cheaper large instrument displays - mast mount

[nigelmercier]

Having created the layout in Designspark, I take it a clear plastic film is loaded into a printer - is this correct? Any special printer/inks required?

You can use plastic sheet, but I use a special film as it gives consistent results. I use a laser printer, but you can get injet film as well, see: http://www.megauk.com/artwork_films.php

I also have some cheaper film that I use for test prints, but I cut them all to A6 before printing.

Veroboard might be the Devil's work, but creating new components in any CAD package is Beelzebub's bidding.

Piece of cake in DesignSpark, at least compared with Eagle. In this case you only need to use pin headers, don't you?

I quite like the faffing about with chemicals and stuff, takes me back to when I used to develop my own camera film.

 

[Tom_Brewis]

A frustrating day

Building up the strip board
Started with power supply 12 v in and 5v out worked
Soldered on discocovery board
Soldered on the cables from the lcd
Added opamp and 10 k pot. Powered up and got contrast control but output to lcd scrambled
Added mosfet for backlit control
Found dry joint and then dislpayed the startup menu. Hurray i thought.
Unfortunatley after a couple of mins screen scrolling left to right on random lines, readable but not ok.
Spent a lot of time checking joint, repowerd thought i had fixed it, but again same distorted diplay.
Then i suspected my powersupply so pluged into usb and all well except for a 1hz flicker in the display, so i removed my powersupply from the board. Still have the 1hz flicker.

Stopping now as going backwards.

I agree that stripboard is the spawn etc espcially with my soldering.

Going to boat wed am so want to getting working tomorrow.

All the best

Tom

 

[Jabamusic]

Any more details info?

I actually was thinking about the screen mount, but that was also useful !

 

[Tom_Brewis]

Another frustrating day

I used rigid wire and that has caused a lot of weak joints as I have been handling tha assembly a lot.
So I have deconstructed. Put in flexible cable from the LCD back to the main board which I intend to put back on breadboard.
I will try to do this tomorrow and the put in housing and take down to the yacht.

I will post pictures if I can get I working

All the best

Tom

 

[Tom_Brewis]

Today

I have reconverted to strip board.
But I have damaged my good LCD by overheating the contacts and blown up my opamp
So I now only have manual control over the contrast
This has delayed going sailing which is missing the point.
I had better go sailing for a while and come back to this project after a break

All the best

Tom

 

[Lurch]

http://www.nasamarine.com/proddetail.php?prod=IRepeater

I wonder if they have been following this thread?

 

[npf1]

I asked Nasa about the above. Sounds like it's going to be sub £400 for the display, brackets, cables, interface box and remote control. Sounds interesting.

 

[aurelrica]

hello to all, new to this thread, I've read almost all of it since i started to bulid my own instruments on my boat, untill now a voltmeter/levels/ temperature/oil pressure with a 4x20 display, I use AVR not PIC as a micro. After seeing thomas knauf? seatalk page I was working at a seatalk Nmea bridge like the one from gadgetpool.de ...
Now the mast repeters is sommething I realy wanted for longtime but after 1000 ours of search for a suitable enclosure and seeing that the display from rs costs like 50Euro and is not quite visible in the direct sunlight I've change my mind and I think I'll go with classic white led, thru hole mounted on a custom policarbonate enclosure. I'll explain now: I doo my own circuits and boards with design spark (without even draw the scheme) and laser printer (using the magazine paper, the one who is shiny) so I intend to mount thru hole the white leds and the same tru the front pannel of the display and resin all once in place.
My ideea is to build a seatak-nemea bridge as gadgetpool alredy made and to build only the display like 7 segment displays with another micro that recive from rs232 or seatalk as a display (from a string that colud be: [A12.5,B10.0,C0.0] where A is thewind speed, b is depth ecc since pharsing the seatalk seems liketime consumming andI'm afraid that the processor could not handle and because as a Display only I don't have to send the seatalk wires directly on the mast, the seatalk bridge and electronics stay inside the boat and for further software updates/debughing I could doo them live on navigation, so the display is only an rs232/rs485 reciver that display on 3 chars seven segment display whatever you want to send from downstairs where the seatalk nemea main unit is. Pros: cheap 100 led=10euro, 1 micro avr=3 euro, 15-20 smd mosfets 10euro, 20x10cm board 1 euro, epoxy resin 10euro...
to undarstaind where the genius is: once soldered and tested all you have to do is put 4 long screws stainless steel from the 4 corners and thighthen them with blocking nuts then doo (4 pieces only) enclosure around (even from cd case plastic) and mold all of it with clear epoxy resin on a pice of wood/plastic that will came off once the resin is dry. that way you'll have a nice thin display waterproof. for the connections I'm thinking at a connector like this one http://it.rs-online.com/web/p/connettori-circolari-industriali-e-per-automazione/4762229/
with the female soldered on the board. since i'm using the smd's and I intend to sndpaper the 5mm led's (alredy donned for another project, you can sand down a led..) the whole thickness of the display will be under 2 cmm so with a stainless steel bracket/backplate to screw on the mast I think will be perfect...

the main problem I always had was too litle time to develop big projects so how about wee divide the tasks: i'll do the display and since I sow that tom brews alredy donne the parsing from seatalk and nemea doo the inside part, look at the case from gadgetpool from the swithces wou can select the various information to display on the tree big displays...
So now i'm working on creating the led arrays and the driving circuit with a a microcontroller, if annyone is interresed to collaborate let me know.
one more thing: since I do not like flickering that all the 7 segment displays doo when swithcing I intend to use direct pin address for each segment and controll the dimm of the light on the main +12vsupply using one pwm...

