DavidBolger
Well-Known Member
Good Evening all,
I wonder if anyone could help me with an electronics problem I am having. On my Sadler 34, I have a Garmin 128 unit which is great and has worked fantastic over the years. It interfaces with my Raymarine Tack Tick instruments so that I can see SOG, COG, bearing to waypoint etc. Unfortunately the Garmin GPS gave up the ghost recently and I lost all this valuable data stream. I also have a Vesper AIS onboard so I was able to take the NMEA output from that and feed it in the Raymarine system so that I can now get SOG and COG. So far so good. I tried to replace the Garmin 128 by getting one from eBay but they tend to sell for close to €200 and I just don't see the value in that. I am not tempted by a new Garmin unit as they only sell ones that are all singing and all dancing and cost around €700. I use navionics on my iPad in the cockpit so I really just wanted a basic GPS unit with NMEA output to feed into the Raymarine for bearing and waypoint information. I bought a Garmin Etrex and data cable on eBay for £35 and have tried to wire it in. I was able to configure the Garmin interface to NMEA Out. The manual shows me which are the data out and data in the cable and I connected it all up but guess what, it didn't work. I think the cable works as I was able to check it for connectivity but not able to check whether it was outputting the NMEA. I know that this is a very technical question but I would welcome any help and advice on where to go next to try and solve the problem.
Regards
David
I wonder if anyone could help me with an electronics problem I am having. On my Sadler 34, I have a Garmin 128 unit which is great and has worked fantastic over the years. It interfaces with my Raymarine Tack Tick instruments so that I can see SOG, COG, bearing to waypoint etc. Unfortunately the Garmin GPS gave up the ghost recently and I lost all this valuable data stream. I also have a Vesper AIS onboard so I was able to take the NMEA output from that and feed it in the Raymarine system so that I can now get SOG and COG. So far so good. I tried to replace the Garmin 128 by getting one from eBay but they tend to sell for close to €200 and I just don't see the value in that. I am not tempted by a new Garmin unit as they only sell ones that are all singing and all dancing and cost around €700. I use navionics on my iPad in the cockpit so I really just wanted a basic GPS unit with NMEA output to feed into the Raymarine for bearing and waypoint information. I bought a Garmin Etrex and data cable on eBay for £35 and have tried to wire it in. I was able to configure the Garmin interface to NMEA Out. The manual shows me which are the data out and data in the cable and I connected it all up but guess what, it didn't work. I think the cable works as I was able to check it for connectivity but not able to check whether it was outputting the NMEA. I know that this is a very technical question but I would welcome any help and advice on where to go next to try and solve the problem.
Regards
David
