Linking Raymarine MFDs with ethernet Raynet

[ronstory]

Our boat has a Raymarine C97 MFD at the nav station and a A68 MFD at the binnacle. The cool thing about the C97 is it has two Raynet ports and I found I could plug in the radar into one, and then link the A68 with the remaining port.

Background: Raynet is just Raymarine version of Cat5 Ethernet with a proprietary 10 pin connector on each end. They also use shielded Cat5E cable. I documented the Raynet pinouts here:

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...ut-193586.html

So the question was how to run the 20-25' of cable to from the nav station to the binnacle? Also, Raymarine wanted a premium for their long cable and the connector was too large to thread through the pedestal guard tubing without cutting. So if I'm going to have to cut a cable anyways....

Yes that was foreshadowing. Let me dig up the links.

[ronstory]

I found you could get a 6' raynet cable off ebay for an almost reasonable price for $30.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Raymarine-R...72.m2749.l2649

When I received the cable, surprise! The actual wire between the connector was just a standard CAT5E shielded cable. So I cut it in two, and the ordered these keystone jacks.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Yes, there are six and I only needed two, but that's why I spent a bit more for CAT6 so i could use them in my house network as well.

Since the Raynet cable is using standard network wire... the colors matched up perfect with the wiring diagrams on the tool-less keystone, so it was a breeze to connect. I used the T568B wiring version, but it doesn't matter as long a the both keystone are wired the same. The only trick is remember to tuck the shield wire into the wire retention and make contact with the metal case of the keystone jack.

Then I just went down to the local cable store and bought a 25' shielded Cat5 cable for $12. Snaking it was easy and it CAT5 plug went thru the pedestal guard without a hitch. Just tape the connections in the binnacle to avoid water ingress.

Now I have chart sharing between the two MFDs... plus RADAR at the binnacle. Woo-hoo!