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Gradual migration form B&G NET to NMEA 2000

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Sergei Podshivalov
(@spodshivalov)
New Member
Joined: 2 years ago
Posts: 1
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Motivation

My boat is equipped with B&G NET instruments and autopilot. The setup is almost 20 years old and gradually falls apart.
I already replaced two wind display units (servo motor failure), but it's getting more and more difficult find them on eBay.
Also the connectors and cables are getting old, rusty and brittle. On top of that all the instruments in B&G NET are connected in series, so if one of them fails, the whole network is down.

To have all instruments to replaced at once is quite costly, so I decided to do it gradually.

The first step was to build the adapters that will convert analog signals from the wind sensors and boat speed sensors to NMEA 2000.
I found the ESP32 NMEA200 kit sold by Hat Labs  and decided to use it as a base for my project.
This kit allows you to bring the multiple analog and digital inputs has N2K controller and very good power supply.

I got two of these kits. One for Mast Head Unit and Paddle Wheel Sensors and another one for GPS, Compass and IMU.

It took some Googling to find how B&G Mast Head unit encodes the wind angle. The wind and boat speed are quite simple, just a pulse train.You can find all details at my git repository

This is the photo of two boxes built using Hat Labs ESP32 kit.

 

The first purchase was the B&G Triton display. Here is the picture of the boat before and after the installation. Good news the Triton can see my instruments on the network.

Nest steps: testing, testing and testing.


   
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