New anchor alarm bow-offset feature in V8.01 isn't working

The exciting new anchor watch capability in V8.01 includes this feature, according to the release notes:
“(2) The anchor icon is dropped at the bow of the bow, not at the GPS position. (For accurate location of anchor drop, a heading sensor should be used.)”

This doesn't seem to be working on our vessel, however. The anchor alarm is created centered on the GPS position, not at the bow as expected. Here's the setup and what I've checked:
-Primary heading and position source on this vessel is an SC-70.
-The SC-70 has a solid fix, which I can see on its own display.
-The SC-70 is selected as the preferred source for position and heading on the TzTouch2s, and the TzTouch2s are using the SC-70 as the heading and position source, which I confirm in the Initial Setupata Source menu, and by seeing a fix and heading displayed in the left side Data panel boxes, and by looking at the plotter and seeing the My Ship icon and heading line exactly where expected (vessel is in its berth)
-In Initial Settings, the overall Boat Length (70ft) and longitudinal GPS offset from the bow (50ft) both appear to be set accurately for the vessel.

When tapping the My Ship icon and selecting Set Anchor Alarm from the context pop-up menu (or I also have it configured as a long two-finger tap), the anchor alarm center point is created right at the GPS position, not offset to be centered at the bow as expected. I can confirm this wrong behavior two ways.

1. If I zoom the plotter in all the way to maximum where the ship geometry becomes visible, the anchor alarm’s little anchor icon center point is clearly right over the red "plus" of the GPS position, not at the bow of the vessel.
2.The anchor alarm status bar at the top of the display shows a distance of ~0ft, rather than the 50ft I'd expect it to immediately show when the anchor alarm is first initiated, since 50ft is the configured longitudinal offset of the GPS back from the vessel's bow.

Am I doing something else wrong here, or have I found a bug? Thanks.

PugSndBoater":2zy4h67i said:

Am I doing something else wrong here, or have I found a bug? Thanks.

Click to expand...

I double-checked with the experts, it's not a bug,

A couple of things, first head over to HOME > Settings > Init. Setup > and make sure you have a value for the GPS Position: Longitudinal (from bow) setup. Next check that there's a value for boat length.

See 3.3 Initial Setup: https://www.furunousa.com/-/media/sites ... manual.pdf

If you suspect the anchor watch is dropping a mark on your "+" GPS position, try setting a radically big value for either fields and than set the anchor watch again (e.g. set 1,220' for GPS Pos long (from bow), and say 1,400' for boat length). You'll notice with an exaggerated value for boat length and GPS position that in-fact the anchor watch mark is being placed on the bow.

Hope this helps, :sail

- Maggy

Magnetron":1rn19fzl said:

A couple of things, first head over to HOME > Settings > Init. Setup > and make sure you have a value for the GPS Position: Longitudinal (from bow) setup. Next check that there's a value for boat length.

Click to expand...

Indeed, as mentioned in the original post: "In Initial Settings, the overall Boat Length (70ft) and longitudinal GPS offset from the bow (50ft) both appear to be set accurately for the vessel."

Magnetron":1rn19fzl said:

If you suspect the anchor watch is dropping a mark on your "+" GPS position, try setting a radically big value for either fields and than set the anchor watch again (e.g. set 1,220' for GPS Pos long (from bow), and say 1,400' for boat length). You'll notice with an exaggerated value for boat length and GPS position that in-fact the anchor watch mark is being placed on the bow.

Click to expand...

I agree that's a good thing to try, and I have taken your suggestion. So maybe some photos of my screen when doing so will help where you and the other experts can look at it and see what you see. I set overall length to 900ft and longitudinal distance from bow to 800ft. Then, I set overall length to 400ft and longitudinal distance from bow to 200ft. Finally, I set overall length to 70ft and longitudinal distance from bow to 50ft, which is accurate for the vessel. For each of these three cases I dropped an anchor alarm, then I took a photo of the plotter screen and attached it here. It seems pretty obvious that it's not being dropped at the bow. Rather, it's dropping the center of the anchor alarm at the GPS position. Moreover, it's dropping the anchor alarm center in the same position across all three cases, regardless of what I configure as the vessel length in Initial Settings.

The position of the vessel is accurate, and the heading fix/input is solid, which you can see in the photos from the green heading line pointing to 90 degrees, which is the correct vessel heading.

