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Old 08-08-2023, 16:39   #1
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NEMA-2000 / NEMA-0183 diagnostic tool

Looking for a diagnostic tool ( other than Digital Yachts/ Maretron). There was a person that "listed" a debug tool he had built sometime this last year on the classifieds thread , cant seem to find it.

Looking to combine two different NEMA-2000 sensors ( depth) onto the same NEMA-2000 or NEMA-0183 bus in order to output two different depth readings at the same time onto a display, however i believe that the NEMA protocols only allow for one sensor type at any one time on a bus.


The tool had some interesting options and features and would like to find it if anyone can refer me to the link / posting or thread on this site.

Thank you
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Old 08-08-2023, 17:22   #2
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Re: NEMA-2000 / NEMA-0183 diagnostic tool

I don't know about the tool you mention, but if you tell us more about what you want to accomplish, there may be other ways to skin the cat.


It's fine to have multiple same-kind devices on N2K. The device consuming the data, typically a display product of some sort, has to be smart enough to pick which source it wants to use, but it can be done. The biggest issue is that NMEA 2000 does not enforce a particular method for data source selection, and as a result there are vendors with different, incompatible approaches and requirements. NMEA deserves a hard rap on the knuckles for allowing this, but so it is for the past 23 years....


NMEA 0183 is different since electrically there can only be a single "Talker" on any given channel. But there are ways around that with multiplexers that can listen to multiple Talkers on different input channels, and merge them into a single Talker on an output channel. Actisense has a good like of products to do this. That said, this might not work even with Actisense because I don't think you can have the same sentence (DPT - "depth") from two different devices and be able to tell them apart. I think they would have to be fed separately to a display device, each on it's on channel, and displayed separately based on which channel the data come in on.
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Old 08-08-2023, 17:39   #3
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Re: NEMA-2000 / NEMA-0183 diagnostic tool

Thank you for your quick response, basically having Depth in each hull of a catamaran, and for that matter an additional on in the stern. ( if anchoring in narrow rivers,,, there can be a tad of a difference in depth fore and aft). Worse comes to worse, take two different NEMA buses and input them into a box and output to RS-232 with two different sentence labels and allow me to combine the data into a tablet would work as well. Thank you



Thank you
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Old 09-08-2023, 02:05   #4
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Re: NEMA-2000 / NEMA-0183 diagnostic tool

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Originally Posted by forwardvoyage View Post
Thank you for your quick response, basically having Depth in each hull of a catamaran, and for that matter an additional on in the stern. ( if anchoring in narrow rivers,,, there can be a tad of a difference in depth fore and aft). Worse comes to worse, take two different NEMA buses and input them into a box and output to RS-232 with two different sentence labels and allow me to combine the data into a tablet would work as well. Thank you



Thank you
https://www.marinetools.au/product/MCT/1

I think you might be thinking of this unit?
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Old 09-08-2023, 03:55   #5
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Re: NEMA-2000 / NEMA-0183 diagnostic tool

Firstly, with NMEA2000, you can have multiple sensors of the same type on the network. So no problems with installing a depth sensor in both hulls of your catamaran and another in the stern. Each device on the NMEA 2000 network has a unique id, and as part of the address mechanism used on the NMEA 2000 network, each device has a unique address.

The potential difficulty will be in configuring a display, albeit a MFD/Chartplotter or a simple instrument display, with multiple depth screens, each one using the different depth transducer as its source. You will need to do your homework. Alternatively, if you have multiple instrument displays, configure one to use the port hull transducer as its depth source, and configure another to use the starboard hull transducer as its depth source.

Secondly, with regards to diagnostics, the most basic tool is a multimeter. At a basic level you need to be able to measure 12v DC on the NMEA 2000 power pairs and be able to measure 60 ohms resistance across the CAN-H and CAN-L pairs. Each end of the NMEA 2000 network is terminated with a 120 ohm resistor. Here is a link to a good video illustrating diagnostics on the CAN bus.

