16-jul-2017, Southern Lynn Canal — A quick note. Yesterday AIS stopped displaying error signals and all readings returned to normal, so we should be back on line.
Errors like this are worrisome.
New house batteries are great.
We’re on our way to Skagway and about to lose internet.
I’m still convinced your AIS problems are bug(s) in the firmware.
Do you have a rough idea how many class A and B AIS systems are
in range when the problem happens? When the AIS is acting normally?
When the state changes have you gone from few to many vessels in
range or vice-versa because of terrain? There is a lot of complexity
in obtaining transmission time slots, and the problem may be related
to system loading.
If I was working for Vesper and empowered to work on this problem,
I would add code so that the user could take a snapshot of system state
when desired and upload it to Vesper for analysis. With that data, the
nature of the bug may become obvious.
As software systems keep getting more complex, we are going to be
encountering more bugs more often.
Erwin,
I maybe moving towards a connector, but am uncertain. We had days and days of rain, and when the rain stopped for a few days, the AIS came back to life with proper readings.
The connector at the mast head was the one I was most certain of, so I am in a quandary.
BTW, Vesper does have a log that can be sent to the company, which I did. I’ll be in touch with them again today.
What do you think of this connector? https://www.amazon.com/Shakespeare-PL-259-CP-G-Marine-Center-Connector/dp/B000K2IGPE
Finally, as I will post in a bit, the Mac cam back to life… that is a firmware problem that was resolved when the batteries finally went so low the the dynamic memory lost its contents: the system lost date and time.