The other thing I'll point to again is the last thing (#2) I mentioned in my original post. After dropping the anchor alarm, in the anchor alarm status bar that appears at the top of the display, the left-most data box shows a distance of ~0ft, rather than the expected 50ft (see photo 70-50-anchor again) since 50ft is the configured longitudinal offset of the GPS back from the vessel's bow. That is, if you drop anchor alarm. were the anchor alarm actually centered at at the bow the Distance data box should already show "50ft" when I first initiate the anchor alarm and the bow is right over the anchor, since the GPS longitudinal offset is configured to 50ft in Initial Settings. However, my display shows ~0ft, which also reinforces the idea that the anchor alarm is not being dropped at the bow but rather at the GPS position.

PugSndBoater":2zbgikpd said:

-The SC-70 is selected as the preferred source for position and heading on the TzTouch2s, and the TzTouch2s are using the SC-70 as the heading and position source, which I confirm in the Initial Setupata Source menu,

Click to expand...

What happens if you select the internal GPS over the SC70 for preferred position source? Same condition, or does it drop the anchor at the edge of the bow now? :sorry

- Maggy

Magnetron":1smubago said:

What happens if you select the internal GPS over the SC70 for preferred position source? Same condition, or does it drop the anchor at the edge of the bow now? :sorry

Click to expand...

Good idea, and worth a try, but I saw no change in behavior. I set the length back to 900 and GPS longitudinal offset to 800 in Initial Settings so any difference in behavior would be obvious, and switched the GPS Data Source to the internal GPS. Same result it seems. Photo of the screen under these conditions attached.

I tried even two more things, based on your most recent Data Sources suggestion.

First, I switched the heading source over from the SC-70 to the vessel's backup source which is a PG-700 also onboard. Same result, anchor alarm dropped at the GPS position, not the bow.

Second, I tried switching over both the heading source to the PG-700 and the position source to the internal GPS. Same result, anchor alarm dropped at the GPS position, not the bow.

We appreciate you troubleshooting the issue together, it certainly appears to be a mystery to say the least. :sorry :lol: (we may need to go grab an SC70 and hook it up). One thing I noticed was that there is always going to be some 'GPS drift' when under <3kts in general. For example, when I dropped my anchor watch icon I noticed almost immediately it shifted from the bow to the rear within milliseconds as my boat icon jostled about. :roll:

Tentative fix: so a quick fix is to just tap on the anchor icon > "Edit Anchor Watch" > and manually tap & drag it in place.

Much appreciated, :sail

- Maggy

Thanks for continuing to dig deeper, Maggy. I'm happy to try more things on this end too, as the need for more debugging might come up.

Magnetron":2h1sfzks said:

Tentative fix: so a quick fix is to just tap on the anchor icon > "Edit Anchor Watch" > and manually tap & drag it in place.
Much appreciated, :sail

Click to expand...

For sure, a workaround for me for now is to simply drop the anchor alarm at the GPS point, select Edit, and then drag the center point 50ft forward manually (in my case given that's the expected GPS longitudinal offset on this vessel). And all should work as expected if it were dropped at the bow from the start.

Following up on this old thread, was this problem setting the anchor alarm point at the bow based on the vessel length ever confirmed to be a bug and flagged to Japan to hopefully fix in the next TzTouch2 software release?

Another follow-up on this older thread: has there been any attempt to verify, replicate, and hopefully fix this issue?

Some additional information I can offer, if only a little, is that trying this same thing onboard with the Nobeltec Timezero software with CCRP (Consistent Common Reference Point) values configured to the same boat dimensions, and using the same onboard sensor hardware (GPS, Sat Compass, secondary heading source, etc) all works as expected with the anchor correctly dropped at the bow.

Since the Timezero software has more user-settable values for CCRPs versus TzTouch, my hypothesis is that Furuno's attempt to port the Timezero functionality to TzTouch while also simplifying the number of user-settable parameters by computing the anchor offset in TzTouch instead of just having the user manually input the anchor position like on Timezero, Furuno may have introduced a software bug in this anchor position computation.

It isn't uncommon for the Nobeltec software to conduct functions differently than the Furuno MFD. For example the PGB data used and how it is displayed in the MFD is totally diffrent than Nobeltec. It doesn't make either method wrong, it is just done differently. I have no doubts that the PC software conducts anchor watch differently, yet they should play together fine. I will ask the tech guys to look over this thread and try to duplicate any concern. At this point I am not aware of any open complaints or bugs on this feature from other customers. It might take bit for them to collect all the equipment and test but it will be dug into and then reported if an issue is found. Thanks for following up.

