Furuno FA-50 AIS to OpenCPn

[mpo1991]

Hi All

Looking for some expert help, have spent all morning reading through threads, but still can't find info on connecting my Furuno FA-50 AIS to OpenCpn via ethernet, or even if it is feasible. Would appreciate if anyone could put me out of my misery. Thanks in advance. Mark

[bcn]

Searching I found this (at Panbo):

-- Info supplied by Andy:
The NavNet 3D sends most of its data (propertary & non propertary data strings) on port UDP 10021 this is also true for the FA-30 (i would guess the FA50 to since the software reversion is virtually the same)

so you might set up an UDP connection at Options|Connections (the manual will help) and try it out.

[jstevens]

I just did a quick look at the product info on the Furuno website, and it appears the unit has a NMEA183 output port and generates the VDM sentence. Why not use that port instead of Ethernet?

John

[David M]

Have you tried Furuno's tech support? They are very helpful, even when trying to connect to someone else's software.

[muttnik]

Don't have furuno kit to try this myself but navnet was discussed a few months ago:
http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...3d-119421.html. When I last looked a few weeks ago OpenCPN's parsing looked like it would handle it: That may be different in the recent betas than older versions as it seems a poster in that earlier thread was having issues. Try what bcn suggests in the second post and if it doesn't work make sure you're using a recent beta:

- set up your computer as described in the fa-50 manual (address in 172.31.24.xxx (where xxx is a number 0 to 254 but not 3) and net mask to 255.255.0.0 (not sure why they're so picky about the "24" with that netmask...)
- Set up an opencpn data connection. UDP protocol, port 10021, don't check "output on this port".

Let us know if you have any luck. If not, a packet dump from a few seconds of output might be interesting.