Garmin v Raymarine: Which One Do I Buy ?

[IceMan]

I too went with the Garmin because of experience that I has with aviation Garmin equipment. The only thing on the Chart plotters is that Garmin had there head up where the sun don't shine. In all their plotters and fish finders they put a magnet in the SD card door. On the 5200 series it is a 5200 gause unit magnet. If you are within 3 feet of any compass, it is off. My 5212 throws my compass off by over 30 degrees. It is a good unit and this is the only thing that that has gone wrong installing it on the sailboat.
I do wish that Garmin would make a hybred chartplotter like the Raymarine does because sometimes manual buttons are better than a touch screen.
In defence of Raymarine, give them a couple of years. Garmin tried to buy Raymarine when it came up for sale but Ray turned them down to take a lesser offer from FLIR. That is because both FLIR and Ray are United Kingdom businesses. But FLIR is a top of the line first class outfit and they have the money to bring up the quality and quanity of Raymarine. If they do it is another thing. Just my 2 cents worth. Be careful of the magnetic deviation on your compass tho.
WD

[senormechanico]

Iceman,
When did you buy your 5212?
I have a 5208 about two years old.
It's mounted on the pedestal along with the compass and I only get about two degrees of error on one compass heading.
The rest of the compass is completely unaffected.
Go figger...

[gello]

Originally Posted by brak

I would be extremely interested in finding out more about this - what protocol did they provide specs for? Do you still have access to their documents?

I may still have copies around though i am sure they are out of date now.
The document was for the complete nema sentences, including the proprietary ones which is what i wanted.
In addition, I got the entire Garmin private protocol including their waypoint and route exchange for upload download and a unique "NEMA OVERLAY"
protocol that allowed both NEMA and GARMIN to exist on the same bus so
I could use Nobeltec on my computer accepting NEMA and use my own software to extract waypoints from nobeltec database and pump down to Garmin without having to disconnect and reconnect cables, interrupt nav, or use T switches.

The stuff is ancient now. I ended up designing some "smart" NEMA multiplexer hardware
with sentence filtering and buffering and using a USB interface in parallel direct to the USB port on my garmin. (smart as in microprocessor based, not clever).

I'd try them again for an updated version if you need it.
If you have no luck, let me know and I'll see if i can pull up my old version.

cheers

gello