Ok, so I've been doing a ton of
research but I'm still not sure if my panned upgrade makes sense.
Boat: New to me
PDQ 32 LRC (diesel powered)
Electronics:
ST 60+ Tridata (depth, speed , trip), works fine
Autopilot, ST4000+, works well, new drive
NO
wind sensor or diplay
Chartplotter:
Raymarine RC435 works, but I tend to use my
iPAD instead.
So, I want
wind and
AIS, maybe add
radar down the road.
My plan:
Buy a
B&G 508 wind
sensor, N2K, $475 (comes with 20M of N2K cable).
Buy a Vesper XB 8000 smartAIS transponder $800.
The logic here is to start a N2K backbone up the
mast and attach the wind sensor to the Vesper. The Vesper
wifi should then give me wind speed/direction and
AIS which I can view on the
iPAD. I should be able to view wind (and any other
NMEA data using
iNAVX on the iPAD. Not sure if the AIS data will overlay on
Navionics?? If this works I will be happy in that my iPAD will serve as a MFD at the
helm. If the ipad breaks, I still have the
chartplotter at the
helm. Viewing wind on the ipad also means I don't have to buy a dedicated wind display (they are expensive!).
The questions:
Will my wind sensor talk to the ST4000+
autopilot so I can set a constant wind angle? It is going through the Vesper and should output
NMEA 083 which the ST4000+ reads, right?
Similarly, will the AIS talk to the chartplotter through 083 to overlay AIS data on the chartplotter? This is not as important to me as I like the iPad better.
Will the
depth and speed from the ST60+ provide data to the N2K
network through the vesper and also display on the iPAD via
wifi?
Down the road, I would get a Zeuss2 MFD with 3G
radar which would expand the N2K
network.
Does this make sense? I appreciate any and all feedback!