Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkMac
What you have managed to do is just incredible.
Thanks for posting it.
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Thank you. There are may be 5 CF members who understand what is happening in this thread and the implication it has. As HAM radios become better programmable, we can program them to do many jobs on a boat. I am sure that this Kenwood can be an AIS transponder plus VHF radio just by modifying the
software.
Update: The Furuno Navnet3D can output a
NMEA WPL sentence, but it does not support it when we send it to it's input.
I did put in a feature request with OpenCPN which looks like to be approved and taken up by somebody so I guess we'll get it somehow.
I wish I would have a development kit for the Kenwood so that I could output a different sentence, like DCS or ARPA
tracking which is supported by the chart plotters. I don't want to put a computer in between.
There is an easy way out however: a friendly Italian manufacturer, Avmap, is selling a GPS navigator much like a Tomtom or
Garmin but it supports APRS input (!!) and it supports user-created maps (!!!). It is the G6 APRS model:
AvMap WebSite
Here you see it decode a packet from an APRS
weather station:
I also found that I can reprogram the Kenwood to receive AIS because it's
modem is 9600bps and it allows to tune into the AIS modulation scheme. However, you get the raw packets in the TNC KISS mode, which need to be processed to get to
NMEA VDM messages. I'm afraid that I don't have enough time and incentive to travel down that path
I'm also working on finishing my
Navnet 3D
radar and
MaxSea TZ install. Just got it to fully work so I'm now waterproofing cable connections etc. I had pulled a wrong cable before so that got me a bit pissed off with myself
I did get the right
cables but also a very nice ethernet switch and USB hub that are both with shielded metal case and wide range DC power input, like 9-24V. The switch now has my
Navnet 3D display and
radar scanner and the MacMini with
MaxSea connected to it and works great. I need to tidy that up.
The USB hub gives you a fool proof externally powered hub, mounted where you can quickly
plug stuff in like GPS, hard disk, N2K converter etc. Need to install that too.
I keep finding
NMEA 0183 connections even after switching to
NMEA 2000. I now have 3 feeds at the navstation: VHF for
DSC and two from the Kenwood radio (GPS + APRS). I think my
SSB also has NMEA output and
DSC... so I will relocate my old 4800bps NMEA mux to the navstation to put all that into one single NMEA stream. I also ordered an Actisense converter so that I should be able to put anything together. I'll just pull some extra
cables here and there to make sure that I don't have to open the ceiling again after this.
ciao!
Nick.