B&g upgrade with Seatalk

[S/v Calypso]

Hello all. I've been reading previous posts but haven't found the answer I need for my particular setup. Recently my garmin 3006c pooped out and I replaced it with a 9" B&G zeus3. Really liking the new unit but now I'm working on interfacing it with the rest of my equipment and the more I look at this the more I confuse myself. Presently I have 2 st60s for wind and speed/depth, along with a raymarine smartpilot connected to a st6001. I purchased a seatalk to seatalkng converter along with a nmea2k to seatalkng cable for connecting the zeus3 to the raymarine backbone, but I'm stumped now as to how to connect every thing.

Each of the st60s has 2 seatalk ports which are in use, so I don't understand how I'm supposed to connect them to the seatalkng converter. Do I keep the existing seatalk wires in place and simply run a separate wire from the smartpilot to the seatalkng backbone, or am I supposed to remove one seatalk cable from any st60, plug it into the ng converter, and then run a separate wire back to the terminal I just exposed??

 

[S/v Calypso]

Here's the way my Tridata is wired

 

[joker460]

I did the same thing a while back but with a Garmin (nmea200) plotter. See attached. It may help a bit.

 

[S/v Calypso]

Thanks Joker. I didn't know if I could splice into the seatalk cables like that because of all the "talker" & "listener" stuff in the old system. Gonna give that a shot. Have you had any communication issues wiring that way?

Thanks again

 

[joker460]

No communication issues. It's been in operation for 3 years now. The ST50 instruments are powered now from the nmea 2000 buss.
The ST4000 AP has it's own power connection and is not part of the nmea 2000 buss.
You can connect the AP to the ST50 Seatalk buss but you have to cut the positive wire in the seatalk cable from the AP to the ST50 instruments. Only the ground and signal wires will be used. I have not tried that yet.
Good Luck!

 

[pfaffk]

Hi, I just did the same thing earlier this summer. Here is the link to the Ray Marine forum where we had the same discussion.
http://forum.raymarine.com/showthread.php?tid=1067

 

[LeslieTroyer]

The SeatalkNG to seatalk converter E22158 only does ST40/60 and GPS not autopilot so you can get wind/depth but not the have the Zeus drive the course routes waypoints.... I don't know if the Zeus and AP have 183 they can talk over but that is one option to explore. + 1 on the Ray user forum. Chuck is a great resource

Les