Never Again Raymarine

[CarinaPDX]

For that many failures it does seem likely that there is some shared cause and not just a massive coincidence. Unfortunately it could be any of a number of problems; I would be looking at any 12V voltage spikes as a first guess. If, for instance, a powerful windlass shares a battery bank with the instruments it is quite possible to get a large spike when turning off.

For most people I think RM is a good choice among the consumer units. But for big installations ($50k qualifies for that) I would instead go with Furuno, which is commercial-grade equipment (used by the USCG and the SEALs among others), and other best-in-class providers (Airmar, Maretron, others). I would also not tolerate proprietary connectors on the N2K bus - everything should be the standard DeviceNet connectors. There are many ways to test N2K, and DeviceNet connections make it compatible with various solutions.

While I agree that Garmin has a nice UI, I have a problem with their chart obsolescence. Too many people have been left behind too early due to lack of chart support. OTOH my 14 year old Furuno still has available current charts (although the choice is less due to changes in the chart market) and every year I download for free the current NOAA raster and vector charts for U.S. waters. Having current domestic charts is alone worth the premium for a Furuno chartplotter.

Greg

[FerrariSailing]

I met a Pommy bloke who said he was ex Raymarine service dept. Told me don’t buy Raymarine they are now sourcing components from wherever is cheapest, left the company over that!

[philiosophy]

All this talk about bad customer support from Raymarine. It's hard to believe Raymarine could be so different from my experience in Australia. They were still helping me out with my C 80 chart plotter a year ago when trying to link it with the new,wrong transducer a stupid salesman wrongly sold me. This last year while sailing up the East coast of Australia from Tasmania, they helped me diagnose and figure out what the issue was with the transducer by sending me two different ones to see what the best one would be.I got at least three hours one on one in the Sidney tech support facility and countless phone hours. I have never heard of that from Garmin, or B and G especially.. They literally stayed with me up the coast and we decided to go with a excellent in hull transducer which they shipped to Cairns. How are you going to beat that. I have not heard anything about professionals doing your 50,000.00 installation. In fact I had a Raymarine tech install my in hull transducer just for that reason.
200 pounds of wiring. Really...Mayhaps you might have turned right when you should have just kept the " working perfectly equipment" you already had. Cancell Culture really has no place in the Offshore Yachting World. Mother nature does not give a damn. No amount of electronics will keep you safe if you don't display proper seamanship.

[sailorxyz]

My new Raymarine installation has been holding up well and not given trouble. My previous boat had ST60 generation stuff and that also never gave trouble. If you are having had a complete system failure, something is likely wrong with the electrical system. I doubt it is with the individual components.

[sailorxyz]

Originally Posted by CarinaPDX

I would also not tolerate proprietary connectors on the N2K bus - everything should be the standard DeviceNet connectors. Greg

I'd have to disagree with this. The Raymarine connectors are some of the best in the business.

[jmauld]

The one thing I’ve learned from this thread is that I should be doing installs. I’m guessing that OP may have about $12-15k in equipment with 35k in install fees? If you’re paying that much you should never be the one contacting raymarine. Your installer should do that.

[CarinaPDX]

Originally Posted by sailorxyz

I'd have to disagree with this. The Raymarine connectors are some of the best in the business.

The point is not the quality of the connectors; the RM ones are decent and certainly far ahead of the SimNet connectors. The reason to go with DeviceNet is standardization. DeviceNet are a little more robust than RM SeaTalkng because they are metal instead of plastic but I don't think that is very significant. RM also is different in that the DeviceNet system is a M-F daisy chain, out from a middle power tap, while the RM ones are M-M cables into F sockets. Also, if 3rd party devices are used (highly recommended) then adapter cables will be needed. For those who wish to stay inside RM's walled garden stick with their cabling - no problem. Otherwise use the industry standard DeviceNet.

Greg

[sailorxyz]

Originally Posted by CarinaPDX

The point is not the quality of the connectors; the RM ones are decent and certainly far ahead of the SimNet connectors. The reason to go with DeviceNet is standardization. DeviceNet are a little more robust than RM SeaTalkng because they are metal instead of plastic but I don't think that is very significant. RM also is different in that the DeviceNet system is a M-F daisy chain, out from a middle power tap, while the RM ones are M-M cables into F sockets. Also, if 3rd party devices are used (highly recommended) then adapter cables will be needed. For those who wish to stay inside RM's walled garden stick with their cabling - no problem. Otherwise use the industry standard DeviceNet.

Greg

To me its a non issue. Most of my stuff is Raymarine, product which I've used since 1991 and have had little trouble with it. I use a converter cable when I connect non Raymarine stuff to the network. In a marine environment, plastic is actually a plus, especially when it has been as well done as Raymarines are. I have not always praised Raymarines fittings, in the days of ST50, they were awful and the first thing I'd do was cut them off and just use terminal blocks but for the SeatalkNG fitting, I've nothing but praise.

