[TG11] es127 touch screen failure

[pwagsc]

I have checked the power with an oscilloscope and it is very stable. I have 2 power sources - AGM and Lithium. Failure is the same with either. I have been doing testing the last few days and I have a consistent result that is very strange.

If I keep power off the NMEA trunk and run the display, then it runs all day with touch with one exception: If I disable touch then reenable it, I never ever regain touch until I reboot.

Second weird symptom. If I am running, once again disconnected from NMEA, all is great until I turn on the radar. Instant loss of touch. If I turn off the radar, still no touch. Only resolution is as above - reboot and it is back and will keep running until I turn radar on again. I should mention that this problem started occurring after I installed a new Quantum radar replacing a 418HD.


If I keep radar and NMEA off, it seems to run all day. This seems to point to software, not hardware. The very fact that touch disappears after I hit the disable then reenable - but a reboot restores it - appears to rule out hardware - or at least make it very weird.


Then again, if I turn on the NMEA bus then eventually touch will disappear. Could take seconds or a day. After it fails, I get a consistent touch beep every three to 50 seconds as if someone is touching the screen and the screen changes as described in my original post.

I will triple check the drain wire continuity just in case.

Thanks for the response,

Cheers, Paul

(05-27-18 09:29 PM)Tom - Raymarine - Moderator Wrote:  Hello pwagsc,

Sorry to hear that.

To answer the last part of your post first, I wouldn't do a factory reset, I don't think it will resolve the problem.

In the experience of myself and the support team here in Australia, incorrect touch inputs or unresponsive touch when using clean, dry hands are generally down to one of the following things:

1. Incorrect product grounding
The eS has a thin black drain wire on its power cable, along with the thick black power cable. This drain wire needs to be connected via a low-resistance path to the boat's RF ground point (battery negative, if there's no dedicated ground). It needs to be a low-resistance path in order to provide a preferential route for noise signals. Installers who don't know what to do with it commonly leave it hanging free (or connect to the nearest bit of metalwork, or even to battery positive (!)), but none of these are a good plan.

2. Unstable power supply
The touchscreen relies on an electrical connection between your body and the display: if the display's supply isn't stable, the touchscreen controller doesn't have a reliable reference point. Boat power supplies can be anything but 12V (or 24V) DC, despite what a multimeter or distribution panel meter will tell you. Engine, solar or other charging systems can superimpose significant noise or ripple onto the supply, whilst other devices can pull the supply down through the current they draw, which can be anything but steady-state.
If in doubt, we recommend having a good-quality, technical installer check the supply with an oscilloscope: this is the only true measure of supply stability. We sometimes see 12V supplies that measure as 13-odd volts stable on a multimeter but turn out to have peaks of 60V or more when checked with a 'scope.

3. A product fault.
If neither of the above options make any improvement, I'd suggest getting it checked at your nearest Raymarine technical service dealer or service centre. If your display's only around 1.5 years old then it sounds like it may well be under warranty (2 years as standard, 3 if registered on our website when new.)

Regards,
Tom