New GPS

tjar

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Aug 8, 2011
166
Hunter Legend 35.5 Tacoma, WA
Looking at replacing my old Garmin GPSmap 492 as it seems to have finally bit the dust. I'm considering some affordable options to either replace it with another stand alone GPS, or getting something that can integrate with my other old systems.
Is anybody familiar with the B&G Zues2 chartplotter and how well it would integrate with an older Raymarine ST60 Wind Instrument? I eventually want to update all of my instruments and possibly add radar, but I'm looking at doing it piecemeal for now.
What other affordable chartplotters can people recommend to integrate with the ST60 and ST4000 autopilot?
 
Jan 11, 2014
11,323
Sabre 362 113 Fair Haven, NY
I installed a Zeus2 MFD last fall. The other instruments were old B&G Network instruments and autopilot. When I talked to B&G Tech support, they indicated that the old B&G instruments, may or may not work because the Zeus2 needed NMEA 0183 v. 1.5 or later and my instruments were not NMEA 0183 v 1.5, but an earlier version. I decided to hold off connecting the instruments to the MFD. I did connect a Vesper Marine AIS transceiver and that was plug and play.

There will be 3 questions to ask, what version of NMEA 0183 do your instruments use? What is the oldest version of NMEA 0183 that B&G supports (I think it is 1.5, but I could be wrong)? Finally, the cables will be different, will it be necessary to add an adapter of some sort?

As for the Zeus2, I've been happy with mine so far. Seems to have an easy interface to use. The 4g radar is pretty impressive. I have the 9" model, the screen on the 7" seemed a little small, the 12" was huge. One nice feature is the spilt screen, the radar can be on one side and the chartplotter on the other. Or a close range radar image on one side and a long range radar on the other, or any of many different combinations.