ST60 Wind Transducer - What does this Test Show?

[senormechanico]

The wind vane outputs a chopped 8 volt square wave.
It increases in frequency but not amplitude as the wind increases.
The 8 volts is supplied by the display.
All you need to see is if the 8 volts is there and if it goes up and down when you turn the paddles.

[sailah]

In the highly unlikely event that someone else has this problem...

My ST60+ was basically locked in wind position. Wind speed worked fine.

I tested the masthead transducer on my lab bench today, supplying it with 8V DC according to Raymarine test here. The magnetic Hall sensor (Sentron 2SA-10) seemed suspect as I would get varying voltage (2.5-5.6V) with green but blue was fixed output at 5.6V.

I disassembled it down to circuit board and repeated test by spinning a magnet above sensor and same result. Pins 4 & 5 on the IC are the outputs and my pin 5 was constant 5.6V DC no matter what I did with magnet.

Sentron is long gone but I did some digging and Melexis owned them at one point. The Melexis MLX91204KDC-ABA-002 is the same part, has same pinout and same sensitivity. They are about $5.50/ea so I plan to buy a couple and solder one in to see if it fixes the PCB. I checked everything else and it all seems good, PCB is in good shape otherwise.

This part is widely available from places like Mouser and Digikey

https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail...204KDCABA002SP

In the pic below, Pin 3 should have ~6V (I was feeding transducer with 8V). Pins 4 & 5 are your outputs. In my case Pin 4 worked fine but Pin 5 was steady 5.6V.

I'll report back on the fix.

[sailah]

Success!!

I got the replacement IC from Mouser. Unsoldered the old one and soldered the new sensor back in place. Bench tested and it works great. I made a short video explaining the procedure. Will test on boat but I'm fairly confident I fixed the problem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAEUHWjrMMQ

[jbchrist]

RJV+sailah
Congratulations on the important advancement in the human races' understanding of the intricate working of Raymarine wind sensors!
I also have a problem, but have not made any real gains in solving it: The two wind directions seems to work OK, but the wind speed (yellow wire) is stuck at 0,55V no matter the actual wind speed.
I might have missed something, but I have not been able to find the solution to my problem by studing this fantastic post.
Any suggestions?

[sailah]

Originally Posted by jbchrist

RJV+sailah
Congratulations on the important advancement in the human races' understanding of the intricate working of Raymarine wind sensors!
I also have a problem, but have not made any real gains in solving it: The two wind directions seems to work OK, but the wind speed (yellow wire) is stuck at 0,55V no matter the actual wind speed.
I might have missed something, but I have not been able to find the solution to my problem by studing this fantastic post.
Any suggestions?

Recalling from memory, there is another magnet? Steel plate? mounted to the wind speed axle and on the bottom of the PCB you see me working on. It goes through another hall effect sensor that essentially counts the number of times it revolves around and thus your speed. The hall effect sensor looks like a "u" and the axle of the wind speed passes through it without touching it.

If you repeat the same things I did by powering the transducer with 8V and then checking the readings you could further debug it. I assume that you have transducer on top of your mast? And you're reading the various voltages at back of your instrument or mast connections? If that's true you likely have power going to the transducer correctly. It could be that something is broken or corroded on the yellow wire somewhere in your system. I'd probably want to debug that first before taking the transducer apart.

You could connect a long wire (that will reach your masthead) like a piece of CAT5 cable or 18g etc to both ends of your multimeter and zero out the resistance. Some multimeters will do this, cheap ones won't, my Fluke does. Then connect 1 end of the wire to the yellow wire feeding into back of your ST60. Take the other end of the wire with you up the mast with your multimeter. You are going to connect this wire to one probe of your multimeter and the other to the yellow wire at your Raymarine mast head fitting. You've now made a circuit and are reading the resistance of the raymarine mast wire only. It should be pretty low. If this checks out, you know your mast wiring is good. You could also do this on a smaller scale from your mast connection at base to the instrument to see how it works before dangling from bosun chair.

If the wiring is good (and I suspect it probably is but still need to check) then you likely have a problem with transducer. Remove transducer while you are up there and disassemble. Maybe the magnet/plate has broken off and can be reglued. Maybe the chip that resolves this is faulty. You won't know until you start narrowing it down.

I can't tell you what chip is doing this speed math because I never looked other than a glance. If you're comfortable trying some soldering you can attempt a repair but it might be easier to just buy the circuit board. Check your wiring first there are lots of small wires and ring terminals on mine. Maybe something broke or has a bad connection. Doing the long wire resistance check is fastest way to determine if you have something wrong with wiring, then proceed from there.

