raymarine !!!

[boblydon]

Well was hoping to take my new little boat out for it's first wrecking trip in the morning but been having a few issues with the raymarine sonar module not talking to the display unit...........beginning of the week was told by raymarine tech dept there was a problem on the seatalk hs cables.........bought 2 new ones and a crossover switch £135, fitted them and it worked great in the marina, after 40 minutes the no data came up again now it's not working again.

Another call to raymarine tech dept, now they tell me i have a faulty unit and must send it back to them, am fed up more than 2k for the display, dsm 300 module and 1kw transducer.............Just my bloody luck!!!!!!!!!!!

[canman]

Wooooosh! straight over me head Bob, but I can see you're not a happy bunny Hope you get sorted soon and some compensation for the extra outlay. Good luck on your maiden voyage, hope to see some catch reports soon mate.

[oldessox]

I had raymarine equipment on my last boat , it was excellent gear that I didnt have any problems with so have no idea what their aftersales service is like , though I seem to remember they were haveing a bit of financial trouble recently , i hope that has no detrimental affect on your service.
I've got garmin on my new boat , again it's excellent to use but this time I've had to send back my 750s to be replaced due to it switching itself off for no apparent reason a few hours into a trip, they were very good though and replaced it with a brand new unit, now unfortunately I'm having problems with my garmin vhf 200i radio, it works fine for a while and then suddenly develops unsquelchable interference , if I switch it off for a few seconds it returns to normal , but only for a short while before developing the same problem again.
It's 18 months old , I'm not sure how long the warranty lasts but I'm hoping its still covered , I've just sent them an e-mail outlining the problem and they say I'll hear back in 3 working days , no doubt I'll have to send it off like the plotter which will leave me with no radio

[Paul_h]

Well was hoping to take my new little boat out for it's first wrecking trip in the morning but been having a few issues with the raymarine sonar module not talking to the display unit...........beginning of the week was told by raymarine tech dept there was a problem on the seatalk hs cables.........bought 2 new ones and a crossover switch £135, fitted them and it worked great in the marina, after 40 minutes the no data came up again now it's not working again.

Another call to raymarine tech dept, now they tell me i have a faulty unit and must send it back to them, am fed up more than 2k for the display, dsm 300 module and 1kw transducer.............Just my bloody luck!!!!!!!!!!!

Boblydon,
sorry i have deleted my sentence, i was mis informing you.
sorry to hear your problem, hope you get sorted, hit them to pay for the extras you bought
hope it helps
Paul

[Norman]

bobly don,

I can only sympathise, however I'm afraid I don't do sympathy very well

in the short term I can tell you if you take a line run from the north pier, travel 1.23 mile then line up the power pylons and the big gas tank so long as you have a ham sandwich in your hand and a TLD 15 in the other you may just drop onto a codling or two .......

good luck mate, always a place if you need it ........

norm

[The Jester]

Back to basics eh Norm...

[Norman]

Back to basics eh Norm...

Aye chris, but I didnt tell him the whole truth ..... ya need to line up the pylon with the chimney not the gas tank he'll know no better


norm

[Paul_h]

Well was hoping to take my new little boat out for it's first wrecking trip in the morning but been having a few issues with the raymarine sonar module not talking to the display unit...........beginning of the week was told by raymarine tech dept there was a problem on the seatalk hs cables.........bought 2 new ones and a crossover switch £135, fitted them and it worked great in the marina, after 40 minutes the no data came up again now it's not working again.

Another call to raymarine tech dept, now they tell me i have a faulty unit and must send it back to them, am fed up more than 2k for the display, dsm 300 module and 1kw transducer.............Just my bloody luck!!!!!!!!!!!

Boblydon,
found this, it may be rubbish but a bit of reading

Seatalk uses a "one-wire" communication. All the seatalk instrument are connected to one wire, that is the yellow one (the others are +12V (red) and 0V (black or shield) for power).
All instruments on the line can talk and/or listen for data.
Normally, the seatlak wire is at 12V (because internally in every instrument it is connected to 12V via a resistor), and whenver one instrument wants to talk, it will pull it down to 0V with the digital pulses (it switches it to 0v via a transistor).
It also listens for its own data transmission, and if accidentally two instruments want to talk simultaneously, they will hear different data that they are transmitting, because any instrument can pull the line to 0V. In this case they will cease transmit and wait some random time to start transmission again. An instrument will also wait for the seatalk line to become idle (+12V) before starting transmission again. If the line never comes to idle, or it is always at 0V, or have invalid data because of noise etc. on it you get a seatalk error on the instrument.

So I would do the following:

First check to see that you have around +12 on the seatalk line, which can occasionally go to 0V. It is quite hard to see it with a normal voltmeter, but you might. You can see occasional drops in the voltage, or some average below 12V. If you can get an oscilloscope that can show it very nicely. Unfortunately seatalk uses 4800bps data like NMEA, but with binary coding for shorter messages and uses the parity bit for signalling, so it is not that easy to simply connect it to a serial port of a PC and see that data.

If the line is constantly at 0 or 12V, check for any shorts in the cable. Shorts to 0V is OK, it wil not damage anything, short directly to +12 might damage the instrument when it tries to pulse the line to 0V.

Disconnect all instruments and use an Ohm meter to see if there is any short to 0 or 12V.

My best advice would be to try disconnecting/connecting the instrument one-by-one from the seatalk line. A faulty instrument can disable the whole setup. Check that when not connected to seatalk, a device should have +12 on its seatalk line, with possible data.

Make sure that all instrument have good power connection. Bad connection on power can introduce noise to the seatalk line.

Check all connections. I have once seen that by accident the seatalk line was connected to the NMEA out of an instrument, which will obviously disrupt it.

[boblydon]

Thanks for the kind words, still in a big huff though lol lol.

Paul,
Thanks for the info you found, unfortunately all of the connection are the seatalk hs (like cat 5 telephone plugs), connections could not be any easier just push fit and they lock in.

Norman,
Thanks as always for the kind offer of the trip, i need you and Tony to show me how to use them funny rubbery shaddy things properly.......could not get away with them last time i tried, was properly doing it wrong.

Having done loads of research on the net about these dsm 300 units, seems to be quite a common fault which the manufacturers seem well aware of.

As all of you who know me, know i like my electronic toys in the boat, this is a list of the goodies..........

1/ Raymarine e120 12 inch multi function coloured display unit coupled to a dsm 300 fishfinder module and a 1kw transducer, this is also a backup chartplotter...........will be great when it eventually all works.

2/ Interphase 12inch colour chart plotter.

3/ 2 Icom 603 dsc vhf radios

4/ Garmin gps (was allready in boat)

With it only being a small boat they take up most of the window space, just need to get out there and use them now.