Thanks for all of your help!
Quote:
Are you investigating the Vesper XB-8000 because you:
1. Need an AIS transponder
2. Need an AIS transponder and also need a NMEA 2000 gateway
or 3. Just need a NMEA 2000 gateway ?
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I already own the XB-8000. I sailed with it from
Fiji to NZ in 2019, a wonderful piece of
gear it is. At the time, since we had just purchased the
boat, I used it for
GPS and AIS and broadcast that over Wifi and used OpenCPN on my Android Tablet. All worked really well. I was using the old non-networkable and original analog
wind and
water speed sensors.
But now the plan is to really set myself up tech-wise for 3 years of
South Pacific cruising. We will be expanding the NMEA 2000 backbone with a
B&G wind,
water depth and temp sensors and I will also connect a Vulcan 3 9" chatplotter for viewing in the
cockpit. I plan on feeding the XB-8000
GPS and AIS into this NMEA 2000 backbone. So far this seems A-OK.
But I also want to create a super
low power consumption system for the
chartplotter inside. The "smart boat system" so to speak. I purchased a Raspberry Pi 4 for this and will connect it to a
low power portable 13" HD
screen which I will mount in place. A new digital
B&G (or similar)
radar will feed both the raspberry pi/open cpn and the vulcan
chartplotter via ethernet and a
network switch in between.
Everything left of the radios will be replaced by a small raspberry pi with a 13" HD portable
monitor which I will mount on a new
teak panel.
So both inside and outside systems will use the same data from the NMEA backbone but in a sense I will have redundancy of "computing" and, unlike the chartplotter which sucks a decent amount of
power, I plan on leaving the Raspberry Pi ON all of the time as it will also
monitor barometric pressure and potentially
freezer, fridge and
engine room temp sensors. Based on my
research it also appears possible to connect my
Victron BMV-702
battery monitor to the Raspberry Pi via the VE Direct USB cable and I have found a few open source serializng code examples to dump the data in an InfluxDB.
I am using a lot of fancy terms to me, but really I am just getting started with this. But if you're anything like me, I love messing about and
learning new things so this is all good fun. :-)
The one thing I have not been able to find easily online, and the reason for this post, is whether or not I can simply connect the Vesper Marine XB-8000 to my Raspberry Pi via USB and be able to see my NMEA 2000 data (GPS, AIS, Wind Speed, Wind Direction, Water
Depth, Water Temp) or if I need any drivers or anything. I understand the data will flow via Signal K but do I need to do anything to "see" the data or will it all work as-is. Perhaps the reason I cannot find anything online is this is a non-issue.
From the answers on this thread, it seems I can
plug and play and Signal K will ensure the data is displayed to OpenCPN.
Thanks for all of your help, I think when I'm done with all of this I will create a big blog post summarizing my approach. If anyone is interested in one day following our voyages, our blog is alulasails.com We hope to fly back to NZ in the early fall (vaccination dependent I am guessing) and resuming our sailing adventure then. Cheers