[sailah]

Look at post #6 here

Raymarine Wind Transducer Failure Rate - Gear Anarchy - Sailing Anarchy Forums

Shows the speed and how it's actually measured. Looks like any chip is likely on top of PCB. Could be the same Sentron chip I replaced does both but I'd need to trace it out on PCB to be sure to know where yellow wire connects on board.

[Team Terminal]

Thanks for the video Sailah. My wind direction is only showing aft of beam irrespective of the actual direction of the wind. I sent my instrument into the shop who plugged it into another head unit and it worked fine.

So I have brought down the head unit & checked as in your video. My voltage ranged on both pins from 6.17 volts down to 1.7 volts through 180 degrees.

However I found the low & high points were 90 degrees apart. On the first leg with the pointer directly forward I had 1.7 volts, 4 volts at mid left or right & 6.17 volts pointing aft. On the second pin this was offset 90 Degrees. IE mid point right was 6.17 volts & midpoint left was 1.7 volts. Fwd & aft were both 4 volts.

My question, is this correct or should the low & high points be together IE fwd & aft?

[Therapy]

Ahh the memories of those pesky wind instruments. Bad ones.
Don't the new ones now have some self diagnostics in them. They have needed that since....forever!

[jbchrist]

Thank you Sailah for the inspiration.
The sensor got back working. all I did was replacing some coroded connectors in the run from mastfoot to instrument. AGHH, do we ever learn?

[jrppersonal]

I hope this thread isn't dead. I'm not a big contributor to the forum - so skills and etiquette lacking.

I have an ST60 Wind on my 2002 C&C 110. Wind speed is accurate. Direction have devolved from the occasional inaccurate wander to now continuous clockwise sweep (@3sec for 360Degrees)

I did quick voltage checks at the wire junction at the base of the mast - no notes hence I'll do-over but memory says all in spec.

Anybody want to give me a jump on - "for sure it's on the little round PCB up the mast" ?

Here's the link to the video of the instrument clocking:

https://youtu.be/Zqeva0mSiEc

[hpeer]

OK, resurrecting this thread because there is a lot of good info here and I can’t find a thread addressing MY problem.

I have a masthead transducer with a MASTER and a SLAVE display.

These are 10 years old and until recently have worked fine. Now I am getting some intermittent weird problems.

In short, thr MASTER is NOT displaying but the SLAVE is.

I am not sure this thing transmits data Master to Slave but the only connection is SeaTalk.

So the mast head data goes to the Master, which converts it to SeaTalk and sends it to the slave.

Sometimes I get nothing.
Sometimes the Master shows Direction but not speed; Slave shows both correctly.

So clearly the masthead is OK. And the Master is doing the Seatalk conversion. But intermittently does not display speed, which Must be a Seatalk signal (because Master and Slave units are identical.)

What the heck?

I am working on swapping the instruments, not as easy as it should be.

[jbchrist]

HI
As you describe the problem it can only be the screen-part of the master which have problems. The electronics "behind" the screen is doing OK if the slave is displaying all data. So, either the LCD is roast or there is a loose/corroded connection.
If the LCD has an amorphous blot covering most of the screen you have your answer. I dont know if you can get your hand on a new screen and whether that will be cheaper than finding a used unit which works. There are a lot of these on e-bay and such places.
If the screen looks normal, but "only" doesn't show any information, you go over the screen and press hard on various places on the display to see if this produces any reaction. If it does, you have a problem with the internal wiring which may be solved by dismantling the unit and applying WD40 (at your own risk!) or working on any connectors between screen and print.
The ST60 system represented some of the best when it came out many years ago. Today, one can wonder if the tech inside has been overtaken by more nimble circuitry which has a higher degree of digital processing/signaling as opposed to analog. This is only my guess - and I am not saying that new systems cannot fail. But the long life of threads like the present one certainly testifies that ST60 owners have their fair share of nautical-tech problems. This is also why I am not long among this select grouping.

[hpeer]

Jbchrist,

Thanks for that answer.

Unfortunately I have UNICORN.

I was positive when I swapped the Nav and Cockpit displays the problem would resolve.

NOPE!

Something else going in here.

Today I am going to read through the Owners Manual again and write out the voltage tests and the Master/Slave confirmation process and see where this leads.

I will be back in a few hours with results.

At this point…..I am stumped.

[hpeer]

I went through everything. I am getting +8 to mast head but the direction voltages coming back are low. Speed is in range, but i only occasionally get speed reedings.

I have trued both heads and neither works or both the same.

While I can not explain why it initially died, or came back with the cockpit head working but the master not.

It is blowing like stink here right now, and HOT. If things calm down this PM or tomorrow I will try to crawl up the mast head and see what is going on.

[goboatingnow]

In my experience the ST60 series is one of most reliable and long lived instrument series on the market. Mine are the age of the boat and still working perfectly