More advanced diagnostic tools, some of which include the ability to check the voltage and resistance, include those from Maretron and Actisense. For example the Actisense W2K-1 (NMEA 2000 -> NMEA183 WiFi Gateway) supports their diagnostic tool (Actisense i) and their NMEA 2000 data viewing tool (EBL Reader.)

The device mentioned in the previous post also looks promising.

Finally, if you want to "roll your own", an inexpensive Raspberry Pi, with a compatible CAN Hat such as the Waveshare or Pican-M, coupled with the canboat software can provide both real-time and offline decoding of NMEA 2000 data.
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Old 09-08-2023, 12:01   #6
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Re: NEMA-2000 / NEMA-0183 diagnostic tool

Thank you both for the reply, that is a great youtube diagnostic video, and the diagnostic unit I was looking for.



Given the list of diags tools ( Digital Yachts, Maretron, marinetools, and any others I have missed), anyone have a preference?



Will also look at the Rasberry PI solutions.


Thank you
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Old 14-08-2023, 21:22   #7
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Re: NEMA-2000 / NEMA-0183 diagnostic tool

You can have as many depth sounders as you want on the n2k bus. You can give them all a different instance number.

The problem is most chart plotters you can only select 1 source to show. So you have to select which one is being used. Simrad you can select a 2nd as “aft depth” So you can show “depth” and “aft depth”. If you have simrad you could just make aft depth as one of the hulls.

Otherwise you need a screen like a maretron dsm. Then you can show all of them. As you can customize all the pages

Or build 2 seperate nmea 2000 backbones. Each with a transducer and a small screen.

For 183. If you multiplexed 2 depth sounders to a single data string. The screen will just switch back and forth every 1/2 sec. As it receives data from each one every sec. And you’ll get. 20’ -25’- 20’. - 25’. Etc.
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Old 15-08-2023, 02:04   #8
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Re: NEMA-2000 / NEMA-0183 diagnostic tool

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Originally Posted by smac999 View Post
You can have as many depth sounders as you want on the n2k bus. You can give them all a different instance number.

The problem is most chart plotters you can only select 1 source to show. So you have to select which one is being used. Simrad you can select a 2nd as “aft depth” So you can show “depth” and “aft depth”. If you have simrad you could just make aft depth as one of the hulls.

Otherwise you need a screen like a maretron dsm. Then you can show all of them. As you can customize all the pages

Or build 2 seperate nmea 2000 backbones. Each with a transducer and a small screen.

For 183. If you multiplexed 2 depth sounders to a single data string. The screen will just switch back and forth every 1/2 sec. As it receives data from each one every sec. And you’ll get. 20’ -25’- 20’. - 25’. Etc.
What he said.

The second depth display is commonly called "Aft Depth", and many MFD's and displays can show this. My old B&G Zeus and Triton displays can show this, as can my Maretron DSM250. The B&G H5000 has Aft Depth as well.


N2K handles this elegantly with a different Instance Number assigned to each depth sounder. 0183 would be very messy unless you simply set up separate dedicated displays. Which, well, is another elegant way to do it.
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Old 15-08-2023, 09:00   #9
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Re: NEMA-2000 / NEMA-0183 diagnostic tool

Thank you all for the replies and recommendations, much appreciated the explanation and details., with this new information, i may try with two different wind sensors in the future on a larger vessel with a obstructed bridge deck or tower structure.
Thank you
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Old 06-09-2023, 05:36   #10
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Re: NEMA-2000 / NEMA-0183 diagnostic tool

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Originally Posted by stevead View Post
Finally, if you want to "roll your own", an inexpensive Raspberry Pi, with a compatible CAN Hat such as the Waveshare or Pican-M, coupled with the canboat software can provide both real-time and offline decoding of NMEA 2000 data.
Would the new Arduino UNO R4 which has CAN support potentially be a possibility too? I suppose that the board is not powerful enough for canboat but I'm not sure.

Acc. to https://docs.arduino.cc/tutorials/uno-r4-wifi/can an external transceiver is needed, not fully documented, see e.g. https://forum.arduino.cc/t/can-bus-t...-issue/1152490.
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