AngusMcDoon
Well-known member
I have a Raymarine ST2000+ autopilot, and like many others it suffers from the problem often reported here of randomly and occasionally dropping into standby for no reason at all with just the quietest of beeps. This is easy to miss and sometimes it slowly wanders off in an unwanted direction for a few minutes before I notice. So here's my fix - a George Corrector YAPP.
The autopilot sends out every second what state it is in. I only use auto or standby as the wind tracking one is a bit pants and I don't use it to follow a course of waypoints. Also the pilot sends via the Seatalk network a message containing what button has just been pressed, including the auto and standby buttons. So my George Corrector listens for the button presses and therefore knows what state the pilot should be in. It also listens for the current state every second, and if it knows the pilot should be in auto but is actually in standby it sends out an auto button press message putting it back into auto. Of course, the heading way have wandered a bit in the intervening second, but not by a lot. The LED also comes on constantly when a correction has been done so I can monitor it happening - twice yesterday.
This is not a totally new YAPP. What I have done is munged this new code into my old autopilot remote code and installed it on the same hardware. I've got an old prototype version of one of these with me so I flashed it onto that.
This is not a YAPP that I'm going to make and send out - the website has been taken offline now anyway, but if anyone wants the code to make one themselves they are welcome to have it.
The autopilot sends out every second what state it is in. I only use auto or standby as the wind tracking one is a bit pants and I don't use it to follow a course of waypoints. Also the pilot sends via the Seatalk network a message containing what button has just been pressed, including the auto and standby buttons. So my George Corrector listens for the button presses and therefore knows what state the pilot should be in. It also listens for the current state every second, and if it knows the pilot should be in auto but is actually in standby it sends out an auto button press message putting it back into auto. Of course, the heading way have wandered a bit in the intervening second, but not by a lot. The LED also comes on constantly when a correction has been done so I can monitor it happening - twice yesterday.
This is not a totally new YAPP. What I have done is munged this new code into my old autopilot remote code and installed it on the same hardware. I've got an old prototype version of one of these with me so I flashed it onto that.
This is not a YAPP that I'm going to make and send out - the website has been taken offline now anyway, but if anyone wants the code to make one themselves they are welcome to have it.
