Raymarine Auto Pilot / Digital Compass Issue

Bob2135 · **Posted:** Mon Jun 04, 2012 8:54 am

Not sure if any of our iFourwinns members have any insight. But here it goes. My 378V has a Raymarine E80 Chartplotter and also has the Raymarine Auto Pilot system. In the Autopilot system, there is a digital compass that is mounted (low and center) in the boat (mine is mounted next to my fresh water tank under the salon floor. For some reason, I can not calibrate this damn thing (have tried many times per the manual), and subsequently it is consistently off azimuth as compared to my GPS and standard helm compass. Now this would not necessarily bother me as I dont us the auto pilot very much on the Mississippi River, but...what is driving me ABSOLUTELY INSANE :evil:

the E series chartplotter boat and map orientation are tied to the digital compass not the GPS...so my boat icon appears to be headed down the river sidways, backwards, and just about any other way. I am wondering if there are any suggestions from the forum on this...before I resort to calling the closest Raymarine tech about 70 miles away and at a $100 per hour labor...it is $300 just to get him there to look at it. :shock:

Thanks

ric · **Posted:** Mon Jun 04, 2012 9:36 am

Is the compass mounted near anything electrical?

Bob2135 · **Posted:** Mon Jun 04, 2012 9:40 am

Ric,
That was my first thoughts...electrical and metal...but no the compass is mounted under the floor next to the fresh water tank. After all my problem solving...I can only deduct that I have a bad compass. Because in the calibration process you can synch the compass with the GPS for accurate readings, and then when calibration complete, the compass will still deviate unpredictably. Good thoughts though.

ric · **Posted:** Mon Jun 04, 2012 9:48 am

Can you move somewhere else just for good measure? If it's reading constantly bad it's either just bad or constantly getting the same interference from something nearby like some wires.

Bob2135 · **Posted:** Tue Jun 05, 2012 10:39 am

Ric,
Giving up, scheduled the Raymarine TECH for a visit. I described the problem to him as I did in this forum, and he laughed, he knows exactly the issue, but needs to be there to troubleshoot the problem. He said it was a common occurance with the Raymarine Autopilot system. So...hopefully in a couple of weeks we are good to go. Thanks for the suggestions.

Paul I. · **Posted:** Tue Jun 05, 2012 1:31 pm

I am going to "assume" it worked before and nothing has chaged. As in, anything new added in that area of the boat. I would check all the connections to it, both power and data. I am not up on Raymarine, but is it a NMEA2k network or SeaTalk?? I know that E-80 can do both & 0183.

Have you opened it up & cleaned it?? Some models you can open them.

Bob2135 · **Posted:** Tue Jun 05, 2012 2:00 pm

Paul,
Thanks for the note. This is our second season on the boat, we ran into this problem several times last season, and I check every connection I could physically find, traced all the electronic compass wires back to the source to see if there was any 'interferrence' along the way, could not find anything, and yep...cleaned everything thoroughly! What is strange in all of this...you can manually calibrate the electronic compass to the E80 GPS and it will pick up the GPS azimuth...then without explanation, it will begin to swing wildly...then sometimes it wont! It is just maddening to watch...so I am done f'n around with it, going to swallow the $$ and get the dumb thing fixed...and while the tech is there, have him run thru all the systems to ensure everything is in good working order.

p.s. the Raymarine works on NMEA2K network.

wkearney99 · **Posted:** Wed Jun 06, 2012 7:09 am

I just gave up on my compass and autopilot setup. Calibration never seemed to work and there's NOTHING near the compass sensor.

Fortunately I never need autopilot on the Chesapeake. And given the abundance of crab pots and the like I wouldn't use it anyway.

Still, I'd certainly love to know what solution they come up with for you.

Bob2135 · **Posted:** Wed Jun 06, 2012 8:34 am

Bill,
When I get them down sometime in the next two weeks, I will certainly post the results of the diagnostics and solution. Hopefully it is a DIY remedy...but right now it is way beyond my feeble skills! :roll:

Paul I. · **Posted:** Wed Jun 06, 2012 8:53 am

Bob2135 wrote:

Bill,
When I get them down sometime in the next two weeks, I will certainly post the results of the diagnostics and solution. Hopefully it is a DIY remedy...but right now it is way beyond my feeble skills! :roll:

Yes, let us know what he finds.

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Raymarine Auto Pilot / Digital Compass Issue

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