EV-100 Auto Pilot Install

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BOAT
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Re: EV-100 Auto Pilot Install

Post by BOAT »

Okay, kurz is right - I remember more now - I have stranded marine cable (romex) of the correct size powering the piston. The piston is essentially a 12 volt electric motor so it's a full power item like an appliance in your boat so it needs to be cabled correctly - there is a pretty good electric surge going through that line. I know it's all protected electronically at the brain but still it's good to have a really good large conductor on that line with the quality silver or tinned coated copper stranded wire because we are making it a lot longer. You don't want that cable heating up in bad weather when the pilot is working it's hardest to fight the wind, waves, and currents. I'm sure it pulls a lot of power.

I remember now, that was one of the reasons I added the extension to the tiller arm - I did not want the piston to need to push so hard to move the rudders because I was concerned about the electric load on that long cable and high forces on the piston so I extended the arc to the minimum 14 inches RayMarine recommended. Everyone else that has done this installation has used the stock 12 inch tiller arm. The fact that the piston is more than strong enough to push the rudders around with only the 12 inch tiller arm tells me it will suck up whatever power it need to get the job done so I decided to be safer with a longer lever even though it limits the arc of the pilot.

Everything is a trade off.
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Re: EV-100 Auto Pilot Install

Post by windsurfmt »

Auto pilot install is complete. Maiden voyage this weekend. Thanks to Boat for the advice!
Any first time advice?
Do you guys use the auto pilot to track and gybe or disengage it?
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Re: EV-100 Auto Pilot Install

Post by BOAT »

At first you will get messed up by forgetting you have it. You will try to turn real fast and forget your connected and if you get in a panic or rush you might try to disconnect in a panic and then the arms will not be aligned to reconnect later.

It will take a while before you stop forgetting to disconnect and there will be times you hit the pilot on button and it's not working and you get an alarm and it's because you forgot to RE connect.

You will get used to it and stop forgetting after a while.

The important thing on the shakedowns is to BE PREPARED TO GO BELOW! a LOT! You will be diving under the cockpit a lot in the beginning to reset the arm position back to center because you forgot to disconnect in the center position. After a while you will stop forgetting.

Don't use the pilot to make complicated maneuvers until after you have a lot of hours under your belt - that goes for ANY AP. I can maneuver 'boat' now on programmed routes right out the harbor without even touching the wheel allowing me to bring in the laundry and do other chores while heading out.

I am at the point now where the only time I need to be at the helm is to jibe or dock. It took a long time to get to that point.
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Re: EV-100 Auto Pilot Install

Post by kurz »

I agree with boat. Much "I am stupid troubles" at the beginning... That will repeat every season at the beginning :D

Since I have the remote with special programming from madman I never dive under the cockpit. I can stay in the cabin an watch the tiller arm moving with this special remote.
And even more the wlan cam will show me all when I am in the cockpit... The cam is new so I will see after this season how good it will work.

As I have no plotter I never used tracks.

Do you Boat use the AP with the motor hooked on? I never do as I am concerned the load may be too heavy. Maybe it was no problem...
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Re: EV-100 Auto Pilot Install

Post by BOAT »

kurz wrote: Sat Jun 13, 2020 2:03 am I agree with boat. Much "I am stupid troubles" at the beginning... That will repeat every season at the beginning :D

Since I have the remote with special programming from madman I never dive under the cockpit. I can stay in the cabin an watch the tiller arm moving with this special remote.
And even more the wlan cam will show me all when I am in the cockpit... The cam is new so I will see after this season how good it will work.

As I have no plotter I never used tracks.

Do you Boat use the AP with the motor hooked on? I never do as I am concerned the load may be too heavy. Maybe it was no problem...
I have never had a problem with too much load on the pilot. It's been tested very severely - an 18 knot crosswind in bad chop going WOT all the way across the San Pedro Channel from Long Beach to Avalon at Catalina Island. The wheel was cranked over a quarter turn all the way to compensate for the stiff wind blowing us sideways and the spray coming over the side made me soaked by the time we got there (almost two hours). The pounding was so bad I sent the wife below to ride it out and by the time we got there she was really sick. A short trip of only 22 miles - if we were not in such a hurry to get a mooring I would have spent the 4 hours to sail there (much more comfortable) but it was the busy season.

The only time we have ever got a pilot alarm was because of not enough forward motion - (trying to sail in .5 knots of wind). If the current drifts you around too much the pilot wallows and wanders trying to get on course and if it can't turn the boat because of no forward motion it will sound the alarm.

I have read of reported drop outs and pilot alarms here on the site by folks using the tiller pilot connected directly to the steering tie bar - that bar is connected less than 12 inches from the tiller pivot so it does take a lot of force to move the rudders at that angle. That is why I have the tiller extension - it gives the pilot a lot more leverage on the rudders - uses a lot less electricity too. It also makes the heading much more accurate in performance mode (very handy for really tight navigation between rocks and stuff).

I have the cheaper RayMarine remote control that has only pilot control (left right) and a few maneuvers like tack and circle, etc. It does not have a return to midships feature like the expensive RayMarine remote has or all the goodies like kurz madman remote. If you want lots of features on the remote the madman is probably a much better deal.

