Raymarine AP and rs232

[moordred]

Hello everyone.
Im having issues with sending a route to my st2000+ AP from ocpn and I wonder if someone could push me in the right direction.

Im using a usb till rs232 ttl adapter (attached) that has 5v, vcc, 3v3, txd,rxd and gnd.

The autopilot has +,- nmea+ and nmea-. (Yeah and seatalk which I cant use right now),
I have put a cable between txd to nmea-, rxd to nmea+ and a external 12V battery to the +,- on the AP.

Ocpn is set to send data and the correct sentences has been filtered for output (esentially rmb). The nmea "filter window" shows that data is going to the Serial port.

But the autopilot wont go into track mode after create a point to navigate to in ocpn.

I wonder if I need to ground the rs232 somehow and in that case where? Or if there are some other connection I need to do for the rs232 to actually send data to the AP.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. This is extremely frustrating.

[bdbcat]

moordred...


On my Raytheon A/P, I need to manually engage the "Route" function of the A/P after activating the route on OCPN. It will not start automatically. Safety feature, I think.


Dave

[houlejm]

I have the same pilot and it works well with OpenCPN. But I use a seatalk to NMEA converter between the Serial to USB adapter.


In your case, it should also work but your connections are not correct. TXd should go to NMEA+ and ground to NMEA- RXd is not used. That is you send to the AP but you do not receive anything.


As Dave wrote you have to put the AP in follow route mode.


Jean-Marie

[moordred]

Originally Posted by houlejm

I have the same pilot and it works well with OpenCPN. But I use a seatalk to NMEA converter between the Serial to USB adapter.


In your case, it should also work but your connections are not correct. TXd should go to NMEA+ and ground to NMEA- RXd is not used. That is you send to the AP but you do not receive anything.


As Dave wrote you have to put the AP in follow route mode.


Jean-Marie

Aha ok.. that explains it. thank you so much for that input!

I know about the auto/+10/-10 combo. But I guess since the connections was wrong it didnt matter.

I will try it out today after work!

But since you guys have a better solution; Which seatalk converter do you use? (Is it Good?)

Regards
D

[houlejm]

Originally Posted by moordred

But since you guys have a better solution; Which seatalk converter do you use? (Is it Good?)
D

It is the Raymarine "PC/SeaTalk/NMEA Interface Box". I am not sure it is still available. I used it so I could get my ST60+ readings into OpenCPN.


If you just want to control the pilot, I dont think you need it.


JM

[moordred]

Originally Posted by houlejm

It is the Raymarine "PC/SeaTalk/NMEA Interface Box". I am not sure it is still available. I used it so I could get my ST60+ readings into OpenCPN.


If you just want to control the pilot, I dont think you need it.


JM

Ah ok. I thought I needed seatalk to get the wind angle. But looking at the manual it seems to be able to handle that nmea sentence.
Anyway, the connection suggested looks like a success. It is connected, but only switch between the current heading and some bearing info. It is also suppose to show distance and some other thing. But this might be due to me not sending all necessary sentences(xte for example has an error, possibly related to me not having a GPS position)

It feels solvable though, so thanks again. I will connect the wind direction sensor in the weekend and see if the AP can accept wind angle sentences without seatalk.

[pinguino]

TTL adapters do not work properly with opencpn they are not exactly the same as serial ports and the signals they send to the pilot are garbagge. I have personally checked it.

https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/215

It is better to use the traditional serial-USB port adapters or the ones that are specific for the different connections:
rs232, TTL and rs485 which is the NMEA 0183 standard.

[moordred]

Originally Posted by pinguino

TTL adapters do not work properly with opencpn they are not exactly the same as serial ports and the signals they send to the pilot are garbagge. I have personally checked it.

https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/215

It is better to use the traditional serial-USB port adapters or the ones that are specific for the different connections:
rs232, TTL and rs485 which is the NMEA 0183 standard.

God dammit, I bought like five of these...
Thanks for the info though. That extra voltage is probably even more important later in the boat due to distance from the AP...

[pinguino]

Originally Posted by moordred

God dammit, I bought like five of these...
Thanks for the info though. That extra voltage is probably even more important later in the boat due to distance from the AP...

The same thing happened to me because I bought them in packages because they were very cheap.
Fortunately the serial-USB that I bought in amazon and that if it worked it didn't cost me a lot of money either, about 10 €uros.

So the loss was not so dramatic.

The bad thing is when you don't know and you go totally crazy because everything seems to be fine. There's nothing that tells you the problem and it's a mystery until you find out. We already happened in the forum of opencpn and openplotter in Spanish:

https://foronavegantes.net/thread-579.html

[moordred]

Yes I just ordered Five regular Serial to rs232 and three of the other ones, and some 9 pins females for soldering. Should be fun hehe.

I also noticed it behaved a bit...weird. loosing connection from time to time, so Im very grateful for this info.

[moordred]

I just want to update this thread to write that with the new "true" rs232 to usb adapters everything works perfectly.