Category: NMEA 2000, 0183 & Signal K
Panbo reader Laurence Woodward built his own 40′ catamaran in Devon, England, and he’d like to use Garmin GMI 10 color N2K instrument displays at both helms. However, his mast rotates and therefore he needs some sort of sensor to keep track of that rotation, which must then be applied to the apparent wind data coming from his masthead vane (or ultrasonic). I doubt that Garmin will develop its own rotation sensor because there aren’t that many rotating masts out there, but then again maybe just a software tweak to their existing rudder angle adaptor might be all it takes. Or perhaps there’s another way? Let’s discuss…
I think you’re going to be amazed at how many NMEA 2000 sensors and displays Jeremy Anwyl has managed to install on his lovely sloop Tranquilidad, but probably not surprised that they haven’t all played together perfectly. In fact, when I wrote the first entry on N2K bridges I joked that Jeremy’s soon-to-come guest entry on the subject might be sub-titled “One brave man’s experiment with a CANbus bridge, and the issues that drove him to it!” The publishing delay is entirely the fault of your easily distracted editor, but the good news is that Tranquiladad did some cruising over the holidays and Jeremy has more testing results he can add to the comments that will no doubt follow his initial bridge experimentations…
So what the dickens is a NMEA 2000 bridge and why would you want one? Well, I think the answers are complicated enough, and important enough, that they deserve two entries. Mystic Valley Communications, the small company that produced the prototype above, describes its bridge as an “intelligent connection between two electrically isolated NMEA 2000 networks that copies transmitted data between the two networks.” Obviously, then, this is another way to deal with the backbone power issues discussed here in the past; with a bridge you can have two N2K networks that act as one in terms of data but are independent in terms of supplying power to devices, and in terms of a power failure. But the Mystic Valley brochure (unfortunately not online yet) goes on to claim that the bridge can also be used to increase the number of devices and drop lengths beyond what’s allowed for a single backbone. How is that possible?…
I wrote about BEP’s CZone distributed power last April, but didn’t get to see it live until I got a ride aboard Simrad’s demo boat during the Fort Lauderdale show. Isn’t it neat that the control screen can show you the amperage flowing through a specific circuit (and apparently detect a fault)? And if it’s on an MFD, couldn’t valuable details like that also be on iPad or apps phone like I recently saw live with Maretron’s N2KView? In April I also wrote about what a difficult niche distributed power is, but I still think the magic of digital switching is one of the most interesting frontiers in marine electronics. And that we’re going to hear a lot more about it in 2011. BEP, for instance, made a series of announcements during METS…
Once again — and a nice contrast to my various METS ramblings — the good Kees Verrujit kindly wrote up his impressions of the huge Amsterdam marine equipment trade show:
Today I visited METS for the fourth year in a row. This year the show was even bigger than last year, by about 20%. Anyone who still claims they can do all halls and booths on one day is a close relation of Baron Münchhausen. I visited some booths as a NMEA 2000 enthusiast, some in my role of technologist for a yard, but most in my role as a delegated Panbo blogger. This year that was a lot easier than last, as more and more people seem to read Panbo or at least know Ben’s name — most vividly portrayed by a huge quote sign in the Fusion Marine Audio booth {like this one, only bigger!}. The major themes I noticed were: Pads (and iOS apps) were everywhere; AIS is taking off in a major way; Chinese electronics are coming; and
NMEA 2000 is here to stay…
What this screen means: Since Gizmo’s current NMEA 2000 network has more than one sensor able to supply the types of data listed above, the Garmin 5212 gives me a choice of which source to use, and in each case I’ve chosen data that originated from Raymarine SeaTalk sensors and instrument displays, but was converted to SeaTalkNG (aka NMEA 2000) by Ray’s much-discussed-on-Panbo ST-to-STng Converter. Not only does the Garmin perceive all that converted SeaTalk data as valid NMEA 2000 PGNs, but it all looks decent when displayed, and I’ve done similarly successful testing on the Simrad NSE, Lowrance HDS, and Furuno NN3D MFD. So, despite Ray’s caution against using the converter on a standard N2K backbone, a whole passel of ST40 instruments are feeding Gizmo’s network, and getting power off it. And maybe that’s all you need to know, though I did get into some nitty gritty detail…
Furuno’s new WS200 wind/heading/GPS etc. sensor is obviously a re-branded Airmar PB200, and that’s fine; some customers want all their electronics to come from one manufacturer (and sometimes I think they’re smarter than I am ;-). But, in fact, there is one slight difference between the WS200 and the PB200 that Airmar ships today, and once you understand it, and the silliness around it, you too may laugh, cry, scream, or some combination thereof…
A couple of weeks ago I replaced Gizmo’s older Simrad autopilot with the latest generation, which turned out to be easy even though I’ve never installed an AP before. It helped that there was no drive involved, just wire swapping, as the AC12 processor simply controls a solenoid plumbed into the boat’s engine-driven hydraulic steering system. Plus the existing Simrad rudder sensor wired to the AC12 without trouble, and I already had a SimNet backbone in place. So I replaced the old AP11 control head at the lower helm just by plugging an AP28 head into SimNet, and did nothing on the flying bridge (except replace the AP11 with an extra instrument display) because I no longer need a control head up there. That’s because I’m using the new NSE autopilot mode that was announced in Miami as part of its 2.0 software update. So far, it’s great…
At the risk of sounding mean, what excites me most about Furuno’s new GP-33 GPS sensor and display is what it means regarding the coming RD-33 data display we discussed a while back. That 4.3-inch 480×272 pixel LED-backlit screen — seen above in bright sunlight on Gizmo’s flying bridge — is pleasingly crisp and bright. And note how legible and even handsome the screen designs are, and how Furuno has dropped some of the numerical over-precision that has drawn criticism from users of NavNet 3D MFDs and FI50 instruments. You get all that screen goodness — 50% more area than a Garmin GMI 10, Furuno claims — for a maximum of 7 LENS (350 milliamps) of 12v power off a NMEA 2000 backbone…
What’s yellow, white, and blue, and will help a lot of boats integrate older Raymarine SeaTalk1 instruments and sensors into SeaTalkNG/NMEA 2000 networks? Well, check out the new SeaTalk-STng converter above, which retails for $95 and is also putting the Plus in Ray’s new Raystar 125 Plus GPS. The manual PDF can be downloaded here, and I think it will please a lot of people who’ve messed with this stuff. Those yellow connectors above let you not only adapt a mini network of up to five SeaTalk devices — like ST40 and ST60+ displays and their transducers, and/or a LifeTag wireless MOB system — to a SeaTalkNG backbone, but also power them…
