Lowrance Issue? Maybe Motorguide?

I bought a new 2018 Tracker Targa V19 WT 40th Anniversary. It came with dual 7″ Lowrance TI’s and the 80lb 24V Motorguide Xi5.

Issue and History.
Motorguide works amazing all features GPS functions etc work fine.
AutoPilot not so much at first I had full control everything was fine for about 3 hours. Then No Computer Found on the Lowrance. And Trolling motor stopped responding to anything. Took it to the dealer he fired everything up ran it for an hour with no issues and said sorry can’t duplicate it.

Got back on the water and no computer found. Xi5 works beautifully solo. So unplugged power, killed master power rebooted everything. Lowrance sees trolling motor again but now I get a pop up that Trolling motor needs an update. I was on the water with no OTA support so cancelled and moved on. Take control of the Xi5 for 5 min. No computer found and the battery indicator on the Xi5 starts blinking Red. Shut it all down bring it up. Trolling motor goes back to green Lowrance again says needs update I cancel and before I do anything Xi5 starts flashing red again. I turn off auto pilot on the lowrance. reboot everything Xi5 works all weekend with out an issue as long as the Lowrance does not try to communicate with it.

I get home fire everything up turn Autopilot back on and try to do the update OTA. Pops up I hit ok, says trying to update screen goes away and Xi5 Shuts down 2 hours later nothing. No updates to it Xi5 never comes back on line so shut it all down, take it to the dealer.

They Clear what they called a bad update. We fire it up it shows the needs update screen dealer tells me it is a known problem and that I should just ignore it. We cancel that everything works he tells me all is well.

Take it back out and ignore update get 10 min out of it, red flashing battery indicator and No computer found. So I unplug reset turn off auto pilot on lowrance fire everything back up and Xi5 works amazing for 3 days straight on a single charge. Talked to dealer tells me I would have to leave my boat there for a few weeks so they can figure out the issue possibly send things out etc. That is not an option I have a week long charity event in 9 days.

Yesterday took it used it all day leaving Lowrance set up with No Auto Pilot worked all day no issues was great. 10 min before getting off water thought wth lets try one more time turned auto pilot on worked good for about 5 min red flashing light but this time I still had control. Ran it for about 20 minutes Xi5 died. Like the battery was dead. Turned auto pilot off shut down master power, unplugged trolling motor. Plugged everything back in and Xi5 was back to green and working fine.

So here is where I am at with it. Don’t want to give up my boat for 2 weeks. So thought I would post see if you guys have any ideas I should try. Other wise I am just leaving autopilot off until winter and then the dealer can do what ever they want with it.

I would try hooking the interface cable up to the other graph. There is two ways to hook up the interface cable to the trolling motor. Make sure that is correct.

Have tried this. There is actually a little arrow that needs to line up to make sure you don’t hook it up backwards. I for fun tried hooking it up both ways but if hooked up wrong I get no control at all period. Hooked up correctly I get control 20% of the time but when I do I get the flashing red light on the battery indicator in about 5 to 10 minutes.

Sell the Motorguide. Speaking from experience.

That is very perplexing. I have had my xi5 for 4 years now and I only occasionally get some strange behavior otherwise its awesome. The only thing I experience is once a great while, I will have the autopilot engaged and cruise control set (say .4 MPH) and it will just all of a sudden go full speed. I quickly hit the prop on the remote, then reset everything through the remote and all is fine.
Mine just did an update and honestly it never took off after the update, but I didn’t use it nearly as much. I was in Canada for a week and it would do it maybe 2 times a day. Then the update came up on the second to last day, I did the update late in the day and fished without it happening again.
What SW version are you running on the Lowrance units?
I would replace the batteries in the remote. Disconnect power to the NMEA network and unplug your trolling motor. I noticed during my week trip that if I left my trolling motor plugged in to power that when I deployed the motor the xi5 wouldn’t “wake up”. I would unplug the power cord, plug back in and instantly it fired up and locked GPS.

I have the Xi5 w/HDS Lowrance units as well. Love em.
The only time I’ve seen the “no auto pilot computer” warning is when I’ve forgotten to turn on my Master Power switch on the boat. The trolling motor, and graphs start up fine without that switch on, but auto pilot wont work without it on.

Also, if you’ve already deployed the trolling motor and then flip the switch, it still wont work..need to turn it off and back on with master on to work.

Hopefully its as simple as that..

Dave Rumery wrote:

The only time I’ve seen the “no auto pilot computer” warning is when I’ve forgotten to turn on my Master Power switch on the boat. The trolling motor, and graphs start up fine without that switch on, but auto pilot wont work without it on.

This is most likely because your NMEA 2000 network power is being supplied by the master switch while your trolling motor and GPS units are not. It probably isn’t the best practice rigging-wise to not have your GPS unit controlled by a master or accessory switch. I haven’t heard definitively if internal GPS is actually turned off when you power down the unit (if there is still power live at the unit), but I know the older external pucks always had power unless they were on a “switched” circuit like an accessory or master switch if that is the case then you will have parasitic power consumption all the time since it is always powered even though the unit may not be on.
I have all of my GPS units getting power through a switch whether its the Master or an Accessory.