opencpn to nmea2000

[ben373]

I love the product. I am getting a new autohelm evo 200 from raymarine. Unfortunately, it only accepts nmea2000 I understand.

What is the best way to interface this. Both hardware wise and protocol. As I am starting from scratch possibly a nmea 2000 wifi adapter could be good but does OPENcpn communicate with this as it only has 0183? My other instruments are B&G 1000 which I will replace over the next few years.

Thanks

[Littlechay]

Interesting question. I have used the various bits in isolation but never tried to interface them. So with that proviso here goes.

The Evo sensor from Raymarine is awesome, needs no setup just turn it on and it works out where it is, which way up it is and in which direction it's facing. When combined with their autopilot it helps the pilot to learn the boats behavior and provides very smooth helm action. In an installation I did; over the last 10 months the boat has done 20,000 miles in just about every condition you can imagine and the pilot has only got its knickers in a twist half a dozen times. It took a couple of days to learn the boat's foibles, and at first we thought there was a problem as the helm action was quite agressive (big boat with third part hydraulic rams) but it was just learning.

I know that OpenCPN talks ok to the Actisense NMEA 0183 to 2000 converters as that is what I have on my boat, but I don't have the N2K network interfaced to an autopilot. I do know that it passes autopilot sentences because I can see the resulting output on my Furuno RD33 displays.

I'm sure somebody can step in who has done the N2k interface to an autopilot. There are some autopilot notes on the OpenCPN news page but I think only for 0183.

Oh and I think all the Raymarine pilots still have a plain vanilla seatalk interface and they do a seatalk to NMEA0183 interface or you can roll your own (Google).

[Neptune's Gear]

Its quite simple Ben. You can get the actisense converter with the correct connector for Raymarine, and away you go. If your pilot has 0183 NMEA you don't need a converter, but you'll need a serial port on the laptop. If it does not have one, you'll need a usb-serial converter in either case.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

[janp391]

Originally Posted by ben373

I love the product. I am getting a new autohelm evo 200 from raymarine. Unfortunately, it only accepts nmea2000 I understand.

What is the best way to interface this. Both hardware wise and protocol. As I am starting from scratch possibly a nmea 2000 wifi adapter could be good but does OPENcpn communicate with this as it only has 0183? My other instruments are B&G 1000 which I will replace over the next few years.

Thanks

@ben373

Please let us know how you solved this problem. I am in the same situation because we had a lightning strike and all electronic is dead. I will install Raymarin evo 200 as soon as it will be delivered. But have not figured out the connection between the computer and the autopilot

Jan

[Neptune's Gear]

You have to convert the data to/from nmea0183 from nmea2000 for Opencpn to work. Look here http://www.actisense.com/products/nmea-2000/ngw1.html for the adapter. There is an option for a model with raymarine on that page.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

[Littlechay]

Originally Posted by Neptune's Gear

You have to convert the data to/from nmea0183 from nmea2000 for Opencpn to work. Look here NGW-1: NMEA 0183 to 2000 for the adapter. There is an option for a model with raymarine on that page.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

A downside to using Raymarine is that they have hacked NMEA2000 around a bit and added proprietary PGNs (messages). If it was a standard NMEA2000 network then you just buy the NGW-1-usb and plug one end into a usb port on your computer and the other into your NMEA2000 network.

It's possible that you might get the functionality that you need by doing that, but to be safe you should do as the OP says and get the NGW that is designed to interface to SeatalkNG. The downside is that you'll also need to add a serial to usb converter to interface that to the computer

in my ascii art down below the items in [] are physical devices

[Raymarine network]---SeatalkNG---[NGW-1]---nmea0183---[serial/usb]----[computer]

Chris

[Littlechay]

How about this? If you are into a little tinkering.

Buy the NGW-1-usb and see if works.

If it doesn't work because of the proprietary nature of SeatalkNG; just download the SeatalkNG firmware from the Actisense site and flash your device over to the Seatalk version of the firmware.

Doing it this way you avoid having to have a separate serial/usb converter.

Chris