Fault finding when the radar cannot be found - opencpn-radar-pi/radar_pi GitHub Wiki

This page contains some tips for what to do when you've followed the hardware installation page for your radar brand, but it doesn't work.

This may require some equipment that you don't need to own but that somebody in the marina will likely be able to help you with.

  • A current monitoring device. Best is a power supply that has a current display, or failing that, a multi meter in current mode. If using the latter on the high Amps circuit, verify that you didn't burn out the fuse inside the meter beforehand. In other words, measure something that you know that works, like a lamp, before continuing with the radar.
  • Software to monitor the Ethernet data on the network. Besides built in command line utilities we recommend Wireshark which has a reasonably simple GUI that allows you to see what is on the network.
  • An MFD or software package from the radar manufacturer is super helpful to establish that the radar actually works.

Here is a list of things to try. IF YOU SKIP ITEMS OR IGNORE ITEMS THIS IS AT YOUR OWN PERIL.

  1. Start with the PPI display, not overlay. Overlay requires a number of extra steps to be correct.
  2. Is the radar working with another device such as a MFD (chart plotter)? Skip to step 4.
  3. Is the Radome getting any power? The most reliable way to test this is to measure the current it is using. The radomes all use something like 20-400 mA when at idle (standby mode.) With Garmin and no Garmin hub / MFD you may need to fight with "pin 5", see the Garmin page. Anything lower than 20 mA is probably broken or wired up incorrectly. Anything higher than half an amp means that the radar is either transmitting or broken.
  4. Check the hardware side of the Ethernet connection. Although some radars work fine directly connected, you may have to create a cross-over cable (if you've got old 10 or 100 MBit Ethernet ports). Anything decent will do Auto-MDI-X.
    • If you use an Ethernet switch, the Link LED should be ON on both the radar and the computer side.
    • Check the link status of the Ethernet 'device' in the computer.
      • On MacOS, use ifconfig to check on the media and status.
      • On Linux, use ethtool to check for Link detected (and much more!)
      • On Windows, use ... TODO ...
  5. Check that you are getting any IP address, and if possible on the same network as the radar. With the "multicast" radars (Raymarine, Navico) the exact IP address is not important but the interface must have one to be functional.
    • For Raymarine and Navico, double check that the ethernet interface is using DHCP. If there is a DHCP server, it will hand out an IP address. If not, the card will fall back to an automatic IP address in the 192.168.x.x range. \
    • For Garmin, double check that the IP address is in the 172.16/20 range.
  6. Using Wireshark or some other tool, do you see packets from other devices on the Ethernet port?
  7. Disable the firewall on that Ethernet port completely, for now. Once you have it working, enable it again and create the necessary holes; probably the easiest is to allow OpenCPN(.app/exe) full access.