Garmin to Navman antenna connection

[Andrew_Fanner]

I have acquired a Tracker 900 off Ebay, cheap as chips but, understandably, without the antenna mushroom. Already on the boat is a perfectly good Garmin 128 with external antenna but I have just never really got on with it. The Tracker starts up just fine, but needs some way of connecting the Garmin antenna. A Fuji 5 pin female connector is easy enough to get, but a manual showing which wire goes where is not. Any and all suggestions welcome.

If anyone's got a spare one of the little rubber boots that cover the chip socket and hold the chip in place they don't want I'd be interested in that too

 

[Forza_Laverda]

Electric Schema of 1220A antenna

I have acquired a Tracker 900 off Ebay, cheap as chips but, understandably, without the antenna mushroom. Already on the boat is a perfectly good Garmin 128 with external antenna but I have just never really got on with it. The Tracker starts up just fine, but needs some way of connecting the Garmin antenna. A Fuji 5 pin female connector is easy enough to get, but a manual showing which wire goes where is not. Any and all suggestions welcome.

If anyone's got a spare one of the little rubber boots that cover the chip socket and hold the chip in place they don't want I'd be interested in that too

Hi Andrew.
If you can tell were i can get a fuji 5pin female connector i can send you an electrica schema of the original GPS antenna for the tracker 900.
//Forza

 

[Andrew_Fanner]

Hi Andrew.
If you can tell were i can get a fuji 5pin female connector i can send you an electrica schema of the original GPS antenna for the tracker 900.
//Forza

Maplins would be a good bet. Or RS, "Fuji connector" does not seem to be a term recognised by either site, is there a more appropriate/contemporary name?

This looks about right

http://uk.rs-online.com/web/search/searchBrowseAction.html?method=getProduct&R=5332762

 

[salamicollie]

Unfortunately I am pretty sure that the Garmin 128 has got a passive antenna (it will have a BNC connector) and the Tracker has an active antenna (i.e. it sent out an nmea stream instead of an RF signal) in which case it wont work. However a Serial GPS blob will with some set up

 

[pvb]

The Tracker 900 uses an active antenna, so the passive antenna from the Garmin 128 won't work. And, unfortunately, the Tracker doesn't have an ordinary NMEA input to allow you to use the NMEA output from the 128 to give a position to the Tracker. So your next option might be to feed the 128's NMEA output into the Tracker's antenna socket, if you can identify the correct wires.

Incidentally, your "understandably, without the antenna mushroom" description makes me wonder about the Tracker's origin...

 

[Andrew_Fanner]

The Tracker 900 uses an active antenna, so the passive antenna from the Garmin 128 won't work. And, unfortunately, the Tracker doesn't have an ordinary NMEA input to allow you to use the NMEA output from the 128 to give a position to the Tracker. So your next option might be to feed the 128's NMEA output into the Tracker's antenna socket, if you can identify the correct wires.

Incidentally, your "understandably, without the antenna mushroom" description makes me wonder about the Tracker's origin...

Starting to look more complex than I thought, but I see what you mean about NMEA out from Garmin to Tracker. As for the mushroom, I take your point, but from my own experience of one of these setups on a previous boat, the plotter would have easily been moved (I dismounted it when not on board) but the mushroom was pretty much there to stay, cable behind headlining and the thing was a permanent fixture, removal would have left a hole in the cabin roof. Can't find the mushroom's instructions as a download with a quick search so that moves to the "project" universe.

 

[pvb]

Starting to look more complex than I thought, but I see what you mean about NMEA out from Garmin to Tracker. As for the mushroom, I take your point, but from my own experience of one of these setups on a previous boat, the plotter would have easily been moved (I dismounted it when not on board) but the mushroom was pretty much there to stay, cable behind headlining and the thing was a permanent fixture, removal would have left a hole in the cabin roof. Can't find the mushroom's instructions as a download with a quick search so that moves to the "project" universe.

Well, if Forza Laverda gives you the details of the Tracker antenna, it's plain sailing. If not, the 5-pin connection on the Tracker should be easy enough to sort. Two pins will be the power to the active antenna. Two (or maybe only one) will be the NMEA signal to the Tracker. A few minutes fiddling with a meter should tell you the power pins. Then it's just a case of trying combinations for the NMEA until it works.