On Fri, 30 Aug 2013 11:34:09 +0700, Bruce in bangkok wrote:

On Thu, 29 Aug 2013 11:11:46 -0400, "Flying Pig"
wrote:

We believe that the unit has bitten the dust - or there's some problem which
makes it intermittent.

Yesterday, doing some other debugging suggested by RM, I had an instance of
it running NMEA sentences in and out, as seen in the diagnostics screen on
my plotter. However, by the time I'd gotten downstairs and into Terminal to
see if it was echoing down there, I had an alarm saying I'd lost position in
the plotter, and data stopped flowing.

It refused to reaquire satellites, something it's never done in our viewing
of it (green blink) so far, and took a long time to acquire after yet
another power cycle. However, that acquisition didn't lead to any input on
the diagnostics, nor reception in Terminal below. Sounds like it's dead...

I've been observing a number of high end garmin chart plotters freezing while I'm out on
the ocean. A power cycle seams to fix it..

As for the Nema problems.. A little(salt) water inside the nema connector chain will
screw up the communications.. Open them up, inspect them for corrosion, clean them using
95% isopropyl alcohol, let them dry before re-assembly. Note: Add a little silicone
grease to o-rings and threads during re-assembly.


But I'd still love to pop it onto someone else' setup for confirmation.
I've got RM's suggested replacement, a GPS105 from Digital Yacht (bought
through Bethel Marine in FL, great folks to work with), on the way for
tomorrow arrival. That will involve rewiring (well, making new connections
to) the NMEA inputs to the plotter and onward to the computer/autopilot, but
that's trivial.

L8R, y'all

Skip

Skip,

I wonder whether you have given any consideration to what happens if
you are at sea and your gps system dies. Perhaps a small gps that
reads lat. and Lon. and a large scale chart might be a useful thing to
have if all else fails.

Before you set sail .. add a chart plotter app to your smart phone..
(They all have built in gps receivers.)