Instrument redundancy

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
[ QUOTE ]
Ah, my good Lord Latvia

I just knew that would arouse you from your gentle slumber

Cheers
Tom

[/ QUOTE ]

At this rate there will be a Serfs uprising ....... /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif
 
[ QUOTE ]
My 20 year old B&G still works fine, I was even able to purchase a new wind speed and direction sensor last year with no problem as the original one broke after 110mph winds last winter. I'm just hoping it will last another 20 under my ownership!

[/ QUOTE ]

I hope B&G replaced it for nothing, we can't have gear failing just because its 20 years old and the windspeed was a measly 110 mph! /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

How are we serious sailors going to know when to reef if the instrumentation packs up the minute the weather turns a bit blustery? /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif
 
Whilst I can understand the frustration of finding formal support being stopped there are obviously some 3rd parties who will continue the support so don't despair at the first -ve for a solution. This forum has proven to be an amazing source of solutions for most problems.

For those who slag off against the "proprietary" formats such as Seatalk, think for a moment about how advances to technology are achieved. Not by a committee which creates a standard! Standards always come after innovation. Both Seatalk and B&G Fastnet (and others) are proprietary networks which each company designed to stay ahead of the game and each has brought us new features. There are converters or bridges from these companies and from independents to allow interconnection with other manufacturers and the common denominator is NMEA - BUT NMEA does not cater for all features of all instruments and you find that there are proprietary "NMEA sentences" created by some manufacturers to support their features or ideas so incompatibilites arise again. For example, to my knowledge NMEA only supports one alarm sentence (AAM for waypoint arrival) - there is no equivalent of other alarms generated and networked by Seatalk and Fastnet for off-course or depth etc. In a Raymarine and B&G network these alarms are immediatley mirrored on other instruments which may be in the cockpit or at the nav table so they provide a better warning system for dangers.

So even though I applaud inter-connectivity between rival manufacturers, don't forget that innovation will always come first and be protected for a while to ensure commercial advantage to pay for the R&D.

Ray
 
My Raytheon radar went on the blink a few days ago and I thought that I would probably have to fund a new one... Cheapest I could find was £650 thanks to this forum . thanks Grupa... plus say £50 to ship to France (best deal in France for same model £1000 !!!!)

I took the old head into the local Ratheon dealer and explained the symptoms but they said the did not have a matching antenna to do the test with but telephoned Ratheon to ask them if they could test it for me... Raetheon said 'The model is out of date' we cannot test it and even if we could it would be pointless as we have no replacement parts for it'

The dealer lady asked me more about the 'symptoms' and then suggested I remade and soldered the co-axial connections which are what 'send' the echos..
I have just done that and the set now works fine...

Not quite certain I am going to buy Raetheon again...

In the end I just want a radar, wind instruments, log and a depth sounder.. Autopilot too.. In a previous boat in which I sailed some 50,000 miles with a 60 interfaced set of Raetheon instruments I actually found all the interfacing a bit of a pain sometimes...

Technology gone to extremes where maybe we don't want to be - at those sort of costs....

I would prefer to do business with a company that will support its equipment beyond the date they decide is its sell by date...

Other boating companies do this - why can't Raetheon?
 
[ QUOTE ]
Whilst I can understand the frustration of finding formal support being stopped there are obviously some 3rd parties who will continue the support so don't despair at the first -ve for a solution. This forum has proven to be an amazing source of solutions for most problems.

For those who slag off against the "proprietary" formats such as Seatalk, think for a moment about how advances to technology are achieved. Not by a committee which creates a standard! Standards always come after innovation. Both Seatalk and B&G Fastnet (and others) are proprietary networks which each company designed to stay ahead of the game and each has brought us new features. There are converters or bridges from these companies and from independents to allow interconnection with other manufacturers and the common denominator is NMEA - BUT NMEA does not cater for all features of all instruments and you find that there are proprietary "NMEA sentences" created by some manufacturers to support their features or ideas so incompatibilites arise again. For example, to my knowledge NMEA only supports one alarm sentence (AAM for waypoint arrival) - there is no equivalent of other alarms generated and networked by Seatalk and Fastnet for off-course or depth etc. In a Raymarine and B&G network these alarms are immediatley mirrored on other instruments which may be in the cockpit or at the nav table so they provide a better warning system for dangers.

So even though I applaud inter-connectivity between rival manufacturers, don't forget that innovation will always come first and be protected for a while to ensure commercial advantage to pay for the R&D.

Ray

[/ QUOTE ]

I can't find the web-site unfortunately ... wish I could and will try to find it again ... But it went into a history of Seatalk ... It said that Seatalk as used / distributed by Raymarine was different to an original compilation prior.
I took it from that - that Seatalk is not a raymarine development - but THEIR version which is NOT compatible with the original is.

I spend ages trying to find a way to connect my AH 1000 tiller pilot to my GPS as I cannot get a box anymore .. it's pre Seatalk ... but above information came up on one of the sites showing how to construct a junction changeover box. The main point of the site was to show that you cannot do it to Raymarines Seatalk as there is a code or detail missing ... but original Seatalk you can.

Before I get jumped on ... the original name may not have been Seatalk ...
 
My experience is with St60 wind, depth and log, GPS, 6000+ autopilot with 530+ plotter and RL70 radar all integrated and I have been very satisfied. I use a Raymarine NMEA bridge to allow connection to an Nav6+ navtex and a VHF DSC, again with good sucess. All this kit is 5-6yrs old now but I did have the advantage of buying it at the same time. During this period had a wind masthead transducer fail and had to buy a new model but it was a "plug and play" replacement. I am not an apologist for Raymarine because I have been sidelined with their new plotters which have gone to Navionics chartware - what do I do with all my C-Map chartware if I want to upgrade?

