Hi, i have the following autopilot that I bought last summer:
ACU-200
EV-1
Electric Linear Drive Type 1
P70
I already had:
ST60 wind
ST60 tridata
ST60 multi
Remote control
Seatalk1 to NMEA 0183 bridge
That system never worked with my Garmin GPSMAP376C, it would never steer to a waypoint!!!!!!
I was told by Raymarine that the NMEA0183 was too slow for the ACU200.
This spring I bought the i50 and i60 devices to be NMEA2000.
I have a Garmin 7610 chartplotter (NMEA2000) with radar, weather antenna, Actisense bridge for my nmea0183 iCom VHF. I have bought a cable from Raymarine to connect to Nmea2000. On the Garmin I can see all the devices connected, Raymarine's, Garmin, Actisense. On the P70 I don't see the Garmin devices.
If I press auto mode on P70 the autopilot works for a couple of minutes then comes back with NO PILOT, DRIVE STOPPED. sometimes it works for 5 minutes, sometimes for 30 seconds. VERY VERY VERY FRUSTRATING.
Tried to get support from Raymarine USA (Winston a Supervisor) never wanted to help, told me it was my problem. Tried to change power souce to seatalk ng from acu200 to a direct connection to 12volt, made no difference.
I am a very unhappy and frustrated customer. I am preparing my sailboat for a voyage to the Bahamas ans the Caribean next fall and I am getting very worried that I don't have the proper autopilot.
Can you help? Should I replace everything with NMEA2000 compatible products? It seem Raymarine are not NMEA 2000 compatible!
What a waste of time and money. I have been at this for a month now.
************************
Editor: For further discussion in the comments, here is Suttonski's diagram illustrating the the separate Raymarine and Garmin systems:
And here are two ways he's tried to bring the NMEA 2000 networks together:
Do you have a source of weather data on your NMEA-2000, like the Garmin GXM 52 XM?
I see someone else is having similar problems as you here
http://raymarine.ning.com/forum/topics/p70-no-pilot-drive-stopped?commentId=6492755%3AComment%3A283886&xg_source=activity
Yes, I have the GXM 52 giving me weather info on the MFD. The. Weather info is displayed OK, are you suggesting that the GXM is causing the problem? I will go and check up the link .
Thanks
You could just unplug the GXM to see if it makes a difference with the autopilot.
But I'm concerned about how you connected the Raymarine SeaTalkNG and regular NMEA 2000 networks. They must be one network with one backbone and two properly placed terminators to work right. Do you have a diagram? Also, have you had a professional marine electronics installer involved?
I will unplug the GMX this morning and see what happens. I have installed everything myself. I bought two cable from Raymarine to go from SeaTalk Ng to NMEA2000, one with a NMEA 2000 female connector ( that was not the right one) and one with a male connector which I have connected to a NMEA 2000 T. I have one terminator on the SeaTalk Ng backbone and one on the NMEA2000 backbone. Bill Bishop from the Marine Installers Rant told me to do it that way. But I am not sure about this. I would prefer to extend the SeaTalk Ng backbone with a blue cable to the be ginning of the NMEA2000 backbone, this way I would have one continuous backbone with one terminator at each end.
On the Garmin I can see all the devices but on the P70 I only see Raymarine devices.
I have a diagram on my laptop that I will post today when i get the laptop to use my iPad hotspot. I am on vacation on lake Champlain for 2 weeks preparing our sailboat for our voyage to the Bahamas. Hope I can get autopilot and GMX to work together.
Thanks.
Forgot to mention that I took one Raymarine backbone cable and cut it, took the Raymarine cable that had a SeaTalk Ng female connector and also cut it, I wanted to build a cable with a SeaTalk Ng connector (blue stripe, 5 wires: red,black,white,blue,screen) at one end and a NMEA 2000 female connector (white stripe on Raymarine cable, 6 wires: red,black,white,blue,yellow,screen). I connected every marching color together and left the yellow one not connected. I thought this would allow me to create a better interconnection between the two backbones, creating one backbone. Is this a valid approach? Raymarine does not have a cable to do that I think.
The backbone is defined by the terminators. All the cable that runs between the terminators is the backbone. Any cables that branch off are drop/spur cables and can't exceed the length limit. This may not be your problem, but hacking N2K cable/connector networks without understanding the required architecture is asking for trouble. So Bill's advice is correct but none of us, including Raymarine tech, can fully troubleshoot your system without knowing exactly how the network is put together. (Unfortunately you can't post images but you can send it me for posting: ben at panbo.com)
The location of the power tap on the backbone can also make a difference as the voltage drop for total LEN use and cable lengths needs to be calculated in bigger systems.
