Screen freeze Raymarine E120

[Grampus]

I have an E120 at the lower helm and an E80 on flybridge. Charts are Navionics Platinum.

Sometimes the whole lot just freezes up - the screen just locks. It is always initiated by pressing the zoom button. It can be initiated at either station but freezes the entire system - nothing works or responds. The chart does not refresh but sits and sulks.

System will not turn off and so cannot be restarted. Eventually it may return to normal but sometimes it lies about where the boat is on the chart.

Even turning off the 12VDC at the switchboard makes no immediate difference - when restored and rebooted it reloads in the same frozen mode.

This problem usually always occurs just as we are getting to an interestingly difficult part of a passage when zooming in for extra detail.

It's an intermittent fault and never shows up when the Raymarine serviceman is onboard.

Any thoughts would be welcome.

 

[PRH]

I have an E120 at the lower helm and an E80 on flybridge. Charts are Navionics Platinum.

Sometimes the whole lot just freezes up - the screen just locks. It is always initiated by pressing the zoom button. It can be initiated at either station but freezes the entire system - nothing works or responds. The chart does not refresh but sits and sulks.

System will not turn off and so cannot be restarted. Eventually it may return to normal but sometimes it lies about where the boat is on the chart.

Even turning off the 12VDC at the switchboard makes no immediate difference - when restored and rebooted it reloads in the same frozen mode.

This problem usually always occurs just as we are getting to an interestingly difficult part of a passage when zooming in for extra detail.

It's an intermittent fault and never shows up when the Raymarine serviceman is onboard.

Any thoughts would be welcome.

You could check for software updates on the Raymarine web site. You will also find Raymarine quite helpful if you ring them but as you have had the service man onboard you may already have tried that.

The only other thing to do is work out what is different between when you had the engineer onboard and when it freezes (other than the missing engineer). i.e. guess you were at sea, boat moving etc......

 

[Grampus]

That's right, the only obvious difference is that when it freezes I'm on the move and there's no Raymarine engineer. We have the latest version of the software loaded on the chartplotter.

Just beginning to wonder if it's card related so we are investigating that route by going for an updated card.

There really does not seem to be anything obviously different about when it happens - most of the time it's well behaved and does just what it should, then for no obvious reason, other than the pressing of the zoom button - it will sometimes freeze.

Consequently we have not been able to reproduce the problem when the service guy is onboard.

 

[grumpy_o_g]

Can you dis-connect one the plotters and just run with the other for a while? With an intermittent fault like that sometimes the only way is to keep taking things out of the loop until
it stops happening. It's not always practical though I know. I'm surprised the system doesn't keep a log that Raymarine could look through for clues.

Edit: If you haven't re-loaded the latest firm-ware definitely try that first. I was assuming that the Raymarine chappie would have suggested that or even done it for you.

 

[Grampus]

Thank you for the suggestion - it's a good idea and one that I will try if the problem continues. I can just turn on one unit, the master at the lower helm and leave the upper helm off - that's certainly possible.

As for software, we are running the latest version but that has not stopped the screen freeze.

One idea by the Raymarine man was that one possible way to cause a screen freeze is by unplugging the card while the machine is operating but without observing the protocol for removing the card.

So the thought was that maybe there is a card fault or card reading fault, so he has put a new card in the machine - that was yesterday afternoon.

So far, after a trip back from Ireland - no screen freeze. Maybe it is cured - let's hope so - or maybe not, only time will tell - it has been such an erratic and irregular occurrence, never happening when you try to demonstrate it and nobody seems to have had the problem before. The problem is exacerbated by never knowing if and when it will happen again - it's just so unpredictable - does not happen for weeks and then twice on one trip.

Thanks for ideas - I'll try the elimination approach if the problem persists.

galps