Raymarine - Never again.

[arsenelupiga]

i am due to upgrade to second AP and wary of RM. So many software updates
for simple devices and bugs and compatibility issues. And no effort to keep compatibility. 8 years old is ancient.

So i am thinking alternatives.

[UFO]

I purchased a boat (new to me) with 2 x Raymarine ES 125's- Helm and Saloon, after about 4 months they both died. I talked to raymarine and they told me that the units had already been in once for warranty repair and that i was now also 3 months outside of the warranty period.



They told me that, that particular model had had some very serious issues and they could no longer repair them as they had used all the backup manufactured motherboards in warranty issues.


They were though very helpful and did me a fantastic deal on 2 x Axiom Pro's, which after a minor issue integrating with my AIS setup, have been great and not missed a beat.

[Davo1404]

Originally Posted by UFO

I purchased a boat (new to me) with 2 x Raymarine ES 125's- Helm and Saloon, after about 4 months they both died. I talked to raymarine and they told me that the units had already been in once for warranty repair and that i was now also 3 months outside of the warranty period.



They told me that, that particular model had had some very serious issues and they could no longer repair them as they had used all the backup manufactured motherboards in warranty issues.


They were though very helpful and did me a fantastic deal on 2 x Axiom Pro's, which after a minor issue integrating with my AIS setup, have been great and not missed a beat.

Great outcome.

[Dockhead]

I had the old Raytheon Pathfinder radar and 2x MFDs in my boat before my electronics refit 8 years ago, all more than 10 years old and long in the tooth by the time I changed them for Navico/B&G. This was really good, heavy-duty, military-like equipment which worked perfectly and which was still well supported when I sold it all for surprising much money in 2013 or whenever it was.



I have been much less happy with the Navico gear, which is lightly built and which was already not supported only 3 years or so after I bought it, although I was buying the very first Zeus Touch unit to make it to Europe. I had different problems with it and eventually found a good support guy but the support system in general leaves a lot to be desired. This gear is built and supported like mobile phones or tablets -- like disposable consumer devices which no one cares about after two or three years, and that is not acceptable to me considering the cost and the need to use the gear for a good 10 years to reasonably amortize that cost. I will not buy Navico again.



Don't know if Raymarine has gone the same way or not in the mean time, but in the day it was night and day better than this.

[moseriw]

Davo1404 I give you a better deal: 2x noname tabets (waterproof case is around 40 USD) 250 USD and a NMEA 2000 to WiFi bridge for around 200 USD + opencpn freeware.

tablet problems? throw it away and buy a new one.

[roam]

My Raymarine EV-100 stopped working after three months and approx 1500 miles. Sounds like a stripped gear in the motor unit. Now I get to find out how good their warranty support is.

[moseriw]

I mentioned that if there are problems with autopilots it is raymarine. Others say no it is because raymarine is the leader of the market and there are so much raymarine autopilot out there.

Well mine is an ancient Cetec Benmar from 1981 with no electronics but all electric.
Never had any problems since 2014 and say the last 4000 NM and I will keep it.
Sure it it 2x oversized and in Fact I can only switch it on and off but it is fantastic even in 6m waves and 50 knots of wind. Cetec Benmar was designed for fishing trawlers.

With your Raymarine. Maybe it is the wrong type of AP: "designed for smaller sailboats with tiller" so the Spindrift may be ok ;-)

[aqfishing]

Originally Posted by moseriw

Davo1404 I give you a better deal: 2x noname tabets (waterproof case is around 40 USD) 250 USD and a NMEA 2000 to WiFi bridge for around 200 USD + opencpn freeware.

tablet problems? throw it away and buy a new one.

Very hard to do when you in the middle of the ocean!

[moseriw]

aqfishing oh dumb so buy four or six tablets for 100 USD pp. and it is way cheaper as a bloody plotter.

[PirateGuy]

Originally Posted by aqfishing

Very hard to do when you in the middle of the ocean!

What navigation system manufacturer delivers to the middle of the ocean? Or do they email you the schematics so your 3d printer can spit out an MFD? of course, even that option will require Starlink to be fully operational at a bare minimum

[pas63]

This gets even better. After waiting over a month for the wireless display, I finally received it and was able to commission the wireless sensor. What I discovered is absolutely ridiculous. I start the commissioning process and when I try to get the i70s to discover the wireless sensor I get an error message stating that discover wouldn't work with my existing i60 pilot control. connected, turning it off made no difference, I had to disconnect it from the backbone. I was able to get the i70s set up registering the sensor and displaying wind speed/direction and move on to the Axiom integration. The Axiom gives me an error that discover won't work with the SPX5 autopilot present. Fortunately turning the autopilot off worked and I was able to get the Axiom to read data from the sensor.

Here is where I shake my head and wish I went with another vendor. If the hand held wireless display is not on, the sensor cannot connect to the Axiom or the i70s. Raymarine has had 10 years to incorporate the tacktick line into the Raymarine product line. Instead, they took the lazy way out screwing the customer in the process.

So lets look at the Rube Goldberg they've created. The ask is to have a wind sensor read the wind and relay it to the mounted display. This should be a simple thing to do, after all it's a wireless connection and software. Instead they force you to buy tacktick wireless display in addition to the mounted display, to interface with the sensor. Then they force you to buy a a hockey puck (Microtalk) that interfaces with the Seatalkng network and bridges the hockey puck into the Seatalk network. All told it's an extra $750+ in gear to provide functionality that should have easily been built in.

[C420sailor]

I did a full electronics upgrade on my boat. I wanted Garmin, but Garmin’s wind indicators didn’t impress me—and the prices are through the roof. Additionally, I don’t like wireless anything.

Went with Garmin everything but the wind. I installed a Raymarine sensor, wired it into an ITC-5 converter, which fed my N2K backbone. Worked great for a while, then suddenly the wind direction was way, way off. Couldn’t calibrate it via the Garmin chartplotter.

Had to buy an i70 display and cable strictly for wind cal. That is its only purpose.

Not a dig at Ray, but you’d think these manufacturers could play nicer with each other.

[pas63]

My comments are absolutely a dig at Raymarine. If the computer industry operated like the marine electronics industry we'd still be using punch cards.

[George DuBose]

The only product I bought from Garmin was a handheld GPS. It was designed upside down. The price for a chart for this unit was over 400 euros.

I have problems with Raymarine being owned by FLIR and wonder if there are any "sailors" on their new design team or if FLIR does any user or market research.

I had to replace my C120 due to its being overloaded with so much AIS data these days. I bought the Element 12" because I don't like touch screen anything. The Element is missing a lot of features that the C120 has. FLIR should think about adding MORE features instead of dumbing down their products.

Also, because I was upgrading my chartplotter, I had to buy a new radar transponder. The old one wouldn't interface. Baaahhh!!!

[moseriw]

So, do we learn something?
Well I learned that things I do not have can not break.
On the other hand we are in the Kindergarden of wireless development.
Remember: a wire I dont have can not break.

The only things I do have is ST60+ Wind, Speed, Echo converted to NMEA2000 and connected to an AIS and NMEA WiFi and serving cheap OpenCPN Tablets.

No issues.

And it is not the fault of Raymarine when guys buy autopilots that are way to small for their boats and break. I am not a fan of any trademark and would try to buy some noname china brand for 5% of the price but checking its quality before i.E. VA-Meters 500A for 30 USD. That is 400 USD with Victron.