blank fish finder display - V7

[Taniwani]

Since upgrading to V7, I get a blank display when activating the graphical fish finder page after the system has been running for some time. Not sure if it is time or certain actions that provoke this. Once the problem shows up, I found no other way than rebooting the unit, to make it work again.

In this state, the sounder appears to be working, as the numeric depth is correctly displayed.
If I bring up a second TZT2 and select the fish-finder it shows a white screen as well, but it doesn't claim to get an error accessing the fish-finder in the other unit.

If I pull up the control menu for the sounder, I can operate all settings, manual or automatic as if everything was fine. Selecting factory reset for the sounder, changes settings to factory default, but doesn't fix the problem. Picture of screen before and after restart are attached.

View attachment P7311458s.jpg

 

[Johnny Electron]

Almost sounds like the sounder and unit resets were not done after programming. The V7 software has new sounder firmware that requires those resets get done. You might try doing those resets again from the software update instructions. If that doesn't help; I would recommend you open a case with tech support. They might need to look at the sounder firmware level and collect a system log file.

 

[Taniwani]

Quite sure I did the reset as per instructions and have done it a couple more times thereafter.
But in the mean time I found that I can reproduce the problem.

Two days ago I watched the unit reboot by itself for whatever reason, and when it came back up, it had the fish finder display blank again. Manually shutting down the unit and starting it again fixes the fish finder display. What also seems effected is the chart license, as it only displays just the basic chart after such an automatic restart. But shutting down and restarting the unit only fixes the fish finder, not the chart license which I have to input again in any case.

I now found out that I can provoke the same by entering the Service manager and exiting from it again. Then it comes up with lost chart license and blank fish finder.

The conclusion is, that seeing a blank fish finder screen, means that the unit has restarted by itself recently.

 

[Johnny Electron]

Then I would recommend you capture a log file from the service menu (using USB stick) and get that file to your distributor tech support to be looked at.

 

[Taniwani]

Thanks Johnny - will do that.

 

[Quitsa]

This is interesting because it is somewhat similar to an issue that I was experiencing with my radar. It was evident that the radar was operating because it could be controlled from the MFD and set to transmit and ARPA targets would be acquired and displayed on screen. However, the display would otherwise be blank and the radar returns did not appear. To add to the puzzling aspect of the issue, I have a TZT 2 display on the network and it showed the radar at the same time as the TZT 3 displays were blank. Looking at the sensor list on the TZT 3, the DRS25A-NXT radar showed up normally on the list even though the radar display was blank.

Shutting down and rebooting seemed to fix the problem. I subsequently tried bypassing the ethernet switch (hub) and connected the radar directly to the second network port on one of my TZT 3 displays. That seemed to work and the problem (which was intermittent in any case) did not appear after I did that. Both TZT 3s displays and the TZT2 show the radar normally.

It's hard to reproduce the problem unfortunately and thus not easy to isolate the cause. My guess is that it is something software related.

 

[Taniwani]

I agree, it's really hard to narrow down these spurious things. It seems to me, that it happens after an automatic restart, which seems to restart just an app and not the whole system and it somehow ends up with a stale link between the modules. I can provoke the effect by entering and exiting Serviceman. That also seems to stop the top level apps and start them again.

I had these occasional restarts also before V7, but on V6 it would come back up working. The restarts are rare, maybe once a week, so I can live with it, but it is also hard to track down why. I took Johnny's advice and sent the logs to support, maybe they can narrow down the cause.

I have the slight suspicion that it doesn't like me to power off the radar unit. I need to do it, as it is very noisy and draws a lot of power in standby and has no 'soft' power down. I then do get the alarm saying connection to radar lost. Silencing the alarm, leaves the red bar active and then I think I get a restart with the next 24 hours.