Mahe 36: Instruments

[oranaman]

[QUOTE=Scott730;737807]Guys
I had major problems with my Furuno gear, I eventually had the entire system replaced under Warranty. There are a few problems if you are using the 30 series instruments. Problem number one is that the 30 series are only produced and installed by Furuno France, and Furuno USA first refused to fix the units. I had to take this issue all the way to Furuno Japan to get resolution and had the network and instruments all replaced with the 50 series using the standard Furuno ethernet network. In a nut shell, on the 30 series system, all instruments run back to a mini server, if you will, behind the Fridge. This black box is a single point of failure and on mine the voltage would get to high and the server would die. Resulting in a lose of all my equipment. We initially installed a capacitor to limit the voltage to the unit to no more than 12.5 volts, seemed to work for a while. But it happened again while off shore on a night cruise.

Hi Scott,

The Orana instrument design by Pochin is very similar to the Mahe. My boat is no 3 so I had the FI30 series originally but these were replaced in La Rochelle with FI50's. Now I have a dc to dc converter box supplying my instruments, I wondered why - it must be due to the FI30's intolerance of normal charging volts e,g, 14.4v.

Yes I still have an ongoing issue with the depth. Once a 120m is reached a "---" is displayed. However once a depth greater than 150-180m is reached the display will say 10-12m - which can be misleading in Greece/Turkey where the depth can change rapidly. But the really annoying problem is that at some vast depth 0.8m-2m is displayed and this triggers the shallow alarm which really wakes you at 02.00 in the morning in the middle of the ocean. Does anybody else have this problem?

[Wayward Wind]

Originally Posted by Cotemar

JohnC,

You are in the right place, that is where they put my Simrad NMEA2000 / NMEA0183 conversion module.

I have the factory installed Airmar Triducer DST800 Depth/Speed/Temp Sensor, NMEA2000 device.

Mark

Mark,

Sorry about boat name. I should have said Catatude, not Cotemar. I have just gone through the photos I took of the area behind the fridge, and cannot see any conversion module. Also not behind the helm station, nor port engine area. I did not check the nav area, but the Furuno techie who fixed the same problem under warranty spent many hours tracing the cables, and said he could not find the conversion module, despite me copying him in on your post regarding possible locations. He replaced the triducer and it worked . . . just long enough to expire about three months out of warranty : (

I wonder if that is the problem? I too have the Airmar Smart Triducer IDST800-N2000, and I can hear it clicking away, yet the instruments are showing _ _ _

I am now very tempted to switch the whole thing to Raymarine. Looking for advice on this.

JohnC

[Cotemar]

JohnC,

Makes sense to go with another depth sounder if you had two of the Airmar's go bad on you.

The problem is that if you look closely at the Raymarine, Furuno, Garmin or others you will see that they all use and Airmar sounder.

One of the issues is that the depth sounder should never be turned on when the boat is on the hard out of the water (Needs water cooling). They heat up and weaken. Then burn out the next season when in the water again.

You can buy one yourself and install it in about an hour even with your boat in the water. Any Airmar NMEA2000 will work regardless of the tag that says Raymarine, Furuno or Garmin on it. Do not worry about the special plug on the end of the wire when you buy a new one. You only cut it off to make the connections in a junction box anyway.

Mark

[Jef & Marin, Netherlands]

We have had quite some problems with the Airmar transducers. It started the first sailing day after leaving La Rochelle with our new ship; the whole sea was 5.8 meters. Even with changing tides
The next morning a Pochon technician drove to Les Sables d'Olonne and fitted a new sensor. This helped. For about one month. Same problem, but now a constant depth of 6.5 metres. This could sometimes be solved by switching the instruments off and on again. Like you Windows PC.
So that winter we got another sensor. This was repeated 2 more times. Every time we got a version with a higher revision number, which should solve the problem. These are software versions (yes, really). There have been versions ending with a revision letter A...F. We have had 5 different ones before the F version, which solved the problem.
Then in 2009 the temperature indication of the last F version (which does depth very well) broke down. We got a new Airmar. This one has lasted until June 27 this year, then the waters between the UK and France were 55 degrees. Centigrade. Until now all have been warranty exchanges, but I fear the moment that one lasts the European minimally required warranty of 2 years.

So maybe Airmar has some serious product quality problems....

I also expect that at some moment during our planned world trip, the indispensible echo sounder will break down. Therefore coming winter I will mount an internally-mounted transducer and depth instrument, in the other hull. This will work as back-up. Also I hope you can find the middle of a narrow pasage by looking at the difference between port and starboard depth.

