Autohelm4000 help no manual

[sailingdolphin]

My autohelm does not perform  from about 70deg to the wind to a close haul. It goes way off course. The compass reading is off at least 30 deg from my binnacle compass. How do I calibrate?

Also  I think its called the flux gate its black a half round about the size of a tennis ball.  That is installed in the aft cabin to the left underneath the seat right when you walk in. that was installed before I got the boat.  When I bought  the boat it did not have a stove. Believe it or not instead of a stove there was a bar.  I installed a stove on the other side of that wall very close to the fluxgate.  Could that have affected it? I know it would affect a regular compass.

also How do you set a course on the autohelm and how do you set the alarm?

[SteveLyle]

Raymarine posts their owner's manuals on the web.

Go here:

http://www.raymarine.com/raymarine/Default.asp?site=1&SECTion=3&Page=657&Parent=166

Most manuals are available on the web.  I've printed out all the manuals for the gear on my boat - instruments, autopilot, VHF, GPS, furler, etc., formatted 2 pages/page.  Makes them compact, and always available on the boat.  

I believe the manual will cover your usage, compass calibration and location questions.  Yes, the stove could be affecting it, depending on how close it is.  

Are your steering cables snug?  Autopilots go haywire if there's any play in the steering.

Steve

[Stu Jackson]

Doug

Do a search here on "ST4000", there is tons of information, including how to calibrate the unit, which, if I recollect correctly, needs to be fooled into thinking it's running a hydraulic steering system to work.

In addition, see Whacky Autohelm on the FAQ page.

[sailingdolphin]

Has anyone done that before?  How do you set it up? I have a Garmin GPS which is NMEA 183 seatalk compatible. Which is what ST 4000 is compatible with.  I just dont know how to set it up.  

I would also like to set it up with my DSC VHF.

[Mike Vaccaro]

Doug,

This is going to take a bit of work.  Step 1 is to get your autohelm flux gate properly calibrated and get the autopilot to work in a basic, magnetic heading hold mode.  Your best bet is to get a hold of the manual and spend some time digesting it.  It could be as simple as a calibration, which usually motoring in a slow 360 degree turn whilst the flux gate compensates for magnetic deviation (anomalies caused by the installation of the magnetic sensor in the boat).  As Stu said, there may be other steps involved as well.  Only a through reading and understanding of the manual will provide answers.

The next step is to set up your "network" if you intend to interface your instruments.  This can be as simple as hooking up the autopilot to the GPS, or networking all of the electronics on board.  This may or may not be practical with your existing equipment.  It certainly IS practical to hook the GPS up to the autopilot, but again you'll need the manual to proceed.  Unfortunately, your hardware may not be as simple as "plug and play," and you'll need access to both the autopilot data as well as the GPS to determine if the two are compatible.  There is a compatible interface (NMEA), but you may find that you need to tweak the "language" to ensure that all "messaging" is understood by the autopilot.  Then again--it could be as easy as running a single wire!  

If you search this site and message board for "Garmin" or "GPS" you may find some helpful posts.  Additionally, there are quite a few Autohelm users out there who have already hooked their equipment up--perhaps they've got some good lessons to share!

Your best bet right now is research:  Learn about the systems you have and then working on getting them to talk to each other.  

Also, if you've got a wind instrument of some type on board, you may want to interface that with the autopilot as well, if the two are compatable.  Often, when you sail, there is a lot more practicality in steering to wind (like a wind vane steering system) than steering to a point in space (GPS) which won't compensate for wind shift enroute.  Like steering to a mag heading, steering to a GPS waypoint will always be a compromise as far as sail trim goes.  It is, however, darn handy when motoring!  

Best of luck,

Mike

[SteveLyle]

Yes, it absolutely can be done, and has been, by a lot of people.

I covered my adventures in setting this up (Nexus instruments, Garmin GPSMap76, Raymarine ST4000+II AP) on Sewanee Belle in the May '04 Mainsheet, available on the Tech Notes section of this site.

The key to doing this is to know the capabilities of the equipment you've got in excruciating detail.  Support of NMEA 0183 isn't enough - there are redundant NMEA 0183 language 'statements' that equipment can use.  In my case, my default 'out of the box' GPSMAP 76 did not generate the statements that my AP could handle - it took a software upgrade of the GPS and a tweaking of the GPS config to take care of that.  Another little gotcha is that an NMEA 0183 device can only get input from one other device, which makes it tough on AP's since you want to send it both GPS data as well as wind data.  The solution is an NMEA repeater, which can take multiple NMEA input streams and generate a single output.  My Nexus instruments filled that role.

If you haven't done it, it's very cool to hook your GPS up to your computer, configure your Window terminal app to the port you've hooked the GPS up to, and see the NMEA statements (which are man-readable) come streaming over your computer display.  I don't think I really believed all this stuff until I saw it with my own eyes.

Get it working and it's a beautiful thing.

[rappareems]

Doug,

I have the Autohelm 4000+ manual downloaded in Adobe.  I tried to email it to you but your mailbox was full.  If you are interested in it let me know. Rappareems@aol.com