Garmin AIS600 - repair old or buy new?

[SoundOfSilence]

I bought a new Garmin VHF and a Garmin AIS in 2014. None of them worked for a long time and both were sent for repair. Garmin confirmed both had failures and they sent me new units under warranty. The VHF has worked fine after that, but I never installed the AIS before now. But now it is completely dead again. I have contacted Garmin again but they say they now want 378 euros to repair it.

So, what would you recommend and why? Repair the Garmin which has really never worked, or buy a new shiny one (of a different brand) and which one? The broken AIS is AIS600.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how I can repair the Garmin myself? As Garmin already can tell the price for repair before they have checked the unit, it is probably a common problem.

[Snore]

Originally Posted by SoundOfSilence

I bought a new Garmin VHF and a Garmin AIS in 2014. None of them worked for a long time and both were sent for repair. Garmin confirmed both had failures and they sent me new units under warranty. The VHF has worked fine after that, but I never installed the AIS before now. But now it is completely dead again. I have contacted Garmin again but they say they now want 378 euros to repair it.

So, what would you recommend and why? Repair the Garmin which has really never worked, or buy a new shiny one (of a different brand) and which one? The broken AIS is AIS600.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how I can repair the Garmin myself? As Garmin already can tell the price for repair before they have checked the unit, it is probably a common problem.

IMHO only one AIS to have Vesper 6000 with Wi-Fi. It will take the proprietary data from Garmin and send it out in NMEA0183 format, that any software can read

[smac999]

What is wrong with the Garmin? If it’s new in box it should be working.

Have you plugged a laptop into it with their software?

[SoundOfSilence]

Hi smac,

After I got the AIS600 back from Garmin 4 years ago I didn't mount it until recently because of other more important problems. Now nothing happens when I plug in all the cables, so it appears to be completely dead. There are no lights in any of the indicators. I checked the power cable and it has voltage. As the unit has no power, nothing happens when I connect the computer to it, I tried that as well.

As I don't want to pay almost 400 euros to get it repaired with Garmin, I am now between opening it and see if I can do anything myself or save me the hassle and just buy a new AIS. If anyone have opened these or know a possible solution I would be very glad to hear about it.

I was actually just looking at one model now, it's surprisingly cheap, around 600 euros for a model called Onwa KP-39A. It's a class B+ and if I mount it by the chart table I can use it as a screen showing wind or the GPS coordinates. I'm not so interested in the K-charts as I use OpenCPN at the chart table on my laptop.

[skipperearly]

Fully agree!

Originally Posted by Snore

IMHO only one AIS to have Vesper 6000 with Wi-Fi. It will take the proprietary data from Garmin and send it out in NMEA0183 format, that any software can read