Garmin Raymarine compatibility

[DK2]

We just acquired a 10 year old cat, which has a fish mash of nav instruments. It was originally fitted with a Raymarine suite, but the chartplotter and radar has recently been upgraded to a Garmin 1042xsv unit. The Raymarine instruments are ST60 tridata, wind and ST6002 autohelm. First question - is it possible to interface the two parties using NMEA xxxx or otherwise - the Raymarine currently has a seatalk backbone. Next question - the depth, speed and wind do not display on the ray marine instruments - this was noticed at the pre-purchase survey and discounted accordingly, but I am thinking (hoping) there is something simple adrift rather than the whole lot being broken. The auto helm seems to work fine however. The ST60's just display a bunch of dashes instead of depth, wind and speed.

Its kinda hopeful, but does anyone has a clue where the issue with the tridata may lie? I cannot believe the transducers all went bad together, so what things might I check to see what is going on? I don't really want to get a $100 an hour electronics team in to troubleshoot - if faced with that I would probably just upgrade it all to Garmin and do it myself.

thanks in advance!

[skipmac]

Sorry I can't help with troubleshooting the Raymarine instruments but you can interface the Tridata and the Seatalk network to Garmin, assuming it is a newer model with NMEA2000 capability. I did this exact thing on my boat.

First step you have to get a Raymarine converter box that upgrades the old Seatalk to the newer Seatalk NG network. SeatalkNG is software compliant with NMEA2000 but uses proprietary Rarmarine connectors. So next step is to buy or make a cable that has Rarmarine connector on one end that plugs into the adapter and a standard connector on the other end that plugs into the NMEA backbone connected to the Garmin.

When I got mine hooked up I could see the speed, depth, temp, etc from the ST60 on my Garmin plotter. If the problem is just the display with the Raymarine then you won't need it anyway BUT if the processor in the display is bad or the transducers then you're out of luck.

This is of course the simplified version of the process. You need to know about NMEA backbones, terminators, etc. Are you already familiar with this?

[smac999]

The converter won't help you unless the st60's are working. Or you will just get dashes in the garmin too... fix the st60's first. On the back is seatalk and transducer. If they turn on the seatalk should be fine. Only thing left is the transducer cable.

[svmobert]

Originally Posted by DK2

We just acquired a 10 year old cat, which has a fish mash of nav instruments. It was originally fitted with a Raymarine suite, but the chartplotter and radar has recently been upgraded to a Garmin 1042xsv unit. The Raymarine instruments are ST60 tridata, wind and ST6002 autohelm. First question - is it possible to interface the two parties using NMEA xxxx or otherwise - the Raymarine currently has a seatalk backbone. Next question - the depth, speed and wind do not display on the ray marine instruments - this was noticed at the pre-purchase survey and discounted accordingly, but I am thinking (hoping) there is something simple adrift rather than the whole lot being broken. The auto helm seems to work fine however. The ST60's just display a bunch of dashes instead of depth, wind and speed.

Its kinda hopeful, but does anyone has a clue where the issue with the tridata may lie? I cannot believe the transducers all went bad together, so what things might I check to see what is going on? I don't really want to get a $100 an hour electronics team in to troubleshoot - if faced with that I would probably just upgrade it all to Garmin and do it myself.

thanks in advance!

First thing to do is to troubleshoot the SeaTalk network and Sounder connections.. It may be as simple as the transducer wires are not connected to the ST60 display. Generally the Depth, Speed, Water speed connect directly to back of the ST60 tridata display, and the masthead wind sensor connects directly to the ST60 Wind display. The SeaTalk network will daisy chaing from display to display, and may be connected through the Autohelm, providing power to SeaTalk as well.

Look at the back of the ST60 displays and make sure the transducer wires are properly connected.

If there are more than one of each (like we have since we have two helms), then one ST60 Wind will connect the transducers and the ST60 Wind repeater will only have a Seatalk connection. Same for multiple Tridatas.

You can get an STNG<->ST1 converter from Raymarine and then a NMEA2000 to STNG adapter to connect to the Garmin displays.. Or you can cut the Raymarine STNG backbone cable and a standard NMEA2000 backbone cable and splice the two together.

