Best option to add ais into electronics if installing a B&G vulcan

[steve yates]

My mate is putting a b&g vulcan chartplotter into his boat, forward facing sonar and 3g radar. I have suggested to him he really needs an ais receiver in the package if he is spending that much to bring it up to date, as it will need to last for years after this.

Currently he has an ancient gps and android tablet with navionics and a vhf radio with an old style tel piece to talk and receive with.

I presume to install the new kit he will need to put a network backbone down, like n2000 or whatever it's called, and that it is extremely unlikley his old vhf radio will work with any of this. (Does it have to though?)

The b&g 500 ais unit looks expensive, but I notice b&g do a vhf with inbuilt ais receiver, at half the price. Would that be the best option? or could he get the nasa ais radar and just conenct that to the chart plotter for a gps signal?

All advice gratefully received and passed on.

Thanks.

 

[Mikedefieslife]

Since he probably needs a VHF anyhow, he'd do well to buy something like the Lowrence Link-8, Simrad RS35, B&G V50. They are all the same radio, and importantly have AIS built in and NMEA2000.

 

[dolabriform]

Yes, he will need a NMEA2000 network backbone.

If he's going the whole hog then surely it would make sense to fit a transponder rather than just a receiver?

 

[jwilson]

I have a Vulcan with B&G V50: mine is connected via a Raymarine St-STng gadget that also feeds in inputs from old ST60 wind/speed/depth instruments. All works pretty well. My only quibble about the Vulcan is that it is a bit slower to redraw when zooming or panning than the now-dead Raymarine plotter that it replaced.

 

[pvb]

I'd agree that one of the Navico family's VHF/AIS units would make good sense. There are others, but he may find that a Navico unit will have better functionality with the Vulcan (eg being able to make a DSC call direct to an AIS target).

 

[pagoda]

We have a Vulcan 9, running on a mainly NMEA 2K backbone. There are few standalone AIS receivers which output N2K messages, so we use a NASA AIS engine3 and an Actisense NGW-1 to translate the high speed NMEA0183 AIS to N2K. It might not be the most economical way of doing it , but it works well and was simple to set up.
One think you need to be aware of is that there are a host of "other" AIS messages out there- non target ship related. Not all manufacturers are up to speed or support all of them. Ask first spend second!

 

[pvb]

We have a Vulcan 9, running on a mainly NMEA 2K backbone. There are few standalone AIS receivers which output N2K messages, so we use a NASA AIS engine3 and an Actisense NGW-1 to translate the high speed NMEA0183 AIS to N2K. It might not be the most economical way of doing it , but it works well and was simple to set up.
One think you need to be aware of is that there are a host of "other" AIS messages out there- non target ship related. Not all manufacturers are up to speed or support all of them. Ask first spend second!

Readers should be aware that the Nasa AIS Engine 3 is only a single channel receiver, which alternates between the 2 AIS channels. Data may therefore be slow to appear.