NMEA 2000 Bennett Trim Tab senders

[Skybolt]

Anyone who has the NMEA 2000 Bennett trim tab senders for display on most MFD's, if you try and calibrate the senders with a Maretron DSM, you may wipe out and render the device useless as I did. In calling Bennett (actually Yamaha now) there is nothing that can be done to reprogram the device unless you have a Lowrance MFD that is capable of calibrating the Trim Tab sender. That came straight from their only tech support guy. They have no procedure to send commands and I was told only other manufacturers have their own programming for the device. Yes, other manufacturer's have their own spec to program these senders. That is absolutely crazy. Lowrance can't help as it was a contracted project or something as I was told, I think more like the person who created these is no longer around and took that info with him.

I was told my best bet was to use a Garmin GBT-10 as that could be Programmed by the Garmin MFD, Raymarine doesn't support this.

Anyway I thought I would post my trials and tribulations on this ...

 

[ttmott]

Anyone who has the NMEA 2000 Bennett trim tab senders for display on most MFD's, if you try and calibrate the senders with a Maretron DSM, you may wipe out and render the device useless as I did. In calling Bennett (actually Yamaha now) there is nothing that can be done to reprogram the device unless you have a Lowrance MFD that is capable of calibrating the Trim Tab sender. That came straight from their only tech support guy. They have no procedure to send commands and I was told only other manufacturers have their own programming for the device. Yes, other manufacturer's have their own spec to program these senders. That is absolutely crazy. Lowrance can't help as it was a contracted project or something as I was told, I think more like the person who created these is no longer around and took that info with him.

I was told my best bet was to use a Garmin GBT-10 as that could be Programmed by the Garmin MFD, Raymarine doesn't support this.

Anyway I thought I would post my trials and tribulations on this ...

Same thing happened to mine and I also went to the Garmin. I had issues with the Bennett electronics from day one getting the calibration to execute then the entire thing failed. As it ends up there are real issues with the Bennett/Lorance design. I ended up calibrating with the Vessel View but yet the converter still failed. So, I still have the actuator coils and rods but now with the Garmin GBT-10 - no issues to report after two years.

 

[Skybolt]

Same thing happened to mine and I also went to the Garmin. I had issues with the Bennett electronics from day one getting the calibration to execute then the entire thing failed. As it ends up there are real issues with the Bennett/Lorance design. I ended up calibrating with the Vessel View but yet the converter still failed. So, I still have the actuator coils and rods but now with the Garmin GBT-10 - no issues to report after two years.

This is too funny, in doing a search in general not on this site, I came across your original post from Feb 2019. I also just ordered the GBT-10 to fix this. Glad that worked out for you.

Tom's thread with pic's;
http://www.clubsearay.com/index.php?threads/experience-with-bennett-trim-tab-nmea-2000-kit.91314/

 

[alnav]

Timely thread for me and may have helped me dodge a bullet. Just got my Bennett NMEA 2000 tab kit installed this past Friday. Lucky for me, it seems to work fine right out of the box. Both VesselView and Smartcraft Connect were on when we lit off the system and I'm wondering if that helped. I'm seeing the data come in via VV, Smartcraft Connect and the Bennett module itself and it's displaying on both the DSM410 and the Garmins. I may have been tempted to try and calibrate them absent this thread. But, there doesn't seem to be any need to do anything.

Orlando, I'm wondering if you could use the YD CANVIEW interface to try and recover? I know it will transmit configuration and other commands to NMEA 2000 components. I guess you'd need to know exactly what the proper commands are to do it. The YD programmers are pretty savvy in my experience.

 

[Skybolt]

... Orlando, I'm wondering if you could use the YD CANVIEW interface to try and recover? I know it will transmit configuration and other commands to NMEA 2000 components. I guess you'd need to know exactly what the proper commands are to do it. The YD programmers are pretty savvy in my experience.

Funny you mention that, I tried just that but this thing was frozen and could not get a reply from any command I sent it. I had ordered the Garmin GBT-10 and it just worked, I manually calibrated them and they work perfectly.