Cheap J1939 display options

Fire99

Fire99

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Howdy folks,

I may have caught a bit of Mr Googler's bug on practical projects and one I'm thinking about is my engine displays. I use Caterpillar MPD's which give good info but particularly the upper helm ones are looking a bit washed out. Caterpillar being Caterpillar it may be cheaper to start up my own MFD company than buy their own displays. I jest a bit! Not that I was considering replacement MPD's.

So I was thinking (again) about outputting J1939 data from the engines to a couple of Tablets. I can deal with waterproofing etc and the info would be much clearer than squinting at the old MPD's.. So does anyone have a cheap option? Obviously I could go down the Garmin GPSMap route etc but for pure engine output there must be more modest solutions and before I go digging too far, does anyone have any practical options? I seem to remember a few guys have done exactly this.

cheers as always.
 
Fire99 said:
Howdy folks,

I may have caught a bit of Mr Googler's bug on practical projects and one I'm thinking about is my engine displays. I use Caterpillar MPD's which give good info but particularly the upper helm ones are looking a bit washed out. Caterpillar being Caterpillar it may be cheaper to start up my own MFD company than buy their own displays. I jest a bit! Not that I was considering replacement MPD's.

So I was thinking (again) about outputting J1939 data from the engines to a couple of Tablets. I can deal with waterproofing etc and the info would be much clearer than squinting at the old MPD's.. So does anyone have a cheap option? Obviously I could go down the Garmin GPSMap route etc but for pure engine output there must be more modest solutions and before I go digging too far, does anyone have any practical options? I seem to remember a few guys have done exactly this.

cheers as always.
Click to expand...
Do your plotters support NMEA 2000 ?
 
Fire99 said:
Afraid not.. Plotters are Seatalk gen1.
Click to expand...
Thought so, would have been to simple.

The GPSMap is an obvious, but pricey, solution. Just plug the J1939 data straight in. Once on the N2K network the plotter could pair with a tablet using Active Captain. So one plotter on the upper helm and a tablet at the lower would do the job.

Quark offer this JS01 J1939 to NMEA 2000 Engine Data Gateway It converts J1939 to N2K and also sends it to a tablet via Bluetooth. Look like it's powered by the N2K network, but i'd expect you could just use a N2K power cable.

Other options might be to use Raspberry Pis etc, but i can't help there, as suggested above, @vas could be the man there.
 
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