PG700 on Nav711C stopped communicating

[Janaconda]

We have a furuno PG700 compass on a Furuno Nav711C autopilot

It was installed less than 1 year ago and was working great.

Suddenly one day the compass quit working. We powered it off, and restarted and all lights are green on the compass but no compass data is being read by the display unit.
All lights are green on compass.

 

[Johnny Electron]

Per the manual on page 10, three lights is normal operations after a compass has been calibrated and has a table stored. I generally don't see problems with the PG700 unless water damages them. It almost sounds like something has happened with your NMEA 2000 bus. Do you have any other units on your system other than the Navpilot that you can use to look for the compass like a NavNet?

 

[Janaconda]

We have a B&G Zeus 3 12" with Helo 20 radar bundle, forward scan, Triton 2 with wind and depth transducers and external GPS. all connected to NMEA 2000 backbone. The autopilot is not yet connected to this system, but that is the plan. The PG 700 is sitting in a dry central place, but could have had metal things close. Could that interfere so there is no compass reading?

 

[Johnny Electron]

It could be, but one of the lights would most likely be blinking, if that was the case. You don't have to put it with your existing NMEA 2000 bus if you don't want but it must have a valid bus to talk to the pilot. A valid bus should have power and two terminations besides the connected players. If you have a bus, it would normally be seen and taking. There might be a bad wire where someone has dug a tie wrap into it or folded it over beyond the suitable bend radius. It would need to be troubleshot. Could always send the compass in for testing but it isn't common to see problems with the unit itself.

 

[Janaconda]

It is possible the compass has received an electric shock from a very close lightning hit. If we take the compass off the system can we hook up to the B&G GPS model instead? How would we go about doing that if possible? We are in Brunei leaving for a 1000 mile trip to Jakarta in 4 days and would really enjoy using our auto pilot.
We have a Zeus3 multifunction display with B&G instruments for wind/speed/heading and B&G Halo 20 radar on backbone. Can we integrate the auto pilot into that system without the PG700 compass?

 

[Acer]

Just my 2cents: Check if you perhaps changed the termination setting with the switch on the PG700.

Check if despite the missing data the compass shows up in the n2k device list, your plotter o
a RD-33 for example should have such a menu point

You can also perform a complete factory reset as described in the manual. I once also had the problem with a disappeared PG700 and the reset solves that issue