[CA] No communication E7 and instruments

[BlackButterfly]

We have an E7 chartplotter with I7s,P7 and radar wind and depth. These have all worked fine for the past 5 years. We left the boat late 2017 returning May 2018.

All instrument panels had power but no data, no autopilot. The E7 showed no instruments or data at all except the radar.

First thing I did was update the firmware and the charts, this has been done regularly over the years, no difference. I started to remove one instrument at a time and found when I disconnected the E7 I finally got data to the instruments, except wind. I reconnected the cable from the E7 and the instrument data was still going to the instruments but not to the chartplotter.
The chartplotter itself is not acting normal, it is slow to start, has always been, but now the screen does not seem to acknowledge any input, but if you wait it will eventually do what you have asked.

The boat has been in the water the whole time and there was a lightening strike to a boat on the next dock. Approximately 100 ft away.

I am presuming that the E7 may have had an EMP glitch.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated on what else I should do or check. I would normally have updated the instruments but as the chartplotter cannot see them I can’t.

Is it worth sending for checking and repairing or are the newer chartplotter better for the money?

Glenda

[Chuck - Raymarine - Moderator]

Welcome to the Raymarine Forum Glenda,

It appears that at least the e7 MFD and possibly the Wind instrument may now have communications circuitry failures. Should an Evolution autopilot be installed onboard, then we may be able to use the diagnostics feature of the p70 autopilot control head to poll the SeaTalkng / NMEA 2000 backbone to list any SeaTalkng / NMEA 2000 devices sensed (MENU->SET-UP->DIAGNOSTICS->ABOUT SYSTEM). I two or more devices are listed, then any devices listed would then be deemed to have operational SeaTalkng / NMEA 2000 communications interfaces. Any devices not listed would then be deemed to have suffered a failure of their SeaTalkng / NMEA 2000 communications circuitry and should be sent to Raymarine’s Product Repair Center to be bench checked / serviced.

[BlackButterfly]

Sorry for not responding earlier, we found out we had to be out of the country the next day, thought we had another week! Caught it in time!

Ok so given the age of the E7 is it worth having it looked at or just get a new one? I am not sure what the cost of repairs are likely to be, do you have any rough estimate if it’s just checked and the software zapped? If not is there anywhere I can ask that question?

[Chuck - Raymarine - Moderator]

Glenda,

At the time of this response, Raymarine's US Product Repair Center is charging $90 to bench check and/or update software within a device which is sent to Raymarine. In this case, I would recommend that both the MFD and Wind instrument both be sent to Raymarine’s Product Repair Center to be bench checked / serviced.