I no longer go below since I added a rudder indicator for the pilot - now I have a gauge on the pedestal that tells me where the pilot arm is at all times so it's easy for me to line it up if I forgot to disconnect at midships. The rudder indicator has really eliminated all my issues with going below.

I would like a camera in top of the mast - maybe kurz can show me how to do that.
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Re: EV-100 Auto Pilot Install

Post by kurz »

If you want a cam in top of the mast the only is you need 12V. Then connect a wlan-cam with your mobile phon. thats it.
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Re: EV-100 Auto Pilot Install

Post by windsurfmt »

First few times out and it's working great! Thanks again for the advice....
I saw some mentions of a less expensive remote from Madman. Is this right and is he still making them?
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Re: EV-100 Auto Pilot Install

Post by kurz »

Just watch his homepage.
If you order you can ask him for programming do move with the fob the AP tiller on standby mode. The fobs are very cheap.
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Re: EV-100 Auto Pilot Install

Post by windsurfmt »

Looking at getting a Humminbird Helix G3 to work with the Raymarine EV'100 autopilot. Having trouble figuring out a cable. Any advice?
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Re: EV-100 Auto Pilot Install

Post by windsurfmt »

Hold on... It looks like the Humminbird Helix 5 G2 GPS model I already have communicates in NMEA 0183. The new G3 I want communicates in the same. Did I see somewhere that the EV-100 will work with that?
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Re: EV-100 Auto Pilot Install

Post by windsurfmt »

BOAT wrote: Thu Jan 05, 2017 7:47 am
Estate Sail wrote:As I install my EV-100 I also would couple the autopilot with my Lowrance HDS-8. The Lowrance MNEA connection comes from the power cable, i.e. color coded wires. Can I cut the end of a Lowrance/raymarine compatible cable and match the color codes to join in to the sea talk NMEA network?

If the Lowrance device does not have a dedicated NMEA 0183 or 2000 plug there is no way to tell. The NMEA colors are standardized but it's important to note that there are NO POWER COLORS in NMEA! So the red and white colors in a NMEA cable could mean a completely different thing than positive and negative power or grounds. All the colors in NMEA are identity colors representing certain groups of "talking ID's" - it's not necessary to get ALL the wires matched up and connected because you can run the autopilot with one NMEA group of sentences called RMC and I think those all come down one wire. If you can add the RMB sentences (another wire) the pilot can do more things like waypoints and stuff.

Also. YOU CAN'T HAVE TWO POWER SOURCES ON A RAY MARINE BACKBONE! That is important - the backbone must be powered from one source (preferably the Ray Marine power cable) if you add another power source to the backbone the system will not work. If the wires your using are coming from the power source I would be very careful about using the wires.

If you can get the needed wire for RMC sentences and get that wire connected correctly to a node on the backbone the pilot should see it. Another thing - there is a difference between true heading and magnetic heading in the sentences - I have all the group wires connected for both so I can run my Plotter on TRUE while at the same time run my pilot on MAGNETIC - (why?) It's an old habit most Pac Cruisers still run their pilots on MAG because GPS would drop out over the Pacific in the old days - it's better now, but I still run the AP on MAG because I don't trust the government. :( (strange huh?)

Anyways, try to isolate that one wire if you can and make sure you use a real Ray Marine cable to connect it to the backbone. You can add wires one at a time carefully to see what happens. There might be a color chart on the Lowrance device on the internet.
The new auto pilot is working well and the Boat quick release gets better and better and I learn to use it. Highly recommend the tiller version installed this way, clean and silent!

I'm attempting to connect the EV100 to my Humminbird :tat22: Helix 5. The helix communicates in 0183 as does the auto pilot. My thought is to get an additional blue backbone cable, cut off one plug to expose the individual wires and then connect it to the 0183 cable I'm getting for the helix. I would assume the data out from the gps unit goes to the data in on the auto pilot and vice versa. Is this correct? I understand that no secondary power supply should go into the back bone. So would I just be connecting 2 wires? I can't find a pin diagram for the back bone cable. Anyone know what colors are the in and out data wires?
Is my logic that if both units communicate in the same language that this should work? This stuff is pretty alien to me. Thanks gang...
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Re: EV-100 Auto Pilot Install

Post by green »

kadet wrote: Tue Sep 15, 2015 11:19 pm
I plan to just connect the Ray Marine backbone right into the Garmin backbone so all the stuff can talk to each other.
Yeah good luck with that, that's what I did and the Raymarine Autopilot computer saw some of the Garmin output like wind speed and heading from memory but not the track data or waypoints. Hooked up the NMEA 0183 ports and viola everything worked. I know your 100 does not have NMEA 0183 hence the good luck :P
Kadet (or anyone else in the know), I wonder if you can give me some advice.

I bought a Garmin Echomap UHD 63cv chart plotter that I’m planning to install in a month or so to replace an aging unit from circa 2005. It claims to be compatible with NMEA 2000 and 0183 networks. I don’t have an autopilot system like the Raymarine EV-100 but I hope to one day.

Is there anything I should consider for future compatibility when installing the Garmin? Should it eventually be possible for the AP to use data from the Garmin to follow a track?
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