 

[aurelrica]

http://chaokhun.kmitl.ac.th/~kswichit/Led/Led.html that's what i ment before... but instead to use spi shift registers I want to use a serial shift register with 80ma per exit thatway you don't have to use uln2003...

 

[aurelrica]

ok I've managed to have a 7inch display waterproof for under 200 euro, wifi to the boat systems included for who wants more info: aurelrica@yahoo.com

 

[Lurch]

I rang nasa to see if their big repeater is available yet. They say they have now started shipping out to their dealers. I asked if they had considered including seatalk so it could repeat from my raymarine instruments.
They say they intend to publish the communication protocol between the data multiplexer and the display and full details of the microchip pic driven multiplexer to allow enthusiasts to write their own custom decoder software.
They say they hope people would share the code with others, like myself, who's coding skills are not up to the task.
It's an interesting concept. I wonder if anyone will respond to the challenge?

 

[Pladdatoo]

I rang nasa to see if their big repeater is available yet. They say they have now started shipping out to their dealers. I asked if they had considered including seatalk so it could repeat from my raymarine instruments.
They say they intend to publish the communication protocol between the data multiplexer and the display and full details of the microchip pic driven multiplexer to allow enthusiasts to write their own custom decoder software.
They say they hope people would share the code with others, like myself, who's coding skills are not up to the task.
It's an interesting concept. I wonder if anyone will respond to the challenge?

£400 inc vat. Available to order and delivery in a few weeks !

 

[Lurch]

Over the weekend I installed a nasa yacht repeater. I screwed the display unit to the mast and ran the
cable through a deck gland to the black box multiplexer. This had a row of screw terminals to connect
to my instrument"s NMEA outputs.
I connected it to my GPS, wind meter and compass. I didn't have enough wire to connect to my log
and sounder so that will have to wait 'till another day.
The display is big and clear with a black background and white characters. (Red characters at night.)
With the remote control I was able to adjust the backlight and step through the data screens.
The blurb says the remote is "wireless" which I assumed was radio but, in fact, it's infrared. Even in
the weekend's bright sunlight the range was more than adequate and astonishing at night. The belt clip
on the remote is a bit fiddly, it would have been better to have a lanyard to hang it round my neck.
Overall I am happy with the looks and performance of the kit. The long term durability and reliability
will, of course, only be revealed in the fullness of time.

 

[wookey]

Hello

I am current a 3rd year Navigation and maritime science student currently conducting a study into the yachtsman's attitude towards the lifejacket. It would be great if you could assist me in my research by completing this very short questionnaire, Please just follow the link below.

https://qtrial2015az1.az1.qualtrics....JdAvO7SfixhoR7

Thank you for your time!

 

[laika]

I can't be the only one curious as to why you've resurrected an old thread that is nothing to do with lifejackets to ask that rather than digging up an old lifejacket thread or starting a new one.

I don't think this is the best place for that post: other than being a complete non-sequitur, it's only going to be seen by the minority of people with an interest in DIY electronics who were following this rather long thread....

 

[nigelmercier]

And the link is broken.

 

[skenn_ie]

I am working on a system to run Navionics and AIS(Rx) using a new Single-Board-Computer, the Odroid(similar to the Raspberry Pi), and https://www.adafruit.com/product/1497
There are interfaces available which will connect the Odroid to any LCD display, with or without touchscreen. If you have an old laptop, tablet, or even phone with a large display, a very cheap system can be built.

 

[Artemide]

Main characters 50mm high. Displays depth (m, feet, fath), wind speed and angle (true and apparent, m/s and knots), boatspeed, SOG, COG, VMG, XTE, off course error, set, drift, heading, COG or bearing to mark, distance to mark, volts, 10/5 minute countdown timers, elapsed timer, trip and total log, and number of bananas left.

All this is received in NMEA, but could do Seatalk as well.

Every NMEA sentence can be configured to cope with NMEA standard inconsistencies. 4 buttons on the box. 3 channels can be set, 1 for each button, the 4th going into setup mode.

Just needs a case to put it in, bish-bosh, jobs-a-goodun.

Next project?

hello evryone,

i've just completed the registration to the forum due to this intresting topic.

I'm wondering to built a mast nmea data repeater just the same way you did.
Unfortunately, i've only basic skills in electronics and programming and i actually can't spend too much time to develop a result like your :-(.


So my question:
I had a major fault on my instruments last month, so my old st 60+ graphic instrument is gone........
My hope is to replace him with a DIY,
Would you kindly share your project with me? (materials, cabling and programming)

p.s.

I've on board a Vyacht multiplexer that translate seatalk to nmea 0183 (with wired outputs).

By now, i'm using wi-fi data to log my sailing performances onto my phone just for training and post-regatta analisys.

I hope you could help me.

Best regards and thanks.