This may help some one or not. A few years ago I purchased a
Hunter 23.5 didn't have a lot of options or
electronics and was fun to sail off the coast of FL. Well one day I decided to go on a camping trip and stay out for a night in front of one of the local Island. The whole night after dark I could not sleep in fret of winding up in the middle of the golf upon waking. I was using a small hand held
gps for
navigation. After that day I went on a quest and a mission to find the lowest cost ancore and
navigation. Note I am a
research and
designer for fun. I
work with
electronics and
communications all day at my job. On my
research path I came across
Opencpn. I Loved it a real system designed by great people and the
price was right. No Designed a Custom
Core 2 duo
laptop I got for $50 bucks and then got a usb
gps for $25 now the
race was on the system worked great and with the free electronic
charts from the NOAA it really helped out on a real system that works for navigation. I couldn't stop there after finding out it was capable of running an
autopilot I had a lazy crew and going out was a lot of effort and with out some one to run the tiller and keeping a straight line to the
wind it could some times be dangerous out in the currents and waves I ended up getting a
Raymarine St 1000+ I created a custom cable with adapter and set it up to the pc running
Opencpn using the
NMEA 1883 comm. and tested it works. After
Open CPN Installed the ability to run and control the individual sentences to each usb port things took off. I was able to get a
radio that has AIS/DCS and wired a custom cable to that set up the speeds to each port from
radio now I had GPS on the radio and also
AIS signals to my computer and DCS to my computer. Now I found that the
autopilot would also run off the gps signal since
Open CPN Distributes the information to each device. Well why stop now. I got
safety from the radio and the autopilot to nav. for 20 miles with out a hiccup off the go here now from the
laptop. Well what about
wind I could use that right not just for the autopilot to run off of but also to see on a
screen the exact numbers on a
screen for the direction so I can test to see what angle off the wind gets the best speed from my
sails. So off I go and I found I just needed a
communications converter from
raymarine very simple and a very low cost
weather sensor from a company in
England which outputs
NMEA not just
sensor readings I also integrated a 3 way calibration switch into the comm
wiring and wala a full fledged system that works it reads out wind also note when the auto pilots is wired using raymarine communication and run through the raymarine communications converter now you actually get a true
compass reading from the auto pilot on the pc also. this system is great its like having a 15k system on a small
sail boat. That cost less than 1k a real winner and very unique. If any one is interested in the design. Let me know. If any one in the open CPN
project is interested I have a full schematic of the system 2 years It is still running and in full operation.