After doing some testing in our lab, I agree that the anchor seems to follow the GPS location not the bow of the boat; counter to their statement on the v8.01 release notes. I will report this to the parent company. To be clear, the bow would be your preferred drop location, correct?

As a follow up to the follow up, it appears you might have the same problem we did with our test unit. After discussing with our parent company they assured us that anchor drops at the bow, not based on GPS location with v8.01 and above. After factory clearing our display and re-testing, we did find it uses the bow. It appears if upgraded to v8.01 without factory clearing the machine that the older method (GPS Sensor based) can stick. I would recommend you backup user data and factory clear your 8.01 machine and hopefully you find like we did that it does indeed drop anchor from the bow.

Thanks so much, Johnny, for diving in with a test setup like that and consulting with your parent company. That's encouraging that you replicated the behavior and then, after a reset, it seems to work correctly. I thought I did factory-clear all of the display with the 8.01 upgrade, but it's certainly possible I neglected to do so. I will try what you suggest out here as soon as I'm able and follow up to the follow up to your follow up to confirm what happens.

Circling back to actually post on this issue again. This still doesn't work, even after a factory reset, unfortunately. I factory reset the entire display using the Service Man menu (doing so one of the 4 displays on this vessel first as a test). I then reloaded the saved settings from a USB stick after the reset. I'm still seeing the same buggy behavior where the anchor alarm is dropped at the GPS position and not at the bow.

Assuming what the parent company said is actually on the right track true, the only thing I can think of is that the saved user settings file also saves the bit of information that causes this bug, and that information gets restored after the a factory reset when the user settings are loaded from the USB stick again.

That last theory seems to be spot-on, as I've now finally fixed/worked around this issue. Summary:

• It is a bug.
• The bug is caused by some internal setting, though it's a hidden setting that isn't visible anywhere in the user interface
• If you factory reset the unit, that apparently clears the setting and fixes the bug.
• Insidiously, however, the bug-inducing hidden internal setting seems like it is saved/restored on Settings export/import.

So, that last point means, if you're experiencing this bug, and you export your user-settings file (e.g. to a USB stick or SD Card), then you factory reset the TzTouch2 (e.g. using the Service Man menu procedure), and then you import/restore that previously saved user settings file from the USB or SD Card, that last step (import/restore) also restores whatever hidden internal setting causes this bug and the whole incorrect behavior returns. Yuck.

To verify this theory and resolve the issue, I took a photo of every screen and setting in the entire menu system, homescreen, and side-bars on my master TzTouch2 before doing it's factory reset. Then I factory reset it using Service Man. Then, instead of restoring a settings-file from USB or SD Card, I manually reconfigured every individual setting throughout the menus and homescreen by flipping through the photos I'd previously taken. That took quite a while, but, et voilà, no more bug and the anchor alarm now drops at the bow as it should. To round things out I then exported a fresh settings file from the newly manually configured TzTouch2, factory reset the other 3 units, and imported that new fresh setting to each of them (turning off the chart-master setting on these other 3). All fixed, finally.

Great information. Thanks for following up. I will let them know.

PugSndBoater said:

So, that last point means, if you're experiencing this bug, and you export your user-settings file (e.g. to a USB stick or SD Card), then you factory reset the TzTouch2 (e.g. using the Service Man menu procedure), and then you import/restore that previously saved user settings file from the USB or SD Card, that last step (import/restore) also restores whatever hidden internal setting causes this bug and the whole incorrect behavior returns. Yuck.

Click to expand...

The "backup settings" feature is like a snapshot of your MFD in a moment of time. If there's any issues it'll be backed up with all the other user settings. Currently there's no way to tailor what goes into that config file (nor a way to read it with a text editor). If a user backs up their settings before performing an upgrade to a newer version of software then subsequently restores that file after the upgrade. There is a potential for corruption if the setting was modified or removed in current software, then restored (the MFD will not error). Therefore, Furuno recommends that the installer notate the user's preferences before performing an update and then follow up with a sea trial (if possible), rather than restore the settings. It may seem tedious, I've done it several times on customer boats - but it's the best method to avoid any potential glitches.

I hope this helps clarify.

- Maggy