Now. It's possible that any number of other things were done when the garmin displays were added. For example, you don't mention if wind/speed/depth IS showing on the Garmin display, just not on the ST60s. If you see the data on the Garmin display, then it's likely that they either upgraded the transducers to NMEA2000, or installed a Raymarine ITC-5 to convert the existing transducers to SeaTalkNG and then did the interfacing to the Garmin that way. If that is the case, the best thing to do would be replace the ST60s with newer Garmin or Raymarine NMEA2000/SeaTalkNG displays (Garmin GMI, Raymarine i70, etc).

Incidentally, if the ducers are okay and its just the wiring that's a mess, you could add an ITC-5 yourself, and connect that to NMEA2000, then upgrade the ST60s as above.

In any case.. Trace the ducer wires and make sure they are actually connected to an ST60 display, or figure out where they are going of they aren't connected to an ST60. If you manage to get all the data onto the ST60's just fine, then there are some 3rd party SeaTalk1 to NMEA2000, as well as Raymarine's own device, on the market that will get the data interfaced with the Garmin pretty easily.

[DK2]

Thats great feedback - thanks guys! First task as mentioned is to troubleshoot the ST60s, and since both depth/speed and wind are not displaying, it hopefully is just a connection issue. The Garmin definitely is not linked to the STs since there is not even dashes on that.

[Pete7]

The ST60 manuals are on the Raymarine site if you don't have them on board.

A volt meter test of the instruments at the back may reveal the problem and they are probably daisy chained together with a 3 pin plugs. The wind instrument manual gives the voltages you should see on the wiring. Test at the mast base as well if there is a junction in the cable to the masthead.

Whilst they can all supply data to other instruments, I have decided to keep ours separate. We loose the ability for the auto pilot to alter course if there is a wind shift, but I am in the cockpit watching the instruments any change needed is just a press of a button.

It does however mean I don't need a lot of converters and need to faff around with different makes. It's a personal thing but I like the "keep it simple" approach.

Pete

[DK2]

OK I screwed up - I have ST70 instruments, not ST60, ST6002 autohelm, and Seatalk NG with Seatalk adaptor for the ST6002.

So I had time to troubleshoot this issue, and the three transducers, depth, speed and wind are connected to a seatalk ng hub. When I remove the connector from the wind transducer pod, the depth and speed work. Also if I swap the three connectors around, the results are the same so I assume the wind transducer pod is the problem? When I measure voltage at the transducer wires on the pod, they measure reasonable voltages (+8V on the red wire and varying voltages on the other wires). Do the pods fail?

[smac999]

Itc 5. ?

[svmobert]

Originally Posted by DK2

OK I screwed up - I have ST70 instruments, not ST60, ST6002 autohelm, and Seatalk NG with Seatalk adaptor for the ST6002.

So I had time to troubleshoot this issue, and the three transducers, depth, speed and wind are connected to a seatalk ng hub. When I remove the connector from the wind transducer pod, the depth and speed work. Also if I swap the three connectors around, the results are the same so I assume the wind transducer pod is the problem? When I measure voltage at the transducer wires on the pod, they measure reasonable voltages (+8V on the red wire and varying voltages on the other wires). Do the pods fail?

Can you post a photo of the pod?

[DK2]

Here is the pod, with the cover removed.

Could i replace it with the more modern ITC5 if it proved to be faulty?

[svmobert]

Originally Posted by DK2

Here is the pod, with the cover removed.



Could i replace it with the more modern ITC5 if it proved to be faulty?

Yes you can use the ITC5 instead

[DK2]

Well I changed all the old transducer pods for the ITC5 and everything works fine now, so I guess the wind pod was faulty. Also a Seatalk NG to NMEA adapter cable gives me all the data on the Garmin chart plotter.
Thanks all.

[svmobert]

Originally Posted by DK2

Well I changed all the old transducer pods for the ITC5 and everything works fine now, so I guess the wind pod was faulty. Also a Seatalk NG to NMEA adapter cable gives me all the data on the Garmin chart plotter.
Thanks all.

Great to hear!