[alctel]

Well I found another annoyance, my RM chart plotter wont display wind info unless I also have an ST60 or similar. If I look at the raw nmea packets, it can see the data fine but won't allow it to be displayed unless you have one of their additional displays. What a pain in the behind.

I installed an ST60 multinstrument I got second hand and the wind showed up on the chartplotter, but now I can't select data sources with the ST60 - for some reason I have to unplug it every time I want to view datasources (and yes this is the actual official RM advice)

I miss my simrad

The Quantum radar is nice though

[sailorxyz]

Originally Posted by alctel

Well I found another annoyance, my RM chart plotter wont display wind info unless I also have an ST60 or similar. If I look at the raw nmea packets, it can see the data fine but won't allow it to be displayed unless you have one of their additional displays. What a pain in the behind.

I installed an ST60 multinstrument I got second hand and the wind showed up on the chartplotter, but now I can't select data sources with the ST60 - for some reason I have to unplug it every time I want to view datasources (and yes this is the actual official RM advice)

I miss my simrad

The Quantum radar is nice though

May be you should have done your homework first? That is how ST60 & I60 systems work. It was designed that the transducer plugs into the back of a St60/I60 Depth or Tridata display. Without those, you also cannot calibrate the depth info. This applies to the wind, speed and compass units as well. Via a ITC-5 you can get the sensors on the network but you would still need a ST70 or i70 multi to set them up.

[HankOnthewater]

Apart from radios and AIS, all my electronics are Raymarine. Has worked well for me last 7 years. It might be 12-15 years old by now. E80/E120 ST60+ etc.
Maybe the current quality is worse than it was 15 years ago?

As the topic of this thread is anti-RM, what are the options? Are the other brands any better, or much better? Or does this question belong in another thread?

[Chotu]

I really haven’t had any trouble with Raymarine support. They have two tiers. Maybe that’s where people have run into trouble.

The first tier is in India. That’s for stupid problems like I forgot to turn it on. Once you have exceeded the capability of the Indians, you then go to Nashua New Hampshire, to a company my grandmother used to work at.

It was absorbed by Raytheon. Teledyne (yes from those shower heads).

The support you get from New Hampshire is great. The people care about their work like most people from that area would. And they want to see your system up and running and they are experts. They have the designing and what not right in house there. So you are talking to support people that are right next to designers and system integrators and everything. And that support is just perfect.

The top level support is not like standard script support. They listen to the problem and they actually think about a solution and then they come up with it and have you implement. They also know all the little tricks and tips. I have found they have a very complete and thorough knowledge of the systems.

They found several different ways for me to update my auto pilot for the new, more heavy duty control box I had to buy for it when I switched to hydraulic unit. However, ultimately it was just easier for me (logistically, speed wise) to get an axiom 9 to do that update. And I’m really glad I did because it’s really nice to have something like that at the helm.

[alctel]

Originally Posted by sailorxyz

May be you should have done your homework first? That is how ST60 & I60 systems work. It was designed that the transducer plugs into the back of a St60/I60 Depth or Tridata display. Without those, you also cannot calibrate the depth info. This applies to the wind, speed and compass units as well. Via a ITC-5 you can get the sensors on the network but you would still need a ST70 or i70 multi to set them up.

It's a stupid design. I have the ITC-5, and the chartplotter sees all the wind data (which I can see via a packet sniffer) but it wont display the wind info until I plug in an ST70 (which doesn't even need to stay connected), which then disables the source selection (why???). The navico stuff you can configure/display everything via the chartplotter, no additional displays needed. Note I said ST60 originally when I meant ST70

[RBCurtis]

Recently updated 15 year old RM equipment, with Axiom 9+, AIS 750, Quantum Doppler radar and EV autopilot. Kept fully functional ST60 wind, speed and depth instruments.

All work perfectly.

Let’s assume RM has terrible product quality and one in every 100 products has significant manufacturing errors. The probability of having four faulty devices is 0.01 x 0.01 x 0.01 x 0.01, or 1 in 10,000.

And the manufacturing error rate is probably much lower than 1 in 100 units.

Far more likely that the OP’s issues are due to installation or power problems.

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by RBCurtis

Recently updated 15 year old RM equipment, with Axiom 9+, AIS 750, Quantum Doppler radar and EV autopilot. Kept fully functional ST60 wind, speed and depth instruments.

All work perfectly.

Let’s assume RM has terrible product quality and one in every 100 products has significant manufacturing errors. The probability of having four faulty devices is 0.01 x 0.01 x 0.01 x 0.01, or 1 in 10,000.

And the manufacturing error rate is probably much lower than 1 in 100 units.

Far more likely that the OP’s issues are due to installation or power problems.

I think this is true of a lot of products also.

When you look at Amazon reviews for instance, you see thousands of people with a particular product and invariably 10% of them say it’s junk. One star.

It doesn’t matter what product it is. It cannot achieve more than 4.5 stars once thousands of people leave reviews.