Seatalk / Raymarine assistance

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Pau Amma

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Hi
I wondered if anyone could help me?
I have a raymarine set up
E120 E80 ST290 smartpilot x30 radar wind depth speed and gps all networked together. The system was installed a year ago by the boat manufacturer and has worked well for a year.
Recently it appears that after about an hour of successful operation "gremlins" get into seatalk and start throwing out errors. The autopilot drops out to standby, the plotters complain of lost headings and fixes and the st290 come up with GPS failure and MOB alarms.
I am booked in to see a raymarine dealer in Lisbon when we get there in 3 weeks time. Raymarine tech support were as helpful as they could be - however, ultimately due to my phone bill said it was best to check all wiring (done already) and then get a dealer out (doing that).
My problem is that I am sailing shorthanded and do find the autopilot useful - at present I can't rely on it.
Does anyone have any ideas??
Thanks on advance.
 
The only way to track it down is to pick a point - say the e120 and start from there. Pick each interface and confirm that the wires are seated in connectors properly. The smartpilot box will have those push type connectors on the PCB edge. give them a wiggle, sometimes a bit of corrosion can make life difficult. The big connectors should all be unplugged and re seated on the e-series'' too.

Also check individual fuses. Even though a fuse is blown on the autopilot board for example, seatalk feeds 12v around and things appear to work ..... but dont work fully.
 
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I agree with nimbusgb about picking a point but ...
which GPS unit do you have?
Is it an older model or the latest Raystar 125?
If older the battery may have gone inside the GPS unit.

If newer than try connecting power to both ends of the SeaTalk network. It could be you have a voltage loss due to corrosion.
Note: The ST290 has a mix of SeaTalk2 and SeaTalk.

Complete your profile a bit more. (I noticed the Lisbon bit.) There may be someone in your area that you can swap components with and give it a try.
I am not that happy with Raymarine in identifying faults.
I was having problems with a fluxgate compass so took it in to their Portsmouth office. They measured the resistances across the wires and said it was fine. Yet connecting a new compass to my system solved all the problems.
You could see the problems with the old compass. If you gently rotated it the plotter would show the heading rotating but then at one point flip to change in the other direction.
 
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Thanks guys - all terminals have been checked and fuses. All are OK an no corrosion. Everything checked and re plugged in and still the gremlins exist. I am surprised that this system is so interdependent. The GPS is new and the penny cell replaced. Flashes green.

Very confused. My guess I that the "smart"pilot is bust / faulty.
Anyway thanks for the input & I'll hopefully get it sorted by the dealer in Lisbon...
 
I have recently had a host of strange things happening.... resets, lost data (trip and depth offset) plus all alarms going off. This was on kit that had been OK for several years.

It turns out that the Chartplotter cannot power anything other than a GPS unit as it does not have enough power = low voltage = random issues.

Since I have made sure that the only way ALL instruments except the plotter are powered by the course computer (red wire disconnected from Seatalk just before the Plotter) I have not had any recurrences.
 
I would look at the GPS as both plotters are complaining of lost fix and the st290 complains of lost GPS, however its strange it takes an hour, do you get the faults if the autopilot is not engaged? if not it would suggest a problem with voltage drop after the AP has been running for a while.

If fault occurrs without AP I'd be looking at the GPS.

If it only fails with AP running check to see is the gps flashing to indicate seatalk or NMEA output? 1 flash every two seconds NMEA, 1 every 4 seconds is Seatalk. To make it work seatalk the green and red must be connected to +12V and brown and screen connected together, if there was a HR joint on the green red connection as the volts drop after an hour of pilot use it may cause the unit to switch to NMEA. So check when it is working the number flash's to see what mode it is in and then when you get the failure have a look and see if its switched modes again.

Raymarine recommend using a scotchlock to join the red and green together with seatalk I have had problems with these in the past where they didn't make very well. So worth a check.
 
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If you have access to a laptop and a seatalk to PC serial converter ( see knauff site mentioned previously ), perhaps you have something in the mix already, you may have to monitor the seatalk and NMEA lines to see what's going on.

This one sounds like one of those odd ones that's either going to drive you nuts for weeks or will suddenly be fixed by something very simple!

> edit - if you have a nmea concentrator to allow fast heading data to the e120 along with AIS, it could be that that's causing the problem. After an hour it's going haywire?
 
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Thank you guys all your input is helping me massively! I think that the problem is related to the AP / voltage because yesterday we motor sailed for 35nm WITHOUT using the AP and the whole system behaved exactly as it should / does normally. I don't have a serial link but will investigate that. Next job is for me to see if its voltage related or AP. It is a very very frustrating one. Anyway - I'll mull over and investigate following all your advice.
 
Low voltage..

Remember to check especially the negative return to the battery as well as the positive feed.

Someone suggested this as a possibility in a post of mine re Autohelm dropping into "standby" with 4 beeps at random. I don't believe that this is my particular problem however.

Checked all seatalk connections ok?
 
If it was me I would unnetwork everything possible. The autopilot will work on its own etc.
All the equipment will not fail at once. There must be some system that is malfunctioning and causing faults in all the other equipment.
See what system has errors when it's working on its own. This is defective equipment.
 
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