NASA Marine NMEA Masthead sensor

  • Thread starter Thread starter vas
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Do a search on these forums - there are some good and some bad reports.

BTW - what do you want it for?
Not sure there is much value having wind available for nav systems.
For me, the main reason for wind detection is at anchor when all my nav gear is powered down anyway.
So I use one of these - fantastic value
http://www.navis-anemometers.com/pdf/windy_smartphone_anemometer.pdf
Connects to my smart phone - which IS powered up whilst at anchor.
I believe that Navis have a new product coming out soon - maybe longer range - maybe an integrated vane and anemometer - I don't know.
I'm really only interested in the wind strength - that bit works well - certainly woke us up this summer when the wind blew up.
I bought a spare anchor light and mounted the Navis on top so that I can quickly remove it for winter storage.

Here a couple of pics on it running on my Samsung s4

IMG_8056_Small_zpsufqndceu.jpg


IMG_8058_Small_zpsipno7ozi.jpg


The beauty of this is that the smart phone is already running - doing a GPS anchor watch so very little extra power is used to run the wind alarms.
 
Mike,

reading and following all the discussions re wind picking up while sleeping got me slightly worried.
So, yes, want it for the same reason as you.
However, I will have the GMI10 by my bed running the anchor and depth alarm (through a NMEA2K gps mushroom, the NMEA2K depth/speed/temp transducer). So having an extra alarm for wind speed is a nice have for 125quid (me thinks!)
Will just wire it to a GMI10 and the NMEA2K bus will have it broadcasted around. Minimal power consumption from the GMI10, so acceptable for a 4X180Ah service bank doing bugger all (except for the fridge) and led lights all around.

cheers

V.
 
vas said:
Mike,

reading and following all the discussions re wind picking up while sleeping got me slightly worried.
So, yes, want it for the same reason as you.
However, I will have the GMI10 by my bed running the anchor and depth alarm (through a NMEA2K gps mushroom, the NMEA2K depth/speed/temp transducer). So having an extra alarm for wind speed is a nice have for 125quid (me thinks!)
Will just wire it to a GMI10 and the NMEA2K bus will have it broadcasted around. Minimal power consumption from the GMI10, so acceptable for a 4X180Ah service bank doing bugger all (except for the fridge) and led lights all around.

cheers

V.
Click to expand...

OK
But I like the independence of this device.
I'm not a great fan of wireless solutions like this but this one works well.
During the daytime, we move it round the boat.
I particularly remember the time when I took the above pics.
As you can see - there had been 32 knot winds and we were actually "dragging" through the anchorage at the time.
I was waiting for a good time to re-anchor.
I'm sure your idea is more conventional but this Navis solution really works for me.
 
vas said:
Will just wire it to a GMI10 and the NMEA2K bus will have it broadcasted around..
Click to expand...

Not sure about the input capabilities of the Garmin, but unless they have updated the specs, the NASA unit only outputs NMEA0183 so you may need some convertion unit to get it on your NMEA2000 circuit.
 
nrcoyle said:
Not sure about the input capabilities of the Garmin, but unless they have updated the specs, the NASA unit only outputs NMEA0183 so you may need some convertion unit to get it on your NMEA2000 circuit.
Click to expand...

seems that many people see that GMIs are NMEA2K and miss the fact that there is another socket next to it (that used to power the GMI initially, but not anymore) that has proper NMEA0183 in and out. So, yes, I can have NMEA0183 sensors wired up and replicated to the NMEA2K bus (unless I'm missing something).
Thing is I need to get the cable...

cheers

V.
 
vas said:
seems that many people see that GMIs are NMEA2K and miss the fact that there is another socket next to it (that used to power the GMI initially, but not anymore) that has proper NMEA0183 in and out. So, yes, I can have NMEA0183 sensors wired up and replicated to the NMEA2K bus (unless I'm missing something).
Thing is I need to get the cable...

cheers

V.
Click to expand...

I don't know anything about Garmin kit and I may be wrong.
But there needs to be the "inelegance" to handle all the wind processing inside the Garmin instrument.
For example, you need to set alarms.
Also wind direction is useless unless something can compare the wind direction with the ships heading in order to get true wind angle.
I'm sure that a complete Garmin system would handle this (maybe only using the Garmin wind transducer?) but can their stand alone GMI process raw NMEA wind sentences and produce what you want?
I would call Garmin and read the Garmin manual in depth before ordering.
Apart from that NMEA 0183 is dead easy to wire up.
Good luck.
 
Hurricane said:
I don't know anything about Garmin kit and I may be wrong.
But there needs to be the "inelegance" to handle all the wind processing inside the Garmin instrument.
For example, you need to set alarms.
Also wind direction is useless unless something can compare the wind direction with the ships heading in order to get true wind angle.
I'm sure that a complete Garmin system would handle this (maybe only using the Garmin wind transducer?) but can their stand alone GMI process raw NMEA wind sentences and produce what you want?
I would call Garmin and read the Garmin manual in depth before ordering.
Apart from that NMEA 0183 is dead easy to wire up.
Good luck.
Click to expand...

There's also a Garmin 751 plotter nearby, if for some odd reason the GMI cannot process NMEA0183 data (which I find obscure!) then I can rewire the sensor to the plotter (which means I'll have to have the plotter running through the night, don't really need that)

TBH, I cannot imagine a device having 0183 input if it cannot use it to set an alarm (GMI itself supports wind/anchor drag/depth/temp alarms and I've tried all but the wind and they work)
I also guess wind direction is not much of an interest, until I get a heading sensor which will be part of the garmin autopilot kit I'm trying to put together for next summer. And tbh, not even then will be important...