Try reducing the autopilot system to the bare essentials (without even the interface to the ST instruments) and see if it holds a compass course. If not, and you still see "Drive Stopped", the problem is with the autopilot system and not the Garmin interface. Usually the "Drive Stopped" message indicates that the pilot can not hold the course you have asked it to.
- John the ex-installer
Suttonski sent diagrams of his system and I added them to the entry above.
I think that either cabling option will work, but the adapter cable is preferable as solder joints aren't advised on boats.
I'm also concerned about the i50, i60, p70 daisy chain because the cable lengths aren't given and the total shouldn't exceed 6m.
But meanwhile he told me that "I disconnected the GMX-52 Sirius Weather antenna and surprise, I could now go to waypoint without AutoPilot failure." So it looks like Dan's research in comment #1 was correct!
Apparently the latest ACU 200 software version 1.12 upgrade did not correct the problem, a Ray engineer is quoted thusly:
"1.12 was in existence before we understood there was an issue with the Garmin Sirius Weather Receiver. Qualification of the revised version that resolves this issue (with Garmin GXM-52) remains a high priority for Raymarine."
Sounds like the problem will get fixed:
http://raymarine.ning.com/forum/topics/p70-no-pilot-drive-stopped?commentId=6492755%3AComment%3A283886&xg_source=activity
I plug and unplug my GXM-52 to use the autopilot and it is working fine. The SeaTalk Ng is connected thru a 5 ports hubs, 2 blue connectors and 3 white one. In my setup I have and old ST-60 multi and the bigger Remote Control connected on a SeaTalk Ng1 backbone. These devices where not connected in the backbone so Yesterday I replaced the 5 port hub with the Raymarine SeaTalk Ng to SeaTalk 1 bridge. 5 ports, 2 blue, 1 yellow (for SeaTalk1) and 2 white. Who!! It worked for 8 seconds before I got:
No Pilot - Drive Stopped
Works and does not work but never works more than about 10 minutes.
The GMX-52 was not connected.
Don't know what do to anymore. Did you come across this problem?
I just received yesterday a cable to connect my Fusion MS-AV700 into the NMEA2000 backbone. Connected the cable to a T and immediately got full control of the Fusion system from my Garmin 7610 chartplotter.
Went sailing today, put the autopilot in windVane mode and it worked for a good 10 SECONDS before NO PILOT - DRIVE STOPPED. Disconnected the cable and pilot worked.
So far the following does not work with Raymarine:
Garmin GMX-52 weather antenna,
Fusion Radio
Raymarine's own remote control!
I also had problem linearizing my i60, wrote a post on Raymarine's forum last week but never got a response from them.
Am I the only one trying these products, I have the impression that I am a beta tester. I was in computer sciences for 40 years and I have never seen something like this.
Does someone know how to get Raymarine to look into these problems.
I've run all sorts of Raymarine devices on the same NMEA 2000 network as a Fusion audio unit without problems, and I'm sure many other boaters have too. So to say that Raymarine does not work with Fusion is simply wrong. (Ironically the only major issue I've seen with Fusion on N2K was caused by a Garmin update to their otherwise great Fusion interface, only shut down certain Garmin MFDs, and was quickly fixed.)
It seems to me that all you know for sure is that your DIY NMEA 2000 install is not working well, specifically the ACU-200 pilot and/or p70 seem very finicky about what devices are on the network. You also know now -- isn't a thank you to Dan in order? -- that Raymarine has confirmed an incompatibility with Garmin GMX-52 and are working on a fix. But obviously that's not the only issue.
I strongly suggest that you hire a good marine electronics installer to troubleshoot your install. I suspect that something is fundamentally wrong in the cable layout, termination, voltage or something.
I also suggest that your best approach with Raymarine would be to isolate the new issue with ST-STng converter. But you've got to be clear about what's happening for any remote troubleshooting to work. For instance...
"In my setup I have and old ST-60 multi and the bigger Remote Control connected on a SeaTalk Ng1 backbone. These devices where not connected in the backbone so Yesterday I replaced the 5 port hub with the Raymarine SeaTalk Ng to SeaTalk 1 bridge."
... doesn't make sense. You probably meant that your old ST-60 etc were on a standard SeaTalk network, not STng, but how can anyone help you if they have to guess basics about your situation?
I'm fairly sure that Kern Smith got good support from Raymarine regarding his similar AP problem at least partly because he did an excellent job of describing his system and the problem in accurate detail. This is what tech support needs:
http://raymarine.ning.com/forum/topics/p70-no-pilot-drive-stopped