Garmin autopilot & GPS compass?

[NSboatman]

Wow, I haven’t had any of these issues. We have a steel boat, and all Garmin gear- ghp 20 reactor with an L&S linear (electro hydraulic) drive. 2 Mfd’s- 721s and 740s; and a pair of gmi 10’s for wind and depth. Oh, and there is a Vesper AIS transceiver dropping data on the nmea 2000 network too. All units are networked. I installed it all myself 3 years ago; and it worked out of the box and has had almost no issues. Heading sensor is on the forward bulkhead of the main cabin, at about the waterline.

Have been quite happy with the whole system really- like I said, it worked out of the box and did what I expected. Troubling to hear that this is not well supported by Garmin...

[4kMike]

Allright now! The new Garmin Reactor 40 software (2.2) was released 11th June. I installd it and now the autopilot allows using the external heading data. So Vector Compact can be set to heading source! It seems to work just beautifully now. Gonna test it a little bit heavier conditions ... but now it looks goooood.. At last. :-)

[Trond123]

After I got the new Reactor 40 Compass, to replace a malfunction reactor 20, the autopilot introduced severe zig-zag driving. This was with the software dated February 2018.
In addition to this, another problem was introduced: Frequent communication errors between the autopilot CCU and ECU. (the compass and the steering/ "brain" units of the autopilot.)

After upgrading to the latest software earlier this week, the zig-zag issue seem to be solved, but need more testing to verify.

Still waiting for Garmin to send new CCU and ECU to me, as they have promised.

But the bright side:
With the new software, Garmin finally recognize my Simrad HS60 GPS compass. But I haven't had time to test if this works as heading sensor for the autopilot yet.