Help designing a system

[marciaanddave]

In January we purchased a sailboat with some new, some antiquated and some broken electronics. We are going to haul out this week in anticipation of some refitting.

Our current system includes: standard horizon CP300i chart plotter with a screen that is almost unreadable and outdated cmap, raymarine speed with working display and transducer, raymarine wind with non functioning transducer (tried replacing bearings but must be bad electronics at masthead), garmin echo 300i depth, JRC radar1500, and autohelm st6000+ autopilot with a screen defect (but still works). We have been successfully using iPad up to this point.

I “think” I would like to keep the iPad and get other instruments to talk to it. The open cpn option seems a little daunting based on my current knowledge.

Should I replace or repair the individual pieces or just start anew?

[tkeithlu]

Two schools of thought, of which I represent one. The first is the glass cockpit, in which everything is integrated. It has the advantages of taking up very little space, making just one screen to watch, and overlaying images such as chart, AIS, and radar. The disadvantages are high initial cost, often high replacement cost if the whole thing needs to go at one time, and the risk that a single failure in the integration or the monitor can leave you with nothing at all. For example, you might have one GPS antenna serving everything. It could fail, as could the monitor.

The dispersed model, which I prefer, requires more space and requires that you integrate information in your head. It allows picking and choosing among brands, piecemeal replacement, and means that no single failure can leave you sucking your thumb. But, it may take up more space than you have and you might be prone to confusing two different objects on AIS and radar as being the same.

If there are components amoung what you have that you want to keep, you have the space, and you (like me) don't have trouble integrating AIS information with, say, radar, then a dispersed system is suggested.

If you want an integrated system, Garmin comes with good recommendations. If you want to keep costs down, OpenCPN in the 5.6 version is very easy to use and accepts all NOAA charts (and others) for free.

Your choice, and good luck with it.

[marciaanddave]

Originally Posted by tkeithlu

Two schools of thought, of which I represent one. The first is the glass cockpit, in which everything is integrated. It has the advantages of taking up very little space, making just one screen to watch, and overlaying images such as chart, AIS, and radar. The disadvantages are high initial cost, often high replacement cost if the whole thing needs to go at one time, and the risk that a single failure in the integration or the monitor can leave you with nothing at all. For example, you might have one GPS antenna serving everything. It could fail, as could the monitor.

The dispersed model, which I prefer, requires more space and requires that you integrate information in your head. It allows picking and choosing among brands, piecemeal replacement, and means that no single failure can leave you sucking your thumb. But, it may take up more space than you have and you might be prone to confusing two different objects on AIS and radar as being the same.

If there are components amoung what you have that you want to keep, you have the space, and you (like me) don't have trouble integrating AIS information with, say, radar, then a dispersed system is suggested.

If you want an integrated system, Garmin comes with good recommendations. If you want to keep costs down, OpenCPN in the 5.6 version is very easy to use and accepts all NOAA charts (and others) for free.

Your choice, and good luck with it.

Good advice. We have the room to keep the dispersed system components, and I do like the idea of not relying on a single piece of equipment.