Autohelm Bidata ST30 Upgrade possible?

MM5AHO

MM5AHO

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I have an ST30 Autohelm Bidata instrument displaying the depth and speed from Airmar instruments in the hull.
The instrument is getting crazed on the clear section of the display and I thought to replace it.
The manual says it communicated by "seatalk".

Is there a suitable upgrade instrument (even more modern perhaps), that will receive the data, and so save the hassle of changing sensors?
 
A quick call to Raymarine will give you a definitive answer, but I'd imagine the ST40 BiData display would work, for around £130 or less.
 
I have a similar problem and have (almost) decided to buy a NASA Clipper Duet Depth and Log System & Transducers from Ebay (around £180) and bite the bullet of fitting the transducers whilst the boat is out of the water later this year. Trouble is I am told the newer transducers are smaller than older ones and I may need to glass over the existing holes and drill new. I would have thought someone would produce a sleeve to avoid this ? Or am I misinformed ?
 
Loggo said:
I have a similar problem and have (almost) decided to buy a NASA Clipper Duet Depth and Log System & Transducers from Ebay (around £180) and bite the bullet of fitting the transducers whilst the boat is out of the water later this year. Trouble is I am told the newer transducers are smaller than older ones and I may need to glass over the existing holes and drill new. I would have thought someone would produce a sleeve to avoid this ? Or am I misinformed ?
Click to expand...

Why would you go to all that trouble rather than just swapping the display?
 
Loggo said:
I have a similar problem and have (almost) decided to buy a NASA Clipper Duet Depth and Log System & Transducers from Ebay (around £180) and bite the bullet of fitting the transducers whilst the boat is out of the water later this year. Trouble is I am told the newer transducers are smaller than older ones and I may need to glass over the existing holes and drill new. I would have thought someone would produce a sleeve to avoid this ? Or am I misinformed ?
Click to expand...

I'd stick with Raymarine - the nasa depth sounder I had in the last boat wasn't very good at measuring shallow depths - just when you needed it most! I now have ST30 depth and it can display down to 1 m
 
Why would you go to all that trouble rather than just swapping the display?
Click to expand...

Well,firstly I am not convinced it is the display that is at fault -previous owner said he had fitted new depth transducer though, so it seems favourite. Particularly as the speed seems to work well enough. Secondly the displays that I have seen for sale are not far off the cost of a NASA set up.
 
I've been thinking about replaying mine as well. I'm assuming you can't mix and match raymarine and nasa paddle wheels and displays though. Is that right? In an ideal world I'd like to go raymarine as I expect that will speak to the SPX tillerpilot I may someday be able to afford!
 
Can't really see what a Tri-data would communicate to a tiller pilot...? Depth and speed are not used and the sea temperature feature is notoriously inaccurate anyway, let alone irrelevant.

I believe the depth transducers used by Raymarine and Nasa operate at different frequencies, but a visit to the Airmar website and a look at the Raymarine manual will confirmwhich will suit both the St30,ST40 and ST60 instruments. Nasa do not use Airmar so unless the frequency is listed in the manual, you would have to find the frequency of your existing transducer and ask Nasa if you're considering going that route (answering two posters' questions at once - tricky). As for the paddlewheel (speed), again you would need to get the spec of the Airmar units suited to Raymarine and check with Nasa. Most speed instruments have a range of adjustment to allow the log to be calibrated to suit the installation and you may be lucky.

Rob.
 
I think the 'smarter' tiller pilots make some use of the speed output when working out the amplitude of the tiller movements needed. I don't expect is makes a lot of difference to performance though. (And I don't have a working tiller pilot at the moment so I'm no expert!)
 
MM5AHO said:
I have an ST30 Autohelm Bidata instrument displaying the depth and speed from Airmar instruments in the hull.
The instrument is getting crazed on the clear section of the display and I thought to replace it.
The manual says it communicated by "seatalk".

Is there a suitable upgrade instrument (even more modern perhaps), that will receive the data, and so save the hassle of changing sensors?
Click to expand...


Our new to us boat in the uS came with non-working st30 depth/peed. Raymarine here told me the ST60 transducers fit the same thru hull if I wanted to upgrade to ST60 or ST 70 instruments. In the event we chose a complete revamp of our on board electronics and went to all new NMEA 2000 stuff from Garmin. This did mean we needed a new Triducer installed into the hull for speed/depth/ temp and a new Garmin masthead wind speed/direction transducer. NMEA 2000 stuff is so much easier to deal with, plug and play wise and since we also replaced the old faulty Raymarine radar with the latest Garmin HD radome feeding our Garmin 4210 plotter/multi function display and added AIS transceiver, fast response heading sensor to our system it seemed the best way to go and allow for any further additions as and when. We still have a Raymarine wheel pilot but this still connects To The Garmin stuff via a NMEA 183 feed from the Garmin plotter
 
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