Smartcraft Gauges Won't Retain Clock Time

Electrical and electronic topics for small boats
joc1212
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Joined: Mon May 10, 2021 8:08 pm

Smartcraft Gauges Won't Retain Clock Time

Postby joc1212 » Fri Jul 08, 2022 11:38 am

How to I get the clock on a Mercury Smartcraft gauge to stay set and display the time?

Every time I turn the battery switch off the clock loses the time and has to be reset. I realize it needs 12-Volt DC for the gauges to work but this is the only part of the system that drops the setting.

ASIDE: the engine is a Mercury 150 FOURSTOKE on a 2016 Boston Whaler boat.

jimh
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Location: Michigan, Lower Peninsula
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Re: Smartcraft Gauges Won't Retain Clock time

Postby jimh » Fri Jul 08, 2022 12:45 pm

I don't have any experience with a Smartcraft gauge, so my remarks are not going to be particularly cogent. But, that said, I can offer this comment.

Typically the time available on a marine instrumentation display usually comes from the time provided by a GNSS receiver. When a GNSS receiver has acquired four satellites and has developed a position solution, the GNSS receiver is not only an accurate source of position data, is is also an extremely accurate source of time, down to the millisecond.

Most marine instrumentation displays that show time use the data from an attached GNSS receiver. The only element of the time that is set on the display would be the OFFSET from UTC to account for the local time.

In any device that gets input for configuration of the device from the user of the device, there will usually be a non-volatile memory in the device that keeps the settings retained during power-off. The power for that is usually contained in a small battery in the device, or a battery soldered on the circuit board assembly, or in some cases by a very large capacitor that can store enough electrical energy to last until the next time the device has normal power.

Again, having no familiarity with Smartcraft displays, there may be a dead internal battery that needs replacement. The operating manual from Mercury should give you complete details about how to replace this battery, if the battery is intended to be replaced in the field by the user. If Mercury designed their display so that it stops working properly when an internal battery fails and there is no way for the user to replaced the failed battery in the field, then the remedy sounds like it will be among these choices:
  • have the displayed repaired by an authorized Mercury Smartcraft repair facility--if such a thing even exists, and I am doubtful it does;
  • buy a new display
  • begin a class action lawsuit against Mercury for defective product--or maybe just call them and complain a bit to see what they offer

ASIDE: my cabin up North has a furnace, and the furnace was controlled by a modern thermostat. It is common for the utility power to be interrupted in the Winter due to storms and downed trees. My cabin has a generator that will come on and switch the whole house to generator power if the utility power goes off for more than about one-minute. The four-year-old fancy modern thermostat when new was able to tolerate a minute or two of no utility power and retain all its settings, but in the winter of 2020-2021 the on-board backup power that retained all the data and settings in the thermostat went bad. In this device is was a "mega-Capacitor" that was soldered on the circuit board and not a field replacement part. The manufacturer was a very well known, established, and reputable company that had been in the furnace business for decades and decades.

When I called them to ask about warranty or replacement due to the failure of the capacitor, their response was something along the line of, "Well, yes, that does happen after a few years." I mention this because many modern electrical products that have begun to use on-board electronics to add features are not particularly well designed, especially when they are made by companies that historically were in completely other businesses, like furnaces and outboard engines.

Even GOOGLE had problems with their fancy NEST thermostat. I had one of those, too, and it failed in less than one year. Fortunately, it failed about 11 months into its very short one-year warranty, and I got a new one. The notion that a thermostat only lasts a few years is just crazy. There are thermostats made in 1950 that are still working like new, but they don't have modern electronics in them.

Jefecinco
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Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2015 6:35 pm
Location: Gulf Shores, AL

Re: Smartcraft Gauges Won't Retain Clock Time

Postby Jefecinco » Sat Jul 09, 2022 10:51 am

I don't have an answer to your specific question but I will offer a recommendation.

Connect the SmartCraft data to your multi-purpose display (MFD), also referred to as a GNSS receiver. This can be done easily with the instructions that come with the gateway device required to make the connection. I bought a gateway device when I connected my SmartCraft data to a Simrad MFD from our local Mercury dealer.

I speculate the part of the gauges that is supposed to retain data is far more reliable on an MFD than on the gauges alone.

Mercury also sells a stand alone SmartCraft display device that will work.

Almost anything will provide a superior display compared to the SmartCraft gauges which require searching through multiple difficult to use menus, yellow with age and are prone to cracked lenses.
Butch