Raystar 125 GPS

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achwilan

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Just as some other forumites' , my Raymarine GPS suffered the infamous dead battery failure. So I disemboweled the beast, replaced the faulty CR2032 battery, and alas, I am still stuck with "no fix" icon.
The GPS status menu shows no satellite, and worse, the bottom softkeys appear greyed, with no action at all; frustrating as I cannot then "restart GPS".
The mushroom antenna led flashes red, and the C70 dialog menu (bottom left part) shows D-GPS selected (strange, it was only plain GPS before the beast died).
Does some worthy forumite have a clue what to do?...
 
If the LED is red then there is a problem with the 125 so I don't think the C70 menus etc will help.

Assuming that the battery is inserted the correct way and the contacts and battery were cleaned properly with meths or similar, I suspect that either the original problem was not the battery but a more fundamental problem with the RS125. Perhaps you have accidentally fried the electronics with static during the battery replacement?

Have you checked the old battery with a voltmeter? It should be virtually zero once the 125 stops working.

Did it work OK with the old battery when left turned on for 10 or 15 minutes? If it did, and it doesn't now, then the best you can do is probably to take it apart again and double check and clean everything.

Richard
 
I had the same problem. You do not need to replace the GPS with a Raymarine one. Providing your set up takes NMEA0183, then you will find there are plenty of replacements that work. I used one from Digital Yacht, arrived quickly and worked perfectly, in fact I didnt bother to fix it up on deck as it worked fine upright in a cupboard down below away from the elements
 
RichardS said:
If the LED is red then there is a problem with the 125 so I don't think the C70 menus etc will help.
Perhaps you have accidentally fried the electronics with static during the battery replacement?
Have you checked the old battery with a voltmeter?
Did it work OK with the old battery when left turned on for 10 or 15 minutes?
Richard
Click to expand...
I know the chips' static sensitivity problem; I tried to work cautiously;
Old battery read O volt, quite dead;
Last times (end of 2016 season), it took longer and longer to fix; while preparing 2017 season, I discovered it didn't work any more, so I searched the forums...
I asked Raymarine support for clues: their only answer was to buy a new one, with seatalk-seatalkng adapter... ~500 euros... pfff
I'll have a closer look at the mushroom innards & contacts before considering replacement.
 
Onia said:
I had the same problem. You do not need to replace the GPS with a Raymarine one. Providing your set up takes NMEA0183, then you will find there are plenty of replacements that work. I used one from Digital Yacht, arrived quickly and worked perfectly, in fact I didnt bother to fix it up on deck as it worked fine upright in a cupboard down below away from the elements
Click to expand...

This is word for word exactly my experience and solution
 
achwilan said:
Last times (end of 2016 season), it took longer and longer to fix; while preparing 2017 season, I discovered it didn't work any more, so I searched the forums...
Click to expand...

That's a bit worrying. My experience and understanding is that the RS125 will still work with a completely dead battery, and perhaps even no battery at all. If yours stopped working even with the power switched on I think there's something seriously wrong with it. It's definitely worth having a good look for a damaged or disconnected component or some corrosion and also cleaning the battery and the contacts .... but I wouldn't hold out too much hope. :(

The good news is as someone says above. A new NMEA mushroom can be bought quite cheaply but you will need to do some re-wiring as the RS125 will probably be connected into the Seatalk port of the C70. You'll need to check that you have the NMEA connector for the C70 and that there's no other NMEA data going into it which needs considering.

Richard
 
Ebay. Tell them which chartplotter and setup up you have.You will get a photocopied sheet detailing which colour wire on the Raymarine loom to which colour wire on your replacement receiver.Around £85.00 pounds.
Mine worked first time just chopped the wires close to the old mushroom and soldered in new unit..
Did not fancy chasing back existing wiring right back to my RL80 CRC Chartplotter , all worked fine.
 
Last edited:
oldgit said:
Ebay. Tell them which chartplotter and setup up you have.You will get a photocopied sheet detailing which colour wire on the Raymarine loom to which colour wire on your replacement receiver.Around £85.00 pounds.
Mine worked first time just chopped the wires close to the old mushroom and soldered in new unit..
Did not fancy chasing back existing wiring right back to my RL80 CRC Chartplotter , all worked fine.
Click to expand...

