Star Gazer went nuts

[kpickett]

I plan to call PP tomorrow morning, because they are always really helpful, but I wanted to see if anyone has dealt with this problem before.

 

I run Star Gazer 9.0 with Zbox on a DBW Malibu RLXI. It has been dialed in and working perfectly for me for 5 months. Yesterday, it went nuts on me. It wouldn't GPS lock for a while (where the course is, and we use it regularly). It finally locked on, but then the speed went up and down like crazy. Then it would lose signal again. Finally got it locking on, and it just wouldn't hold speed, in trick and slalom mode. I did a system reset - no help. I unplugged the GPS puck from the Zbox and plugged directly into the master module. That seemed to help it get a signal, but the engine kept ramping up and down. I plugged Zbox back in, and it smoothed that out, but it wouldn't hold speed. I finally put it into classic mode, so I could ski, but it intermittently lost the course. I'm guessing that maybe the GPS puck went bad. Does that happen? I've got another working puck on my other boat. I may swap them out to see if that's the problem. Anyone else confront this problem?

[kpickett]

I can't remember when I switched to Star Gazer. I think it was around 2010 or 2011. That's probably the age of the puck.

 

[sixball]

So we were running our GPS's on our ATV's the other day and both myself and my brothers dropped out lost everything for a short time. About five minutes. Both at the same time and lasted nearly the same time. We both had something like 15 satellites with good signals showing. I was wondering if our government may be playing with something?

[sixball]

Oh and when they came back up they were somewhat confused for another five minutes or so.

[escmanaze]

This is so weird. My boat has NEVER had an issue with getting GPS lock. Then the last two time I went out, July 24th and August 26th, it got funny on me. A month ago I just turned the boat off and back on and that seemed to fix it. Yesterday, it took a bit more dinking around to get it to finally be happy.

 

Either all of our pucks are about to go out or the satellites are being funny?

[sunperch]

Our ZO had episodes of surging and backing off in several passes yesterday. Seemed like GPS problems. Curious that several people had the same issues yesterday.....it was around 3:30 central time.

[oldjeep]

Looks like the government is/was doing some testing in CA and a few other locations over the last week or so

GPS Noticecs

 

GPS Support

[Keith_Menard]

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03330/kim-jong-un_3330074b.jpg

 

[Chef23]

I would go try it again today or tomorrow before I started spending money to address given that a couple of different folks had GPS issues.

[kpickett]

I talked to Mark at PP - he's always really helpful with tech questions. I'm going to check the GPS wires on the pigtail to the engine controls and also try swapping out the pucks. Before I do any of that, I'll just try to run it again to see if it had to do with global GPS issues.

 

He said it's pretty rare for a GPS puck to go bad.

[bassfooter]

@kpickett - Stargazer was installed on our '98 SN in 2011. I recently replaced the puck due to the kinds of symptoms you described. It started by occasionally taking a long time to lock on GPS, and over a period of several months just got worse and worse until it was working less than half the time. Mark at PerfectPass had me do a couple of checks, including bypassing Zbox by plugging the puck straight into the main controller. When nothing helped, he sent me a replacement puck, and now it locks up within a few seconds of starting the engine. I also recommend updating the firmware to Version 9.

 

[Greg Banish]

I have V9 Stargazer 3 event on my '03 SN196 and it occasionally would have fits of overshooting speed coming out of the turn back into the course on the tight end of our lake. It wasn't so bad that you couldn't anticipate as a driver and manually manage the throttle a bit to avoid it.

 

I never called PP about it, but I just got an update stick in the mail yesterday that is supposed to reflash the controller to address "short course setup". I'll get it installed for the weekend and we'll see if it helps.

[daryl]

@Greg Banish what is the version number of the new stick you got? pretty sure mine is at 9.1 or 9.01.... one of those. Just curious.

[TallSkinnyGuy]

I got v9.10 recently and it definitely is better at not overshooting the speed when you throttle up compared to v8.06 that I had before.

[Greg Banish]

My update was to v9.10

 

I installed it this weekend and recalibrated everything. Overshoot and general speed control seemed better this morning, but we had a pretty light boat today.

[Deke]

Could you guys remind me how I can pull up my SG version number? Pretty sure mine is very old.

 

I rarely get the overshoot on the tight turnaround but I do frequently get a major slow down after a heavy handed driver overshoots on a deepwater start. It's a sort of oscillation that SG can't recover from.

[TallSkinnyGuy]

IIRC on mine you press the Menu and UP buttons at the same time and it takes you to a menu list that includes one that shows the version number.

[kpickett]

To follow up - I swapped pucks, and everything went completely back to normal. It's working perfectly again. I guess that puck is defective, or wore out, or something. I mapped the course with the defective puck, and I now realize that it saved the wrong coordinates. Strange, but easily fixable.

[Keith_Menard]

I have been having a similar issue with long lock times and occasional running away. I emailed Perfect Pass and got this:

 

The version 9 software has a feature that records GPS error. You can see these errors in the system logs file.

Press the MENU and UP keys at the same time, use the MENU key to get to DIAGNOSTICS and UP key to select. Press the MENU key to get to SYSTEM LOGS and the UP key to select.

You can also test the system in RPM mode to see the difference between RPM and GPS control.

Some boats run better with the RPM setting "inverted". You can invert the RPM in the engine settings screen. Make sure to recalibrate the system if you change to inverted.

 

 

[Greg Banish]

Update: v9.10 still has issues on my 2003 196. After a tight turn at the south end, it will often overshoot to as much as 38mph (on a 32.3 setting) at the 55's, dropping to ~30 at the gate. This makes for an "interesting" start to the pass...

 

We are driving around it now by manually controlling throttle in the turn (dialing back to ~27mph) then carefully throttling back up to 32 as we approach the 55's.

[Keith_Menard]

@Greg Banish I do the same. @pregom on the other hand has interest in driving for those ski racers :)

[TallSkinnyGuy]

My v8 was performing like Greg Banish describes above, but v9 has dramatically reduced the speed overshooting on my boat ('97 PS 190, mechanical throttle). Odd that it wouldn't be consistently better on other boats. I do have to run my system in "inverted RPM" mode, but if that were an issue for anyone I would think the problem would be much more significant than just overshooting speed.

[pregom]

@"Keith Menard" yeah, my driving the other day was a bit... shall we say, aggressive??