NASA AIS Engine Connection Wire to Plotter

[mph]

Can anyone help with a connection problem? I am going to fit a Nasa AIS Engine in the next few days.
The output cable from the AIS unit has a 7 pin plug at each end, presumably to connect to a PC….how do you connect to a Raymarine C80 plotter so that you can get an AIS overlay on the chart display?
I would guess that one of the plugs can be snipped off and the appropriate wires connected (in a suitable junction box) to one of the input cables to the plotter.
I know I’ll only need to connect a couple of the AIS output wires to the plotter – does anyone know which ones?

 

[alan17]

Suggest you speak to Alan at NASA. They open at 09.10 on Monday and very helpful.

 

[mph]

Thanks Alan, I'll call him on Monday.
Looking at other posts makes me think I've opened a can of worms with possable incompatable baud rates...Hmm

 

[CPD]

Hello mph, I will be trying to do this :

http://www.memory-map.com/index.html?http://www.memory-map.com/ais.htm

In the next few weeks with a NASA AIS engine, so will have the same problem as you I am sure. I am in email contact with Memory-Map in the USA, but would really appreciate it if you could post what you hear from NASA here. Incidentally, memory-map have told me that the GPS signalcan be fed into the PDA/plotter as a seperate input from the AIS engine OR, the GPS signal can be fed through the NASA engine thereby giving only one connection to the plotter. I dont know if this helps or hinders your thinking, hopefully the former. Good luck !

 

[gettingready]

I have a NASA AIS engine connected to a C80 here on my desk! I brought the C80 from the boat during winter layup and bought an AIS at London Boat Show so now have it connected up for testing. I didn't cut the wire as I fitted a small interface cable using a mating 9 way D plug which I had and soldered two wires. Pin 2 is the output and pin 5 is ground or NMEA minus. Then hooked the wires to the NMEA input of the C80, updated the software in the C80 to latest, set baudrate on C80 (System Integration menu) to AS 38400 and it is working perfectly. I also connected a GPS to the spare blue wire from the AIS connector and I have GPS position also. Unfortunately the AIS does not pass through all of the GPS data so you don't get the GPS stats just the basics (POS, SOG, COG, STATUS).

PM me if you want more details.

 

[FWB]

This is very interesting,hope you will keep us up to date with your progress. I see from here --click on miniplex AIS embedded link--- that the NASA engine has a design flaw. Is this a good engine to buy for the PDA still?

 

[chuzzlewit]

I've just fitted a NASA AIS to my C80 and Yeoman Plotter. It works! Unless the C80 is pretty recent you'll need to download (onto a flashcard and widget ....about £30) a free program to let it accept the faster bauds of an AIS. A modern C80 can be programmed to accept faster bauds anyway.
The NMEA Out wire from the GPS leads to the blue NMEA In wire on the AIS, carrying 4800 baud. The AIS puts out 38,400 baud: you must cut the output cable to expose a red wire(redundant),a black NMEA output wire and a bare wire(earth).Connect these to C80.
You need a splitter for the aerial. That's all. I should phone NASA to check I've remembered the colours right. Good luck.

 

[1937rogerdon]

I have also been having problems connecting the Nasa Engine to my Horizon 175C plotter. Nasa have infomed me to just use the black cable to the input of the Horizon. However, this has still failed to bring up any response even with large ships close by. Is the engine faulty? there seems no way of checking.

 

[shamrock]

You should, surely, be able to check the AIS engine by connecting it to a PC via a standard RS232 (COM port) cable and using the software supplied with the AIS engine.

 

[pvb]

Add your own LEDs....

For next to nothing, you can easily add the status LEDs which the cheapskates at Nasa left out. Full instructions here.

 

[FWB]

See my post above. It appears that the NASA Engine is not compliant with RS-232 or RS-422.

 

[shamrock]

Sure, I see the footnote that the NASA engine doesn't have sufficient signal strength for the miniPlex MUX but the whole point of the NASA engine is to send data to a PC so that must work? And I just used RS232 to mean the COM port cable between the PC and AIS engine.

 

[hubert]

As "gettingready" has said the output is pin 2 on the nine pin connector and pin 5 the groung reference. You can cut the connector off. The output is the black wire and the ground is the screen. The blue fly lead does not need connecting if you have a gps connected to your plotter. If you connect a gps to the blue lead it will relay the RMC sentence. I know of people who use nasas engine on both C and E series Raymarine without problems.
Looking in the unit the output is buffered by a transistot with it's collector pulled up to 5volts. If you need more drive just put a 4K7 resistor between the output and 12volts. It worked for me when driving an opto isolator