I think the OP will find that his RS125 mushroom is connected into the Seatalk1 port of his C70 chartplotter. He will therefore not be able to use the existing wiring back to his chartplotter unless he purchases a Seatalk mushroom and, as he's already discovered, they are not cheap, not least because the version of Seatalk has changed so he will need an adaptor as well unless he can pick up a second-hand ST1 mushroom. :(

Richard
 
Instead of getting a new Raymarine GPS and adapter, it is almost as cheap to get an AIS transponder and configure set it to pass through the GPS position data to the chart plotter. I have done such an arrangement using a McMurdo M10 transponder (Rebadged Camino 108) so that I have a backup GPS source as well as the 'normal' AIS features. You just need to make sure that the C70/80 has its NMEA input set to 38400 baud and any existing NMEA input (such as fast heading data) can be taken to the AIS unit (the ones mentioned above have a built-in multiplexor) as it will then be multiplexed onto the AIS output (together with position data). Both the above units are programmed and set up using a USB connection to a PC (I have used both Win8 and 10 on an Asus tablet).
Just a thought....
 
Had the same problem, our RS125 died whilst underway with the red blink of doom. Took it apart, battery was low, but replacing it did not revive it. Red blink apparently means it's stuck in the bootloader, so it may have lost its firmware, but I could find neither a firmware download nor a method of uploading it into the thing.

I needed it to feed GPS into the Seatalk1 bus (for the speed instrument SOG and other stuff) and do not have a C70/80 plotter, nor did I want to be dependent on the plotter. The Raystar 120/125 with Seatalk1 outputs are no longer made.

The options were:

a) SeatalkNG or NMEA2k GPS (Garmin GPS 19x seems to be most affordable choice) with Raymarine E22158 SeaTalk1 to SeaTalkNG converter kit

b) any old NMEA0183 GPS receiver with Raymarine E85001 NMEA/Seatalk Converter (also out of production and difficult to get hold of)

c) replacing all instruments and possibly transducers with current generation (N2k/SeatalkNG) stuff at astronomical cost and effort :grumpy:

d) Bugger it and just use USB GPS dongles for £6 which offer higher sensitivity and precision, can use satellites from other GNSS and the laptop/tablet we're already using as plotter replacment. We have two of these and they work exceptionally well, but without the difficult to get hold of converter box you won't have a GPS fix on your Seatalk1 bus.

We already had b) and d) in place as a backup scenario, but the converter box has also needed replacing before, so didn't fancy relying on it alone. Option a) was expensive and I would've had to start a N2k bus and buy a bunch of silly connectors, adapters and terminators, none of which I did particularly fancy for a variety of reasons, including having another piece of kit (the converter) and a bus with numerous connectors that can fail. Meh.

In the end I got lucky and a working Raystar 125 for £125 "Buy now" popped up on my eBay alert, which we got delivered to an Argos while stopped in Plymouth. Put a new battery in that and connected it to the old cable - it's been fine ever since. If you're not in a hurry, set up an eBay alert for one and good luck! This was definitely the best option for us, and more affordable than the others (unless you're happy with NMEA0183 fed through a plotter).

I also asked in every marine electronics store and chandlery on the way, and the most common response was "if I had one, I'd sell it immediately - people always ask for them".

Good luck! :)
 
It would be dead easy to make a small device that connects to a serial GPS mouse like the Globalsat BR-355 & chucks out Seatalk 1 messages. Maybe I should get YAPPing again if there's much demand for it.
 
The Raystar receivers seem to be particularly prone to early failure for some reason. I had a 120 on my old boat - this died after only about 5 years and I replaced it with another (or maybe a 125) because it was the easiest way of wiring. In contrast, most modern plotters have integral GPS chips which just work for ever.
 
RichardS said:
. It's definitely worth having a good look for a damaged or disconnected component or some corrosion and also cleaning the battery and the contacts .... but I wouldn't hold out too much hope. :(
The good news is as someone says above. A new NMEA mushroom can be bought quite cheaply but you will need to do some re-wiring as the RS125 will probably be connected into the Seatalk port of the C70. You'll need to check that you have the NMEA connector for the C70 and that there's no other NMEA data going into it which needs considering.