Yes, Garmin manuals are rather sparse and s/w rather convoluted sometimes. Will do all my testing beforehand and try to establish it actually works.
Started a thread on the PBO forum (for a change) on an arduino NMEA0183 injector (for an anchor chain counter) so I could easily use this project to dump dummy data to the GMI and see how it reacts before buying the kit ;)

cheers

V.
 
vas said:
There's also a Garmin 751 plotter nearby, if for some odd reason the GMI cannot process NMEA0183 data (which I find obscure!) then I can rewire the sensor to the plotter (which means I'll have to have the plotter running through the night, don't really need that)

TBH, I cannot imagine a device having 0183 input if it cannot use it to set an alarm (GMI itself supports wind/anchor drag/depth/temp alarms and I've tried all but the wind and they work)
I also guess wind direction is not much of an interest, until I get a heading sensor which will be part of the garmin autopilot kit I'm trying to put together for next summer. And tbh, not even then will be important...

Yes, Garmin manuals are rather sparse and s/w rather convoluted sometimes. Will do all my testing beforehand and try to establish it actually works.
Started a thread on the PBO forum (for a change) on an arduino NMEA0183 injector (for an anchor chain counter) so I could easily use this project to dump dummy data to the GMI and see how it reacts before buying the kit ;)

cheers

V.
Click to expand...

Interesting
One of my winter projects is an anchor chain counter using Arduino.
Last time I went out to the boat, I hooked it up and got it all working - much better than my last attempt at an anchor counter.
This time, I'm using proper opto isolators to isolate the harsh currents and back emfs etc that are buzzing round a windlass when it operates.
I was thinking of starting a new thread on this project but it is very specific to my installation (unless anyone is interested).
All the communication from the Arduino is over the ships LAN - sending raw UDP messages etc.
All being displayed over the top of the AnCam screen!!!
Essentially it is all working - the next bit is to sense the direction of the windlass using the motor direction feeds to the Lewmar solenoid.

Sorry for the thread drift - back to your point.
I really would look carefully at whether the instrument handles the raw NMEA data.
I was going to do something similar a few years ago using Raymarine (ST6000 range of kit) and IIRC it required their Wind Instrument to do all the wind calcs.
Not looked at NMEA sentences recently but I seem to remember that there are separate sentences for vane angle and wind angle - same thing applies to wind strength - apparent wind strength and true wind strength etc. And it is quite difficult to find where these calculations are carried out. In my experience only one device will do the calcs and output the results to the ships NMEA systems (be it 0183 or 2000) - in the old days, it used to be the plotter.
 
Mike,

I'm VERY MUCH interested on the anchor chain thing, and pretty sure others are too.

If you've sussed the sensor i/o and the currents, then the actual processing and formulation of a NMEA0183 sentence should be easy.
I understand you want to UDP it to your LAN (which I don't really care yet) but would be a nice base for a project that can output for Garmin custom sentences, UDP and possibly other proprietary instruments or displays!

Would you like to setup a new thread here?

the thread I started (only prv from this forum has replied as yet) is this. Happy to call it off and continue in here only.

coming back on topic, I've read various comments but it definitely accepts (and processes) the relevant signals, so should really work. Worse comes to worse, I can get the NMEA signals on the arduino, correct or convert them as necessary and resend them to the bus ;)
Will bring one of the GMIs back home and test it with the uno currently hooked onto my home PC

cheers

V.
 
OK - I will start another thread but maybe I should add a bit of a downer to your enthusiasm.
There doesn't seem to me to be a spec for an NMEA sentence for a chain counter.
Are you saying that Garmin have spec'd for custom sentences.

I'll start a new thread on here sometime this week and we can discuss it there.

Mike
 
OK, looking forward to the thread.

not a downer as AutoAnchor and Garmin have worked together (?) on this and we have (from the AutoAnchor NMEA sentence pdf posted on the other thread on PBO:

$PAAN,CONFIG,pp,cc,nn,mm*hh to setup the windlass (type, Circumference of gypsy, two unused settings )

$PAAN,STAT,rr.r,c,d,vv.v,ss,ll.l,ee,rr*hh status of windlass (rode deployed in m, chain or rope, voltage to motor, as well as some status information and error codes)

$PAAN,CLR,mm*hh (clear the rode to zero)

latest versions of GMI10/20 do support these sentences but the whole anchor rode menu is HIDDEN unless system receives these sentences that automatically "wakeup" the menu screens. Explains why I've never come across these screens!

So, definitely doable, easy to test and slightly cheaper than the 1000USD or so that AutoAnchor charges for their black box.

True that the UDP sending to your boat wifi router that through a small android/i-device app can show up on the phone would have more customers, but I'm pretty sure most GMI10/20 owners that use their windlass would easily spent the 40quid for sensor and arduino to have the functionality ;)

Would be interested to see your arduino code btw.
Trying to prepare the testbed for the arduino to NMEA injection s/w from bits of code I've picked up over the last few days. Mind not a programmer, simply occasionally doing bits in various setups (lisp, basic, perl, bit of python in this order!)

cheers

V.
 
I have been looking at some home cooked sensors and have looked at the micropython pyboard as I know more python than c. There is also a wireless based one called the wipy. These could make some of your coding easier as there are python nmea libraries that can be used/extended rather than cooking your own on the arduino.
 
sort of closing this thread with some extra info I found today.

NASA do have the 125quid (inc VAT) 1Hz sensor outputing proper NMEA0183 sentence: MWV
They also now have a 10Hz 175quid one (same thing NMEA0183)

Doubt that the 10Hz is going to make any difference in my application, so I'm ordering the 1Hz one ;)

once the arduino project progresses further I'll setup another thread with code

cheers

V.
 
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