[Scott730]

I have not had any problems with the Depth transducer since pulling out the system Pochon installed. I believe that there are only 2 makers of transducers on the market with Airmar being one of them. I find it hard to believe that this is an Airmar problem since they are installed on a vast amount of boats of all types and on every manufacturer of marine electronics. It is probably more of an issue with the Furuno/Pochon system being able to work with Airmar, or visa versa. If I had my options, I would have installed all Raymarine or Garmin rather than Furuno, and I would never let Pochon on my boat again.

[MKB53]

I seem to have been lucky and (touch wood!) had very few problems with my FI30 setup. The Airmar transducer has given up on temperature readings so I was interested to see that Jef had the same issue.

How much of an issue is the voltage? I have been charging up to 14.6V with the shore power charger and 14.5 with the solar panel and wind gen. Mostly we only reach that voltage when at anchor/marina so perhaps the instruments don't get exposed to it that much.

[lstyles]

It appears my wind transducer has given up the ghost and I need to replace it. As the FI-30 series isnt made any more I am having trouble getting a transducer. Does anyone know where I can get one? I am told that the new transducer for the FI-50 series wont work with mine. Is that correct?
thanks in advance,
Lori

[Scott730]

Lori
You are correct, the old proprietary FI-30 system is not compatible with the FI-50. In fact I believe you will need to change everything over to the FI-50.
Which I have done. Sorry to say this is not an easy task and will require replacing the old transducer, the black box behind the fridge and the wiring as well as the wind gauge. You might want to try to find a used wind gauge on eBay.

Scott

[tpkas]

Hi Lori,

I've only had a quick look into your problem but I think you may be able to get a suitable sensor. The Nexus (read FI-30) system uses the RS485 protocol. I did a google search of "rs485 wind" and found a couple of possible solutions. Some are a bit "industrial" but at least it's a starting point for you. Have a look at the link Wind speed and direction sensors - Amalgamated Instrument Co Pty Ltd (AIC)

Good luck!!

Rgds,

Brian

[Edmund]

I've got my hands on a used Furuno Nav511 (FAP-5011) autopilot control unit and a FI501 wind instrument. I would very much like to mount them both at the Nav station. I'm not into NMEA2000/Furuno-net at all, but I do understand that this can be plug'nplay if I get original Furuno-cabling all the way from the instruments at the helm over to the nav station.
However: In the NAV station I've found two grey cables (with free ends), one marked "NMAE" and the other marked "FPA 6011".
Is this net cables (with mispelled markings?) that I can utilize? If so, how do I connect?

Rgds,
Edmund

[Jef & Marin, Netherlands]

Edmund,
Great to have those! Lucky you, I would like to be able to control the autopilot from the inside, but they are too expensive.

About the NMEA0183 cable for the wind instrument:
In my Mahe 088:
The NMEA cable at the nav table is (if I remember correctly) a single pair (one-way) NMEA0193 cable that starts at the connection box behind the fridge. In this connection box the NMEA2000, of the helm instruments, terminates in the Simrad NMEA2000/0183 converter.
Check post #74 of this thread from Cotemar; my setup is comparable though differently mounted. Also check my post #33 for the circuit diagrams.

I think you can use this wire to extend NMEA 2000 to the nav table. NMEA 2000 is 4 wires: two signal wires blue and white; ground / 0V: black; and red, +12V. To connect your wind instrument at the nav table you could try to use the single NMEA wire, but I'll give no guarantee this works; but this is what I would try and I'm an electronics engineer. For one thing, I do not know whether the NMEA0183 cable is suitable (in things like capacitance and impedance and shield quality) for NMEA2000.
Here is what I'd recommend:
On the side of the connection box: Of the NMEA0183 wire:
connect the two signal wires to NMEA200 blue and white; connect the shielding to the ground / 0V NMEA2000 black wire. Remove the cable termination resistor on NMEA2000.
On the side of the nav table: connect the two signal wires to the wind instrument; connect the shield to the ground connection of the wind instrument; Don't connect this to the instrument panel's ground/ black wires!; connect the wind instrument's red +12V connection to the switched instrument 12V of the switch showing a speedboat. Connect the cable termination resistor you have previously removed between the two blue and white signal wires.
then you probably have to set up the wind instrument as a repeater (I have not checked this).
Don't drill a hole in the nav table panels before it works. If my description does not work, fix everything back as it was. Don't be angry.

