need advice on new electronics

[Captain Anthony]

Following

[MJH]

Originally Posted by bratzcpa

Good evening.

We just closed a deal on a new (to us) sailboat. 40' OAL. The existing electronics are old and/or not there. I would like to design a electronic suite from scratch and need some help to do that.

On my current boat, it has the Seatalk backbone, but there are several converters to other components, and a mixture of NEMA 2000 for good measure. it works, but is a bit cobbled. So, on the new boat, since we're starting from a clean start, let's do this right!

Needs: multifunction chartplotter at helm. Secondary smaller chartplotter below. Wind instruments at masthead (2 displays in cockpit: 1)wind direction/speed/apparent/true/etc. AND 2) paddle wheel speed/water temp/log/etc . Vesper XB8000 AIS send/receive. VHF below with remote mike at helm. The boat does have a new Raymarine wheel autopilot. Not sure if this can/should be integrated into everything.

I'm thinking that NEMA 2000 network is the newest standard and most universally used. Correct?

Would you prefer the wired Raymarine i60 wind instrument (this appears to be Seatalk network, NOT NEMA2000), or the wireless system (this appears to be NOT recommended for boats > 35').

Ugh, lots of moving parts here. Anyway, any wise advice and considerations would be appreciated. ~markb

Congratulations on the new-to-you boat. It is one of the two times boaters are happiest...when they BUY and when they SELL. I will take the contrarian view for some balance on your post before you begin spending the big bucks.

As the boat's new owner you first need to get to know the boat, it's strong points and it's weak points which takes some outings and crawling into the corners. Starting with the surveyor's report, get his recommendations taken care of. Then begin your own inspections of all major systems to insure you are confident with them; some of these could be major investments on basics such as thru-hulls, rigging, sails, tanks, engine...the list goes on. Does your electrical system (including batteries, battery monitor, and alternator) provide adequate power for all that it supports now and into the future or do you need solar to supplement it? The latter has become a very common need on today's sailboats.

Your not specific when it comes to the boat's electronic needs just that it is "old". As far as electronics are concerned good sailing needs wind, speed, depth, direction, GPS position information displayed on a screen. If the present system has those what's the hurry unless you are an electronics junky and have to have the latest system that will be outdated next year. I continue to use the Datamarine Link 5000 system that came with my boat and it has taken me on roundtrips to Hawaii and Alaska with the help of a laptop, Garmin handheld, and Vesper Marine 850 AIS...I can't ask for more information. My major investments have included new windlass, rigging, sails, and support equipment such as 560W of solar on an arch and new dodger, larger alternator with serpentine belt, battery monitor, and new 8D Gel batteries which will outlive me.

Don't be in a hurry to spend thousands on replacements until you get a complete picture of what the boat truly needs to reach your goals.

Good Luck.

~ ~ _/) ~ ~ MJH

[Bill O]

Originally Posted by bratzcpa

Good evening.

We just closed a deal on a new (to us) sailboat. 40' OAL. The existing electronics are old and/or not there. I would like to design a electronic suite from scratch and need some help to do that.

On my current boat, it has the Seatalk backbone, but there are several converters to other components, and a mixture of NEMA 2000 for good measure. it works, but is a bit cobbled. So, on the new boat, since we're starting from a clean start, let's do this right!

Needs: multifunction chartplotter at helm. Secondary smaller chartplotter below. Wind instruments at masthead (2 displays in cockpit: 1)wind direction/speed/apparent/true/etc. AND 2) paddle wheel speed/water temp/log/etc . Vesper XB8000 AIS send/receive. VHF below with remote mike at helm. The boat does have a new Raymarine wheel autopilot. Not sure if this can/should be integrated into everything.

I'm thinking that NEMA 2000 network is the newest standard and most universally used. Correct?

Would you prefer the wired Raymarine i60 wind instrument (this appears to be Seatalk network, NOT NEMA2000), or the wireless system (this appears to be NOT recommended for boats > 35').

Ugh, lots of moving parts here. Anyway, any wise advice and considerations would be appreciated.

~markb

Unless you would like to spend a ton of $$ on name brand instruments that will be out dated in a few years, then please do. Otherwise you should at least take a look at opencpn.

