Electronics upgrade - to recent Raymarine based setup

[dunedin]

Hi

Thinking about making some upgrades to the electronics on recently acquired boat. Not familiar with the recent equipment so what do folks think about my proposals:

Boat has a fairly recent (2012) all Raymarine setup:
• Raymarine E90W Hybridtouch chartplotter in the cockpit
• Twin ST70+ multi-function displays
• Raymarine SPX10 Autopilot
• Raymarine 240E DSC radio

Proposed upgrades

1) Second plotter at chart table:
• Propose to fit Raymarine e7d Hybrid MultiTouch MFD with WiFi (circa £800 plus fitting)
• Hopefully this will allow ability see position, check depth etc and set / monitor anchor alarm at night without going on deck
• Hopefully WiFi will also allow checking from iPad without getting up !

2) Fit AIS:
• Either Raymarine AIS650 Transponder + AIS100 Splitter – at pricey £900 plus fitting; or perhaps
• YM test Best Buy McMurdo M15S combined Receiver / Splitter at much cheaper £250 (or perhaps the M10 Transponder but it seems to lack the inbuilt splitter)
• Will the McMurdo be fully compatible with the Raymarine setup or is it better to stick entirely with Raymarine & Seatalk

3) Radar – probably not?
• The radar looks to be beyond current budget and complexity limits – an 18inch dome alone being circa £1,000 but plus cables, struts, poles etc
• Also extra weight, windage and very complex fitting
• Only used our radar one day in last two seasons, so AIS seems the priority as can be used most days (usual cruising areas not on major shipping routes)

I this a good strategy ? Better ideas ?

And how easy would it be to self-fit for a complete 100% electronics novice or better to pay an expert (unfortunately boat overseas so not sure who would be the “expert” and who the expensive bodger)

Thanks for your inputs.

 

[Blue Drifter]

I have my eye on one of these but will wait for price to come down. I am mostly Garmin with a Raymarine Evolution tiller pilot. Should all be plug and play but Raymarine have have propriety system that seems to require a Seatalk NG to Nmea2000 converter cable.

http://www.cactusnav.com/digital-ya...sponder-with-built-splitter-wifi-p-14374.html

 

[dk]

If you install the Digital Yacht AIT3000 you will have an AIS transponder, antenna splitter, dedicated GPS and wifi to NMEA. This means you can have all the instrument data on your iPad or iPhone, including AIS, by installing a simple charting app. Oh, and is has a NMEA multiplexer as well, which means you can feed any old NMEA0183 data in and get it out in N2K format, or on wifi. Probably a lot cheaper than a second RM plotter.
FYI, Seatalk ng is simply NMEA2000, but uses a proprietary ST plug. All you need to connect it to an N2K network is a cheap converter cable.
Furuno now makes a wifi radar, which gets over the complex cabling. You could link this into the network, but it shouldnt be too long before they all follow suit.
Duncan

 

[Maninita]

Be careful. I have been thinking of similarly of fitting a new Raymarine MFD to our C120W system, but the drawback is that the two displays cannot share and graphical information such as cartography, radar, etc, only simple data such as position, instruments and alpha numeric data. See the response below on the Raymarine users forum.

http://raymarine.ning.com/forum/top...tId=6492755:Comment:238560&xg_source=activity

 

[dunedin]

Be careful. I have been thinking of similarly of fitting a new Raymarine MFD to our C120W system, but the drawback is that the two displays cannot share and graphical information such as cartography, radar, etc, only simple data such as position, instruments and alpha numeric data. See the response below on the Raymarine users forum.

http://raymarine.ning.com/forum/top...tId=6492755:Comment:238560&xg_source=activity

I thought the more expensive E-Series could share chart data between units - but I have been advised today that these units aren't able to. So, if true, that is less functionality than the twin Raymarine plotter setup we had from 2000 era.

 

[laika]

I thought the more expensive E-Series could share chart data between units - but I have been advised today that these units aren't able to. So, if true, that is less functionality than the twin Raymarine plotter setup we had from 2000 era.

The old E series could share charts. I think the deal is that the early firmware of the new plotters could still share charts with the old E (capital E) series but the ones with newer firmware can't. Think my source for that was the US raymarine site which they've just banned me from for trying to post with a UK location ('suppose I'll have to re-join with a US location...).

 

[Lucky Duck]

Version 6.27 or earlier allows this http://www.raymarine.co.uk/view/?id=3764 however you don't get the addition features in the latest software.

 

[Saguday]

Laika, I just had an unbelievably frustrating exchange with the Raymarine technical forum, who wouldn't let me register despite having lived in the US, bought a boat there, have all RM kit on board and am also a Canadian citizen. WTF? Why is this forum not world wide anyway?

Anyway, rant over back on topic, we have an E80 2006 vintage and I'm also looking at how to hook an AIS in so the DY AIT3000 looks like it might do the job. I'd also been wondering what the difference was between Seatalkng and NMEA2000 so thanks for the info dk

We also have an older RL70C at the navstation (moved it there when we put the E80 at the helm) but I haven't figured out if it will share chart data with the E80 or not. Does anyone know? Or is it only E80 to E80? At the moment in just use it as an instrument repeater with the GPS data going in but no proper charts. I can't quite bear the idea of shelling out for a duplicate chart just for this, which would cost as much as a tablet. Presumably the AIT3000 and a wifi iPad would bypass all this faff anyway?