Winter Project - Instrumentation

Ben4195 · Dec 14, 2018

I'm doing the same thing, Ward, only hiring it out. I'm afraid to tackle the project myself as I'm not the most handy person. I went all Raymarine, with the eS78 chartplotter, the wind/depth/speed instrument pack, the EV-200 autopilot, , and two i70s multifunction instrument displays (one for the helm, one down below). The installer is supposed to start working on the installs any time now. I'm nervous about it because this is an expensive upgrade for me. Best of luck to you!

jssailem · Dec 14, 2018

@Ben4195 on the scale of 1-5 this can be a 3-4 on the DIY scale. Having a professional install is a great idea. Reading about the install procedures and observing the install, even asking a few ‘limited’ questions will help reduce the anxiety. Remember this is your boat. You want to be comfortable so that when an issue occurs, yes even with professional installs Mr Murphy can make a visit and usually when the timing is bad, you can diagnose the likely problem and be able to either fix it or at least describe it to a repair professional or here on the forum.

We have all been in your shoes. Opened ourselves to a checkbook-ectomy in the hope of better boating experiences. Asking questions and talking about the fears can help.

Meriachee · Dec 14, 2018

Ward, there is one more thing to take into consideration, planned obsolescence. While the itc5 is a great way of injecting "older" data into the data bus (I have one too) the transducers at some point will not be easily available. We're already seeing the next round with the Axiom, suddenly the Lighthouse updates are focusing on that.

capta · Dec 14, 2018

As a professional in this industry, I have been captain on numerous vessels that had Raymarine gear, from small yacht systems to commercial size and grade equipment on a treasure hunting vessel and a couple of tugs.
Both customer service and tech support have been less than helpful and in most cases quite unknowledgeable about the equipment they sell. In one specific case, when I needed a rotary autopilot drive, not one single employee of Raymarine (and believe me, I went through every department including engineers and designers) could tell me the horsepower of the unit I was enquiring about.
My 2 cents worth; I wouldn't waste my time installing Raymarine equipment in any vessel, even if it was given to me free. Buyer beware.

Scott T-Bird · Dec 14, 2018

Ward H said:
Of course there is always project creep. I had trouble all last season while sailing on AP when I started my engine. The chart plotter would restart and the AP would do a crazy Ivan. Then I read in the instrument manuals RM recommends separate power supplies for instruments and engine starting.
So my first step is installing a Blue Sea Dual Circuit Plus battery switch, which will likely lead to some other improvements to the original DC distribution panel.

Nice project, but are you sure you want to join the DCP brigade?!?!

I'm all in favor, as you know. I'm a fan of DCP!

Cover all your bases, though, by installing 2 on-off switches so you can isolate either of the 2 banks independently through the Combined position on the DCP switch, if you ever have a need to do it. Most folks will say it is imperative that you have that function. MaineSail has discussed this in his forum. It is simple but you will pay the price of 2 switches & extra cables. They should be located in a hidden location so they aren't inadvertently switched off at the wrong time. Is there another way to have start isolation without going the DCP route?
BTW, I'm pretty sure you'll enjoy the project and the results!

Sailm8 · Dec 14, 2018

I needed a stand alone autopilot and bought a complete wheel pilot from defender on sale with a raymarine rebate and a discount if replacing due to hurricanes. I installed it and kept getting a no pilot error. I hired an installer to check it out and found it out the software was out of date for one of the components. There is no way to upgrade the software without a chart plotter except to pack it up and send it to Raymarine. What a rip.

BarryL · Dec 14, 2018

Hey,
I have Older Raymarine ST50 depth, speed, wind instruments on my boat. I wanted an autopilot so I bought the EV100 wheel pilot. I paid a technician to install everything and I assisted him. I had a Garmin plotter at the time and I added a Simrad NMEA 2000 VHD / AIS receive. With the addition if the ITC 5 all units receive and share data and it works great. A few years ago I replaced the Garmin unit with a B&G Vulcan 7 and everything still works well.
I have no problem with Raymarine gear. If you want a wheel pilot they are pretty much the only game in town.

Good luck,
Barry

LakeOntario270 · Dec 14, 2018

I just purchased a Axiom 9 chart plotter and it will initially be a stand alone unit. This summer my first step will be to start a NMEA 2000 network to display engine data on the plotter. After that is up and running I'll replace any gauges that fail with NMEA 2000 stuff. After looking at how NMEA works the only hard part is pulling a new cable through the boat.
The nice thing about Axiom is I can update it using my cell phone, linked by Blue Tooth, to the plotter. Sea talk is RS232 and when is the last time you saw any RS232 devices for your home computer?

jssailem · Dec 14, 2018

@Sailm8 I feel your pain.
It is bad but not quite that bad.
You can get online and download the new files from Raymarine. Save to an SD storage chip.
Then go to a Raymarine local dealer or a friend with a Raymarine plotter, @LeslieTroyer on my dock was my resource, and take your AP computer to their plotter. They can attach your Computer to their plotter and update your firm ware. Takes less than 5 minutes. I’ve heard that WM has done this for their customers.