We designed our opencpn based nav. system on a raspberry pi and works very well. Everything works as it should and IMO ocpn has better features built into it than the name brand systems. The programing is continually updated to add new features, without buying new electronic suites to keep up with the changes.

We are running a wireless Tacktick wind, depth and speed sensors on our 49' boat (>7yrs) and signal strength is very good w/our ~60' mast height. Integration into the nav. station Rpi was very simple with a usb adapter cable connected to Tacktick hub. AIS is also a simple usb cable plug into the nav. station Rpi.

All the nav. station data/info. is sent wireless to the tablet in cockpit. We like the tablet better so we can move it where ever we are sitting in the cockpit rather than a fixed display at the helm. Both systems are independent and either station can look at different things w/o interfering w/the others display.

The autopilot (pypilot) is also wireless and can be controlled independently from the tablet or the nav. station.
The wireless connectivity of the Rpi saves running wires all over the boat.

We are not electronics oriented people and it wasn't that hard to set up the opencpn on a Rpi using openplotter.
These links are now "old", but give you an idea of the setup.
https://phoenixketch.blogspot.com/20...-computer.html
https://phoenixketch.blogspot.com/se...abel/Autopilot

[goboatingnow]

Seatalkng is NMEA2000

In my view pick one of the “ big four “ and implement as much as you can within the brand. Mix a brand only for very good reasons.

I’ve a seatalkng back bone ( nmea 2000) with a converter for the older ST60 instruments , everything including my Standard Horizon is on the 2K bus.

Avoid 0183 It’s dated , slow and requires multiplexers,2K is the way to go

[Puget Dan]

I had 20 year old instruments and just updated them all with Garmin and vesper 8000 Ais. The whole package ran about 10k. I used my old Furuno set up for 10 years but I am very glad we updated. Also kept the Raymarine auto pilot as there was no need to change it. Good luck.

[kish]

Originally Posted by hjohnson

I think the complaint is that it's not *publicly* documented. It's open if you're willing to pay the $$$ to NMEA, but not to the average hobbyist. That said, there are enough reverse engineered sources available online that as long as you're reasonably comfortable doing embedded programming, it's not rocket science to implement your own N2K system.

Standards' bodies such as ISO and NMEA produce publicly accessible standards in their individual industrial sphere.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intern...tandardization
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation...cs_Association



Both charge $$$ for printed copies of their public individual standards.


Equipment manufacturers can be members of such bodies for $$$$ per year.


They presumably need to charge for their standards in hard copy to be viable, but the content of the standards is public, not closed and is details are widely available online.

[Snore]

Originally Posted by bratzcpa

Good evening.

We just closed a deal on a new (to us) sailboat. 40' OAL. The existing electronics are old and/or not there. I would like to design a electronic suite from scratch and need some help to do that.

On my current boat, it has the Seatalk backbone, but there are several converters to other components, and a mixture of NEMA 2000 for good measure. it works, but is a bit cobbled. So, on the new boat, since we're starting from a clean start, let's do this right!

Needs: multifunction chartplotter at helm. Secondary smaller chartplotter below. Wind instruments at masthead (2 displays in cockpit: 1)wind direction/speed/apparent/true/etc. AND 2) paddle wheel speed/water temp/log/etc . Vesper XB8000 AIS send/receive. VHF below with remote mike at helm. The boat does have a new Raymarine wheel autopilot. Not sure if this can/should be integrated into everything.

I'm thinking that NEMA 2000 network is the newest standard and most universally used. Correct?

Would you prefer the wired Raymarine i60 wind instrument (this appears to be Seatalk network, NOT NEMA2000), or the wireless system (this appears to be NOT recommended for boats > 35').

Ugh, lots of moving parts here. Anyway, any wise advice and considerations would be appreciated.

~markb

There is a great article in Practical Sailor written a few years ago by a pretty smart guy.

Following are the essential parts of the article. Start with a table of what you have and what language they speak. Then determine what you want. This methodology will allow you to make the changes in steps.

That said……
If you have the budget, start by finding a MFD you like. Garmin and Ray are both very good and have intuitive menus. They can do the basic job.

Serious sailors move to B&G. Why? Because they have information, especially for racing. But their menu functions are much less intuitive. If you don’t race—-meh!