I don't know if there was a change of Seatalk protocol when Raytheon became Raymarine but I somehow doubt it but it could be that the AH1000 does not support some of the newer development of the protocol. A bit like trying to get drivers for Windows ME for newer printers or other hardware in the computer world.

My point was to highlight that whilst NMEA is a very useful common denominator and a standard that the industry can work with it is not something which helps or can readily keep up with innovation.

I would still choose to use a single major manufacturer's proprietary network/system for reliable interconnectivity if it provided useful new features over a mix/match of multiple supplier's equipment even if it is only to be able to have one point of recourse when things don't go as expected - and I have the advantage of technical training and experience.

I do realize it is a minefield out there for non-techies and I sympathise. It is hard to find people with the depth of knowledge and experience to diagnose some of these issues even though most of them are not "rocket science". Unfortunately every time we consumers press for lower prices it eventually ends up meaning lower service outcomes in the long run.
Ray
 
It's a pity Cetrek could not make a commercial success of their C-Net 2000 stuff, as it had many more features than other manufacturers' equipment. Every display could be interconnected by C-Net or NMEA, and each display was also a NMEA multiplexer, with 3 inputs and 1 output. As they used dot matrix displays, each display head could display anything, showing 1,2 or 4 pieces of information on each screen, graphically or numerically.
 
My B&G Hornet wind and log instruments are also still working perfectly after 20 years. I replaced the old depth (of another make) and added a GPS repeater unit, both with B&G H1000. These are far inferior so far as performance is concerned. I fitted three transducers before I got one that worked, the third one was of a completely different design. The GPS unit works OK but the contrast of both the digital screens is very poor, making information difficult to read. Give me the old analogue units any day.
 
Re: Instrument redundancy ... one manufacturer for all ..

Not a bad idea and keeps all in design balance .. plus in theory they should all interface. Seatalk and Raymarine ST series stuff does that.
(the mention of the AH1000 ... that was purely to show why I had come across the historical bit about Seatalk protocol ... mine needs a NMEA to pulse convertor not ST - NMEA).

Autohelm as I know had Seatalk rights and then passed to Raymarine - who niftily altered it to stop copying by others. Bit like IBM and Basic language .. others had to come up with their own ... QBasic ... Basica etc. etc.

I think personally that many manufacturers are blinkered in their approach to gear .. whether its marine or other. Proprietary plugs and sockets ... coded processors ... etc. etc. making the customer walk a compromise path all the time. For company's such as Raymarine etc. - they are established and many people believe in their products .. so why the protectionist proprietary set-ups. Each company has a product that might do a job better than another company ... but another product is different ... so all will get a slice of market - probably at same level as today.
NMEA is a stable protocol and easy to use / connect for average person out there .. and normally just about caters for all needs. Majority of Manufacturers do not see the need to stray too far from it .. so the argument for Seatalk boils down to connectivity - not sentences I feel ... But then you are restricted to only RM products. I don't know if RM still have it - but I seem to remember they used to have a comment about they don't guarantee all sentences etc. transpose across the NMEA - Seatalk bridge ...

Raymarine ... Nasa ... B&Q ... Silva ... Yaesu .... etc. etc. Bit like cars really .. I like Volvo .. but I can get pills for that !! I hate Beamers ... I hope they can get their brains back when they trade the Beamer in etc. !! /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

One mans meat and all that !
 
On a side-tack, what kinds of interesting things can you do by interfacing instruments? Being a pseudo-luddite at the moment I think that my main interest is in reading depth, and Speed, plus log distance occasionally. I understand that I can get True wind direction and speed by interfacing the wind instrument, but reckon that's only useful for providing material for bragging afterwards in the bar (tho' that's important, it also requires doctoring the wind instrument to exaggerate suitably). I'm not really interested in telling the autopilot to go to a waypoint, and if I want to sail to a constant wind angle I'm much better to use the Windvane...

But is there anything else interesting that I can do with interfacing? I don't use a chartplotter, but of course have GPS, also Navtex.
 
You are right that the basic instruments give plenty of information for everyday sailing and I generally like the KISS principle. However some of the other uses for cross connection are for feeding data to other instruments such as VHF DSC for GPS co-ordinates, display of additional information such as SOG, on the log screen and repeater instruments for secondary monitoring positions and redundancy if one part fails.

I setup my boat with Seatalk but also with a bridge to NMEA as I was cruising and living aboard for 5 years. I installed a Nav6+ which has display of NMEA data as a secondary feature to its main Navtex role. This allowed me to see all of the cockpit instrument information at the Nav table - very useful whether at anchor or sailing. It also has a neat logging function which I used to update my paper log at the end of the day and could review various parameters such as speed, wind, wind direction etc over the period of the days sailing. On the other hand I probably used only 30% of the features available but that is true of much of today's technology, usually far more than you need but you can cherry-pick the features which are useful.
Ray
 
I have some ST50's, have had no problems with them, mind you sealing is not a problem for me, as they are fitted in the wheelhouse, what else is wrong with them? My wind instrument is now 10 years old. I like the look of the ST50's as well. But that's a personal choice.
 
simon..... good choice but expensive IMHO I did have a set of B&G instruments but the screens were all nacked I went to LIBS hoping to do a deal on all new kit with £500 in my pocket but no way even the B&G refurb was over my Budget. So I looked at NASA, never cosidered the kit before....&
From This:
Cockpit2.jpg

To This:
instruments.jpg


well pleased, even got a new fixed 152 Garmin at a great price.

poter
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top