Richard
Click to expand...

Well, I checked the wiring this afternoon, did a bit of soldering, and... nada zero.
RIP Raystar.
So, next step, I'll explore the solutions proposed by the helpful forumites.
 
Yngmar said:
d) Bugger it and just use USB GPS dongles for £6 which offer higher sensitivity and precision, can use satellites from other GNSS and the laptop/tablet we're already using as plotter replacment. We have two of these and they work exceptionally well, but without the difficult to get hold of converter box you won't have a GPS fix on your Seatalk1 bus.

We already had b) and d) in place as a backup scenario, but the converter box has also needed replacing before, so didn't fancy relying on it alone. Option a) was expensive and I would've had to start a N2k bus and buy a bunch of silly connectors, adapters and terminators, none of which I did particularly fancy for a variety of reasons, including having another piece of kit (the converter) and a bus with numerous connectors that can fail. Meh.
Good luck! :)
Click to expand...

My backup solution is already a laptop with GPS mouse.
The C70 uses both seatalk, and NMEA 0183, as a RT650 AIS VHF, and a Furuno radar are connected to the MFD, fed through a S2 course computer (cost and reliability reasons... I dislike the Raymarine's "one ring to rule them all" ... the home rule is "graceful degradation" for my systems, should they choose to die at the wrong time!...)
So a NMEA GPS mushroom should do it.
But which one?...
 
achwilan said:
My backup solution is already a laptop with GPS mouse.
The C70 uses both seatalk, and NMEA 0183, as a RT650 AIS VHF, and a Furuno radar are connected to the MFD, fed through a S2 course computer (cost and reliability reasons... I dislike the Raymarine's "one ring to rule them all" ... the home rule is "graceful degradation" for my systems, should they choose to die at the wrong time!...)
So a NMEA GPS mushroom should do it.
But which one?...
Click to expand...

Evermore SA-320 is often recommended.
 
achwilan said:
My backup solution is already a laptop with GPS mouse.
The C70 uses both seatalk, and NMEA 0183, as a RT650 AIS VHF, and a Furuno radar are connected to the MFD, fed through a S2 course computer (cost and reliability reasons... I dislike the Raymarine's "one ring to rule them all" ... the home rule is "graceful degradation" for my systems, should they choose to die at the wrong time!...)
Click to expand...

The Seatalk1 bus concept itself is actually quite good and resilient (much more than N2k) and you can wire it pretty much any way you want, bus, spurs, daisy chains, and it'll just work - all with only 3 wires. You can tell the kit back then was designed by Raytheon engineers that normally build missiles for the military :)

After the GPS debacle and an unrelated AIS upgrade, my current solution is an automatic failover from Raystar to AIS GPS to USB GPS receiver (and a spare one blu-tacked to the nav station console), all routed to both Wifi, Ethernet and Seatalk1 by kplex. After that is manual backup of the "plug USB GPS into a laptop" variety. And after that more desperate measures, like an iPhone with Aquamaps. But I didn't want to derail the thread too early on ;-)

achwilan said:
So a NMEA GPS mushroom should do it.
But which one?...
Click to expand...

You're rarely wrong with a u-blox chipset. Things to look for are multi-GNSS (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, etc.) support and a modern highly sensitive receiver - the kind that works just fine inside the cabin of a fibreglass boat. I can recommend Navilock, who do a range of receivers, both interior and exterior grade and with USB or serial/NMEA0183 interfaces: http://www.navilock.de/produkte/G_505_eKabel-Empfaenger.html
 
AngusMcDoon said:
It would be dead easy to make a small device that connects to a serial GPS mouse like the Globalsat BR-355 & chucks out Seatalk 1 messages. Maybe I should get YAPPing again if there's much demand for it.
Click to expand...

I suspect there's a market for that sort of thing. The Seatalk1 generation kit (ST60, etc.) is still incredibly widely used and used bits fetch high prices. Didn't consider that route, but now that you've said it, it might be option e) if our "new" Raystar dies. I've just made an Arduino Nano NMEA barometer and this shouldn't be much harder to do. I wouldn't want to produce, ship and support them though.
 
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