Garmin 720 interfacing with NMEA0183 AP

[vas]

having spent the best part of the evening searching this forum and googling in general I'm still slightly lost...

Thing is the craft that I'm going to be getting (fingers crossed seems I'm nearly there) has an oldish Cetrek Autopilot with the 618 distribution box. Reading the manual it clearly states that it can read signals from GPS plotters through NMEA0180, NMEA0182 and NMEA0183.
Does that mean that if I get a Garmin 700series (most likely a 720s) will it send its data to the AP?
In theory it should work, but reading around there are different versions of NMEA0183 and I've not got a clue what ver this old Cetrek speaks as it seems that newish garmin plotters speak v2 or v3 of NMEA0183.

Anyone tried something similar on 80ies AP and new garmin GPSPlotters and got it working?

thanks

V.

 

[oceanfroggie]

Should be no problem if AP takes NMEA0183. It's just old fashioned serial data comms at 4800baud. Only two wires needed, TX and GND from the 720 wiring loom. The 720 has two NMEA0183 (ie COM) ports on it's wiring loom.

See here for wiring
http://www8.garmin.com/manuals/GPSMAP720_InstallationInstructions.pdf

See page 92 here to configure 0183 sentence support
http://www8.garmin.com/manuals/GPSMAP720_OwnersManual.pdf

You just need to choose which port to wire for, and then configure that port in the 720's set up menus.

 

[vas]

thanks a lot of,

second link shows that there are indeed lots of options in configuring how the plotter talks to the AP, so should be doable.
Too tired to check again the AP manual for supported words, will do tomorrow.

cheers

V.