Maxsea and Handheld Garmin Vista Cx

demonboy

demonboy

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Hello again!

Just wondering why Maxsea cannot see/read the signal sent from my hand-held Garmin Vista Cx. I know Garmin uses its own proprietary sentences but I would have thought that I could switch this over to NMEA. The installed Garmin 17 on the boat is sending signals fine via the 232 COM connection. Perhaps because the hand-held is connected via USB the old computer struggles to read it, but the hand-held says it is connected, is powered by the USB port and I have installed the drivers for it.

Anyone have any experience with this situation? I'm keen to have the hand-held as a backup.
 
Quite often Maxsea installs and sees Master for data ... this sometimes is not the GPS ....... so you have to go into (this is for Vers 10.1 .....)

<Utilities> GPS Data in / out transfer .......

You will then have a box displayed with tabs ... you need to have the GPS added into this box ... plus of course GPS must be sending out NMEA ... not Garmin.
 
Sorry, perhaps my question was a little confusing:

When I connect the hand-held via USB the computer does not see it at all, so Maxsea cannot see anything. When I go into Utilities all Maxsea can see is COM1, which is my 232 serial connection from the BOAT'S Garmin, not the Vista Cx.

How do I point the new GPS, the Vista Cx, which is connected via USB, to be the port Maxsea finds?
 
If you are trying to transmit NMEA to MaxSea directly on USB and not through a USB/RS232 converter, I don't think MaxSea is ever going to see data. MaxSea looks for data on RS232 ports not on USB ports, the latter is totally incompatible unless converted to RS232 through an adaptor.
 
Get yourself a copy of Fransom GPSGate, a smart little program that should sort out all your woes, trial version is free to download and its about £10 to buy.
 
Hmmm, well that could explain things then. I know you can get 232 to USB converters (I have one), but how on earth do I get my USB connection from the hand-held converted back to 232? Should I just snip the USB plug off the end and wire it up to a spare 232 female plug?

Strange that MaxSea doesn't support USB......
 
GPSGate will even accept garmin in rather than nmea, but not sure if it converts that to nmea.

the garmin setup should allow you to select nmea out rather than garmn.

before you do anything else though, I would check tha
t you have used the correct usb setup for the garmin. it should have its own software which allows usb to come in and garmin/nmea to be read as if it is a virtual port. you should then be able to select that virtual port through maxsea without needing gps gate.

however, gpsgate is a nifty program that will allow you to share the gps to other software, to record the gps, and also to simulate it.
 
Well, I've yet to check out GPSGateway but it does bother me that the laptop will still not see the Garmin object correctly. Despite loading up the correct USB driver (and deleting the one it was trying to load up in its place) there is still the yellow exclamation mark in Device Manager.

I wonder how much the USB port not being USB2.0 has anything to do with it? I have heard that a PCMCIA USB2 card could resolve the problem.

Any comments on this?
 
[ QUOTE ]
If you are trying to transmit NMEA to MaxSea directly on USB and not through a USB/RS232 converter, I don't think MaxSea is ever going to see data. MaxSea looks for data on RS232 ports not on USB ports, the latter is totally incompatible unless converted to RS232 through an adaptor.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not completely right ... what is needed is to have the usb connection be intetrpreted as a Virtual Com Port ... trouble is many later garmin / other USB cables install as Garmin USB and not like the Prolific USB / 232 cable as a virtual port. A friend of mine gave up in the end and used a standard RS232 to USB converter to get round this ...

I wonder if looking in Device Manager - you can plug in Garmin USB cable .. unplug it - watching for what it installs as ... maybe in properties you can alter it ?

Maxsea doesn't care where the data comes from as long as it's NMEA and via a com port of some description ... virtual or real. Maybe a small utility to create virtual port ? Fransongate is more for splitting up ports and making data available to more than one program etc.
 
You cannot snip a USB cable and wire up a RS232 plug to it ...

I assume that the Maxsea is vers 10 or possibly early 11 ? Then it's a little early version to be full USB compatible ...
 
Hi Nigel,

Yes, version 10. And I didn't think you could snip a USB cable and wire to 232.

When I plugged in the hand-held Garmin USB the device manager wanted to install a standard USB driver. I deleted this from the inf folder and replaced and loaded up the Garmin USB driver, but unfortunately it still has the yellow exclamation mark.

I've now dloaded GPSGate and have to return to the boat to load it up on the other laptop to see if I have any joy with that. Will keep you posted.......

Just to make it clear, as I'm probably confusing people here, I have two issues:

1) Using the Garmin 17 GPS (the boat's installed GPS) to feed data to the Maxsea I also want to pick up the NMEA data from my B&G unit. Answer: multiplexor.

2) As an alternative, use my hand-held Garmin Vista Cx to supply the basic NMEA data. This is the one that is causing problems with USB. Answer: GPSGate
 
There are definite advantages to going the pcmcia card route, especially if you plan to use an SSB and pactor modem at some stage.

However, before abandoning this completely. I assume that you have gone into device manager and deleted the yellow triangle and then re-booted?

You have made sure that the handheld is set to export nmea.

and before spending more money check somebodyelses handheld and see if that behaves itself, in which case you have a defective h/h.
 
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