which would allow to to use the VHF with the MFDs turned off, just the AIS turned on, if you so wished.
 
If you connect the AIS in the way Paul suggests you will lose DSC calling / position with the Axiom and also the ability to update the software on the Ray60.
 
DrSpock said:
If you connect the AIS in the way Paul suggests you will lose DSC calling / position with the Axiom and also the ability to update the software on the Ray60.
Click to expand...
That's a fair point.

The OP wants to use the AIS for GPS, so he'll need to leave that setting enabled in the converter and connect the VHF to the network, then select STNG/N2K as the network type, as per post #7. Assuming he is happy that he'd need the AIS and MFD's on to have position on the VHF.
 
I'm assuming that was how it was configured before the AIS & converter were connected otherwise the Ray60 wouldn't have got position data via SeatalkNG from the Axiom. There is no obvious reason why the Ray60 isn't getting GPS data from the SeatalkNG network but suspect it's how it's been connected.
 
Hi gents, I'm Irish Rover's son and I've been doing some of the troubleshooting with him. Just some extra information on the issue, as well as the setup.

The Ray60 is on the stng network, with network output set to NMEA2000 (though I don't think it's actually got anything of interest to output).

Also on the STNG network are two MFDs (Axiom 7, 9), as well as the usual other units.

We added the ONWA AIS with external gps antenna a few months ago, and tried to connect it to the nmea 0183 input on the ray60 radio, but it had no effect (it also did not knock out the radio position, which was coming from the axiom9). It's important to note that's the last time we tried to use the radio's NMEA inputs for this purpose, everything thereafter is on the STNG network.

Recently we added a ydng03 0183 to stng converter to a spare stng port. I only connected the AIS 0183 tx lines to the YDNG rx lines because we have no need of two way traffic here.

On doing this, it didn't work initially, so I wrote a configuration file to set 0183 baud to 38400 on the YDNG. Then it worked, sent AIS targets to the mfds and also gps data (GNSS). Unfortunately that meant no position data was received by the Ray60, and we could not actually deselect the YDNG as the primary GPS source on the mfds either.

To combat this, I rewrote the ydng 0183 config file to filter out 0183 signals related to GPS (GNS, GLA etc, I just blocked all possible signals without checking which were being sent by the AIS). This resulted in the current setup where we have AIS info being converted and put on the STNG network without any issue.

It's just a little frustrating to have an external GPS, and a 0183 to STNG converter and have to block the signal from getting onto the STNG network.

I can't fathom how the ray60 would fail to understand the nmea2000 signal, but I wonder if it's something to do with the sentence characters. I know the YDNG 0183 side uses only 3 character sentences, but I don't know about the 2000/STNG side.

Anyway, if I haven't misunderstood, changing the Ray60 'network output' (from NMEA2000) won't improve our situation as the GPS info is not coming in anywhere except STNG.

Thanks for your patience and sorry for the long post.
 
It's odd that you couldn't connect the AIS to the VHF via NMEA0183 unless you had the SeatalkNG connection at the same time (you can't use both). Although the Network setting says Output is has to be set to the right setting for NMEA0183 input as it doesn't autodetect baud.

I would go back to first principles and test the AIS with the VHF using the Digital Yacht converter and an isolated SeatalkNG network (you might want to factory reset the VHF first which won't affect MMSI). If that works then I'd disable the internal GPS on the axioms and connect the converter without the VHF and make sure you're getting GPS & AIS on the Axioms and then I'd connect the VHF. I would normally also reset the axioms (but then you have to reconfigure) and check a software update wasn't required for any connected devices. Unless you have too many devices on the SeatalkNG network or the GPS antenna isn't GNSS then it's hard to understand why the VHF isn't picking it up.
 
There seems to be something odd about how the GPS position on the STNG network works when there are multiple sources. We had a similar problem with a Ray 50 VHF not getting a position, despite there being both an Axiom and a Camino AIS transponder on the backbone. There is also a GPS repeater display fed via an NMEA 0183 converter that acted weirdly and unreliably.

The solution that made the VHF get a position every time and also fixed the repeater was to manually set the data sources in the Axiom settings.

To do this, go to the network settings, then to data sources and manually select one of the Axioms as the source for both GPS position, and the critical one that made it work was to also set it as the source for time and date.

I don't know why it is so particular about this but we've not had an issue since.
 
Thanks for all the advice and contributions. My son returned to Ireland yesterday, and we've left things as per my #3 - too many other jobs on my to-do list while his free expertise and energy was available. We'll revisit this issue on a future "holiday" I'm sure.
To be continued ----.
 
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