i50 intermittent reset loop

[PhillipPalacios]

The previous owner replaced the st50 with an i50 Raymarine display and connected a LOT of things together using their wisdom in connecting various instruments from various eras together. Unfortunately I do bot have the same wisdom as they do and nothing of this Seatalk / seatalk ng / NMEA 0183 network is making a lot of sense to me. At first no problem it’s worked for two seasons. This season the i50 started acting up. It would get stuck in a reset loop until I would power off then on. Then it wouldn’t respond to that. Thinking it was a power issue I used voltmeter to trace the power supply and it was solid. So I wiggled some other cables around and connected/ disconnected various cables. This revealed what I think is a bad cable. When the cable between the i50 and the wind gauge are connected it goes into its reset loop. When they are disconnected both gauges perform as expected, although the wind instrument only will give apparent wind in this setup. Ok- maybe bad cable. But the previous owner opened the sheath and cut the red wire (power) on this particular cable. So I’m assuming I should do the same on the replacement cable I have on board, but I don’t understand the system setup- when would you do this? And is there something else at play here that I shouldn’t bother mangling my perfectly good seatalk ng spare cable?

[wholybee]

No, the red wire should not be cut. The red wire provides power to the i50. I don't know what the previous owner was thinking. Can you draw the system wiring?

Somewhere there is probably a 5 way adapter. A white cable should plug into that, the other end into the wind instrument. Then a short 12" cable connecting the wind instrument to the i50. Also plugged into the 5 way adapter would be a cable going to 12V power. There could be a whole lot more if there are more instruments involved, but at a minimum you need those connections.

[wholybee]

One thing to track down is how the i50 gets power when that wire is disconnected. The previous owner did something really wrong. Maybe they connected power to the speed instrument directly? I would be tempted to tear out all the instrument wiring and start over.

[PhillipPalacios]

Believe me I’m there with tear out and redo. Only issue is that I am in the Bahamas and there is very little out here for spare parts should I run into issues. Headed south to st Martin/grenada and hoping to get by until I’m near well stocked chandleries

[PhillipPalacios]

The power comes from the other input. I’m going to have to figure that out. The wind instrument power seems to come from the seatalk ng cable originating from the autopilot

[wholybee]

Originally Posted by PhillipPalacios

The power comes from the other input. I’m going to have to figure that out. The wind instrument power seems to come from the seatalk ng cable originating from the autopilot

Yeah, its not hooked up right. There should be only one power feed to the SeatalkNG bus, connected to the 5 way adapter. The autopilot should not power the bus. It should be as I described, and the autopilot would connect to another port of the 5 way. With one white cable connected to either the i50 or the i60, and a short cable between the 2.

Do you not have a 5 way adapter? Maybe the previous owner tried to save a few dollars and hacked something together. That would explain your issues. If so, tear it out and do it right.

[PhillipPalacios]

Thanks for the advice. I’ll have quite the project this next few days finding where cables are run etc. Will update once I have a sketch put together