Les was really great. Cost me a beer and a couple of stories. But I would have enjoyed that anyway.

Sailm8 · Dec 14, 2018

Thanks for the tip. I just yesterday shipped it back to Raymarine on their dime. I can wait. Wouldn't it be nice if they put a usb port somewhere? Just say'n

jssailem · Dec 14, 2018

Yes it would be.
But then how would they sell you a plotter and all their other toys.

Meriachee · Dec 14, 2018

Patches? We don' need no steenkin' patches. The good news is that the Lighthouse updates will touch every device on the Ray network. The bad news is that yes, you need a plotter, and no, for some stupid reason you can't hang your laptop off the NMEA segment of the bus and update everything. You should have a plotter anyway, even a little one. If for no other reason than the oooh aaaah factor.

LeslieTroyer · Dec 14, 2018

LakeOntario270 said:
Sea talk is RS232 and when is the last time you saw any RS232 devices for your home computer?

Seatalk is NOT RS 232. It is a multipoint - multidrop protocol where RS232 is strictly point to point. You may be able to communicate between the two with just two devices, but you loose the multi talker multi listener capability. Seatalk is also NOT NMEA 0183 which is a RS422 based Single talker multi listener protocol

Les

Meriachee · Dec 14, 2018

Les, of course you can talk any network to any network by twisting the blue and yellows together. There've been plenty of threads here that clearly indicate it's acceptable practise. (Followed immediately by the lack of threads detailing the effort in sending the gear in to be repaired)

LeslieTroyer · Dec 14, 2018

Most serial protocols are fairly robust as long as their using proper driver chips, and don’t burn up when feed too high of voltage (they did in the 70& early 80’s) And there is a fair amount of overlap in the electrical portions (voltages, ground references, balanced, unbalanced, differential...) of the spec, so 12volt RS232 can usually talk to 5V implementation (like NMEA 0183) if distance and line loss isnt too great, and lot of folks get away with it, but it’s not guaranteed to work, and is in an undefined state as far as the spec goes. And because the can interact doesn’t make them the same thing

Maybe I’m being too technical but if your not following the rules of the spec, you can’t say you are.

Les

Meriachee · Dec 14, 2018

That's why there are things like the itc5 and the NMEA converter. Stray from that too much and things will act strange.

LakeOntario270 · Dec 14, 2018

"Seatalk is NOT RS 232. It is a multipoint - multidrop protocol where RS232 is strictly point to point."
Yes you are correct but the basic electrical connection is almost the same as RS232. A standard RS232 UART can be used for a Seatalk network.

SeaTalk Technical Reference Part 1: How SeaTalk works
Hardware-Interface
SeaTalk uses three wires, connected in parallel to all devices on the bus:

+12V Supply, red
GND Supply, grey
Data Serial Data, yellow: +12V=Idle/Mark=1, 0V=Space/Data=0, 4800 Baud, pullup circuit in each device, talker pulls down to 0V (wired OR). For connection to a RS232 receiver voltage levels must be inverted.

Serial Data Transmission
11 bits are transmitted for each character:

1 Start bit (0V)

8 Data Bits (least significant bit transmitted first)

1 Command bit, set on the first character of each datagram. Reflected in the parity bit of most UARTs. Not compatible with NMEA0183 but well suited for the multiprocessor communications mode of 8051-family microcontrollers (bit SM2 in SCON set).

1 Stop bit (+12V)

HMT2 · Dec 14, 2018

jssailem said:
@Sailm8 I feel your pain.
It is bad but not quite that bad.
You can get online and download the new files from Raymarine. Save to an SD storage chip.
Then go to a Raymarine local dealer or a friend with a Raymarine plotter, @LeslieTroyer on my dock was my resource, and take your AP computer to their plotter. They can attach your Computer to their plotter and update your firm ware. Takes less than 5 minutes. I’ve heard that WM has done this for their customers.

Les was really great. Cost me a beer and a couple of stories. But I would have enjoyed that anyway.

I did this with West Marine. They let me hook up my Raymarine autopilot CPU to a Raymarine plotter put my SD card in and voila! I love my local WM!