Garmin GXM 53 / SiriusXM stopped working

[SJI Sailor]

This is to make a report of problem solved, since it took a while to sort out. Maybe it will help someone (or me in the future).

Short version: pull the Garmin 53 fuse and reset it, to reboot the antenna controller. Who knew that antennas have to be rebooted?

Here's what happened. We added weather to our SiriusXM subscription, and it worked great ... until we used it for a whole day. When we went later to use the music, it wouldn't time and have an error for "tuner not found." Sending the SiriusXM refresh signal didn't help.

Online help suggested to check the antenna's status LEDs -- but where? I found the Garmin 53 controller inside the cave fuse panel (this is a C30). The light was solid green, so presumably OK.

Since I couldn't determine anything else to do, I traced the power line to an inline fuse. It was OK too ... but after checking and resetting it, the SiriusXM signal returned.

Lesson learned: find the XM controller (an oblong black box that just says "Garmin", in our case in the cave), and start debugging by turning it off and back on again (like they say in The IT Crowd) by pulling the fuse. The admiral says this counts as a success, and I'll take it!

 

[Anchors Aweigh]

I also had similar issue of "turner not found" when trying to access the SiriusXM music with my Garmin GXM 54 and Fusion AV755 radio combination. Weather access worked fine and showed up on the Garmin 8612xsv display.

Ultimately, discovered I had to set the Fusion radio tuner to "Aux 1" and not the Sirius XM selection (certainly not intuitive). Additionally, although I had correct tuner setting now, no sound was emanating as I accessed the music through the Media display on the Garmin 8612xsv.....then discovered the volume settings on the Fusion radio & chart plotter Media display need to be set in the higher range of the volume scales ....whoops!

Marc Doyle
2020 R-29 CB / Puffin
Port Ludlow, WA

 

[fmstuart]

I had to turn the volume on the Garmin to between 85 and 100. The source is GXM54 and not the Fusion. Does that high of a volume setting make sense?


Forrest Stuart
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[SJI Sailor]

Agree with Marc, the Aux1 setting on Fusion is also confusing (that was not the problem for us this time, but it has confused me at other times!)

As for volume, we have ours around 55 on the Garmin and 9-12 on the Fusion. It can be adjusted on either one. Although we don't require such a high Garmin level as 85 I don't think that would be a problem -- although would make me wonder a bit about the cable, loss, impedence matching and other such topics for which I have limited patience 🙂

 

[SJI Sailor]

Another update (mostly so I can find it again in the future 🙂
Sirius radio want out and it was another crazy attempt to figure out why. It worked earlier in the day but not after docking.

Solution: had to reboot the antenna again. In the C30 the fuse is a separate inline fuse in the cave fuse cabinet. The Garmin antenna controller was mounted to the aft wall and tied into 12v with an inline 2a fuse. After removing and resetting that, and setting Fusion to Aux1, Sirius radio works again.

 

[captg]

What about Bluetooth Sirus xm app. from your phone to the Fusion?

 

[SJI Sailor]

Thanks, CaptG -- BT from the phone to Fusion works fine in all cases (so far!) We tune Sirius from the Garmin + Sirius antenna because we are often in places with little or no cell coverage.

FWIW, I have not yet figured out how to replicate the problem with Sirius (or, rather, with the Garmin 53 antenna) crashing, but my latest guess is that it may be related to putting the 7612 chartplotter into standby mode instead of shutting down.