Raymarine E80 Chartplotter

[GOOD FOR NOW]

Hello,

I have the Raymarine E80 Chartplotter with the Navionics card, has anyone checked to see if updates are available for this card? If so, was it difficult to update?

 

[Alex F]

This is a fisrt year for me to upgrade the Raymarine charts, where do you guys do it, is there some type of club like JEPPESEN (C-Map) where you pay anual fee and get free upgrades for one card?

Thanks,
Alex.

 

[Sea Gull]

I guess this sort of depends on where you do your boating, but it's hard for me to see the value in updating these chart chips every year. What changes are there that are going to impact you in a small craft? Buoys may change location, but in many cases this happens several times a year and there is no way that Navionics keeps up with that frequency of change.

I am on about a 5 year cycle for most areas. In the interim I rely on the light list, LNM, and Coast Pilot - all of which are free.

 

[Vince_nj1]

I can't comment on the maps, but I needed to upgrade the software on my C80.

My boat is a 2006 as well. When I first bought it in Sep of 08 the unit kept re-booting when the map card was inserted. It ran fine without the card. At first I thought I had a bad map card or a loose wire, but it turned out that I needed to update the software on the unit. You can go to Raymarines website and download updates.

You place the downloaded files on a blank card and then boot your unit with the card installed in the it.

Just an FYI

 

[wkearney99]

The firmware update on the chart plotters is easy, but it does seem to work better if you use a SanDisk CF card. I used a 64mb card for mine. I tried using a couple of other brand 64mb and 128mb cards and they didn't work. The cards worked otherwise in several PCs and camera so it seemed to be something about the Raymarine unit. But basically you use a computer with a card reader to put a single file onto the card and then boot the unit with the card inserted. There's a menu that will appear prompting you to install the update.

I have heard folks voicing problems with the radar after an update. The cure seems to be resetting the unit to factory defaults, either before or after the upgrade. Mine didn't have any trouble. You can use one of the menus to backup any existing routes to a card before doing the upgrade. I did that, but didn't need to reload anything. You may want to consider just starting fresh anyway as it's rather tedious to use the menus to clean up waypoints and such.

 

[wingless]

I have heard folks voicing problems with the radar after an update. The cure seems to be resetting the unit to factory defaults, either before or after the upgrade. Mine didn't have any trouble. You can use one of the menus to backup any existing routes to a card before doing the upgrade.

Yes, backup the waypoints and routes first.

Then, after the firmware upgrade, perform a master system reset. The Raymarine folks don't always have register consistency from one version to the next, causing confusion that's resolved by performing the master system reset.

Then reload the waypoints and routes.

 

[Alex F]

I did the software upgrade for my C70 by following Raymarin's instructions. It wasn't difficult at all. However, in my case the rebooting was caused to some wires when hit by the door when it would be open all the way. I've moved the wires and secured them the way nothing would touch them and the rebooting issue was gone.

Sea Gull,
You might be right that upgrading every year for Barnegat Bay, NJ area could be an overkill. I don't plan to go further than 100 miles south, which still shouldn't change that much from last year (I hope). However, my other unit (as well as unit on my previous boat) uses C-Map charts. I'm member of the C-Map club and anual fee gives you free upgrade, so I had upgraded chart every year. I was just thinking if Raymarine or some third party has similar program.

I use my C70 as a primary unit, but I guess if I have upgraded C-Map chart on my 2nd unit it should be ok for another season or two.