Regarding the FAP-5011: This needs a connection directly to the autopilot computer in the port engine room. Check the installation manual.
If you are lucky, the FAP5011 wire (with spelling error) goes straight to the autopilot computer. It might even be connected already. it is all very well described in the Furuno autopilot installation guide that came with our ship.
If you can't get it to work, just send the control unit to me to try it in our ship. I will send the unit back to you when I don't need it anymore (-;

I have used the NMEA cable you mentioned, to bring NMEA0183 data to the nav table, as input for a multiplexer. By doing this I can see wind speed and direction and depth and so on on the notebook I use as plotter. I had this working previously when I used Maxsea. Now, using OpenCPN, I have not yet reconnected this, but I will one of these days.

We are presently in the north of Spain on our way to the mediterraenean, our ship being our only home now; we have left the Netherlands. Why don't you sail this way sometime so that we can meet again; last time I sailed to Norway to visit you there....

We can Skype if you want to talk, just search on my name, or you can phone me, you have my phone number if I remember correctly.

[Cotemar]

Edmund,

There are NMEA cables at the Nav station, but do not know if they are NMEA2000 or NMEA0183.

You can just take one Furuno NMEA0183 cable from the Furuno autopilot at the helm and bring it under the sliding door over to your Nav station and plug it into your Furuno Nav511 (FAP-5011) autopilot control unit.

The FI501 wind instrument is NMEA2000 and would need a separate cable to the wind instrument at the helm.

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...tml#post525169

That is all I did and it all just works great. Very simple.

[Edmund]

Wow! Thank you guys for all this input, on such short notice!

Jef : Mark's idea is the obvious one for us amateurs, I think I'll try that first
If not, I will try your way, and if that doesn't work either, I will send you the remains to play with.
Yes, we would have loved to go sailing with you down there! But I haven't had the guts to quit my job. Yet...

Edmund

[Jef & Marin, Netherlands]

Mark, and Edmund,
Mark, I understand what you have done. The second autopilot controller can be looped through the standard controller at the helm. This means that the present autopilot cable which Edmund found can be used both in case this cable ends at the autopilot computer, or to the helm station. In both cases it is not necessary to pull a new cable.
I also appreciate that pulling a cable under the sliding door is an easy, actually the best way to bring a cable to the navigation table. I even pulled a 60 mm air duct for our hot-air heater through there.

Regarding connecting the wind instrument through this autopilot control cable: I think this will not work. I have found nowhere that this cable uses the NMEA2000 protocol. I think it is a dedicated interface.
And even if it used NMEA2000 (which according to me it does not) it would not carry the wind data for a slave display.
So Edmund, I fear you must pull an NMEA 2000 cable to the nav table from the NMEA connection. You can do this as I proposed (which saves a cable, but is not guaranteed to work; just try), or in the straightforward way by pulling a cable under the sliding door from the present helm instruments as Mark proposed for the autopilot controller.
In the latter case you connect this cable to the free port of the wind or tridata instrument, whichever has the free connection.

Termination resistor: At both ends of an NMEA2000 cable, there must be a termination resistor. On the side of the connection box, at the front, this is an actual hardware resistor between blue and white. At the other end, on the instrument side, an in-built resistor in the wind or tridata instrument has been activated by Fountaine Pajot, or, more probable, Pochon.
You can (de)activate this cable termination resistor in the instrument set-up, seen the manual of the wind and the tridata instrument.
You have to de-activate the cable termination resistor in the wind and/or tridata instrument, whichever Pochon has elected to choose. You have then to activate the cable termination resistor in the extra instrument at the nav table, since this has now become end of the NMEA2000 cable.

Hope this is clear enough.

[Jef & Marin, Netherlands]

Mark, Edmund,
I am puzzled; are we talking about the same autopilot?
My autopilot is a Furuno NAVpilot-511. It has been designed before Furuno switched over to NMEA2000; so it is based on NMEA0183. That is why we need the Simrad AT-10 NMEA2000/NMEA0183 convertor.

On my autopilot, the interface to the controllers is a 7-pin connector;
see page 79/79 of the installation manual for the interconnection diagram:
http://www.furunousa.com/ProductDocu...2011-28-11.pdf
The naming of the pins of this 7-pin interconnection suggests an automotive CAN-bus.

NMEA2000 is 4-pin. Nowhere in the installation manual or the instruction manual of my autopilot, NMEA2000 is mentioned.
My conclusion is: The controllers for my autopilot can not go on the same NMEA2000 wires as the wind instrument.

In later models from FP, they might have switch over to a newer version of the autopilot which is NMEA2000-based. In these you should not find the Simrad AT-10 behind the fridge.

Something else: the FPA-5011 wire at the nav table is a 3-wire (no shielding) cable. Wires are white, green, brown. I'll try to find out where it goes. It does not seem very useful, at first glance. But FP/Pochon would not install it if it were useless. To be continued.