AIS aside, it is important to have one firm for all electronics. Why? Because to zero the sensors you have to add offsets through the MFD. I have B&G plotter and wind. My AP is RayMarine. While the MFD can drive the AP through a route and because the AP can use the wind data, it works. BUT- when racing I like to use the heel data to maximize speed. Unfortunately, the B&G cannot zero-out the Ray heel sensor. So I had to buy a second sensor that the B&G could zero. The other issue is that while I can update the B&G firmware, the AP and the ST-1 to STNG converter cannot be updated.

Like you, I have a vesper. I love it and recommend it to all my customers. Why? It ‘jail breaks’ the proprietary data and puts it out on 0183.

Finally, consider NOT installing the second MFD at the Nav station. It is the perfect spot to use an iPad running Navionics or a laptop with a SSD. You can always add the second MFD later. What I like about this setup is that you can update the iPad’s charts much easier than the MFD.

Finally, update the Ray to a below decks drive. Or replace it. Wheel pilots are not exactly robust!

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by Snore

There is a great article in Practical Sailor written a few years ago by a pretty smart guy.



Following are the essential parts of the article. Start with a table of what you have and what language they speak. Then determine what you want. This methodology will allow you to make the changes in steps.



That said……

If you have the budget, start by finding a MFD you like. Garmin and Ray are both very good and have intuitive menus. They can do the basic job.



Serious sailors move to B&G. Why? Because they have information, especially for racing. But their menu functions are much less intuitive. If you don’t race—-meh!



AIS aside, it is important to have one firm for all electronics…...



Like you, I have a vesper. I love it and recommend it to all my customers. Why? It ‘jail breaks’ the proprietary data and puts it out on 0183.

Agree Re first point , however the point Re the vesper makes no sense. Nmea 2000 pgns are documented and the main ones are widely documented

Secondly there’s no need to have anything to do with an ancient slow serial ASCII data format.

[steve77]

If you decide to install the second chart plotter at the helm, consider making it identical to the one at the helm. This gives you a spare unit that you can move to the helm in case that unit fails.

Cheers!

Steve

[Snore]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

Agree Re first point , however the point Re the vesper makes no sense. Nmea 2000 pgns are documented and the main ones are widely documented

Secondly there’s no need to have anything to do with an ancient slow serial ASCII data format.

Simple, from my experience- when you connect a third party to a Ray, Garmin or B&G wifi, but the third party software does not fully integrate. Whereas, when you connect to the Vesper, the Vesper converts the N2K to 0183 and streams the data over wifi to the iPad or laptop where any program can read the data and display it.

[bergius]

Originally Posted by hjohnson

I think the complaint is that it's not *publicly* documented. It's open if you're willing to pay the $$$ to NMEA, but not to the average hobbyist. That said, there are enough reverse engineered sources available online that as long as you're reasonably comfortable doing embedded programming, it's not rocket science to implement your own N2K system.

Exactly, canboat (https://github.com/canboat/canboat) is a good place to start.

I'm using a Sailor Hat for my Signal K Raspberry Pi. This allows it to be a part of the N2K network. There are other similar products, like Pican-M. We have a pair of B&G Triton2 instrument displays in the cockpit, and these happily show values coming from Signal K.

So, even when going mostly-N2K, it is certainly possible to integrate the more DIY stuff this way.

[edlepera]

I lead towards the package deal B&G offers.

[donradcliffe]

I'm following with interest, because I am often asked the same question. Having had issues with Garmin, b&g, and Raymarine, I have no preference for any of them.

I am not a fan of touch screen MFDs in a bouncing boat, especially in the cockpit.

I do like the Vesper kit, designed by sailors, not farmboys. If they would come up with an integrated package, I would buy it .

In networked systems, you need a plan to get critical displays when (not if) the network goes down.

[Snore]

Originally Posted by donradcliffe

I do like the Vesper kit, designed by sailors, not farmboys. If they would come up with an integrated package, I would buy it .

In networked systems, you need a plan to get critical displays when (not if) the network goes down.

That is the beauty of Vesper. It integrates with anything. It is designed to ride on the N2K network and can be updated through their app

[pjShap]

Vesper was bought by Garmin earlier this year.
https://www.garmin.com/en-US/newsroo...-and-services/