Navman tracker 5505 - help on nmea in

[andyp]

Hi - first post here and looking for some advice.

My new (to me) Konsort has a Navman (Northstar) Tracker 5505 GPS Chartplotter running a C-Map catridge. This works fine and sends NMEA data OUT to a Raymarine Autopilot and Navman 7100 DSC VHF.

One talker - two listeners - all well.

I wanted to be able to feed wind info to the Autopilot, and have achieved this with an ST40 wind display and sensor feeding wind data back on a SeaTalk connection to the Autopilot.

The next stage is to add an NMEA Multiplexer which will combine all of the current NMEA and SeaTalk data and feed to a number of listeners. (Future plans include AIS).

My problem is with feeding NMEA data back IN to the Navman Tracker 5505.

The Navman manual and on screen help shows NMEA IN to be fed to two pins on the white socket on the 5505. I believe these are pins 1 (ground) and pin 3 (NMEA IN). I have connected these to what I believe is a working NMEA Multiplexer (checked using laptop and Hyperterminal) but the 5505 refuses to show Depth, Wind, or Water Speed information.

Am I missing something in the Navman set-up to force it to accept NMEA IN?

I know the settings to send NMEA data OUT but can see nothing similar for NMEA data IN.

Any thoughts gratefully received. I spent 3 hours yesterday checking pinouts for power or signal but am no further forward!!!

Andy

 

[earlybird]

Dumb question maybe, but presumably you're sure that the Navman accepts those particular NMEA sentences? I ask this as my small Raymarine plotter only accepts RTE and WPL inputs.
Edit, just found out that the Navman should show those data, so your problem seems to be elsewhere, sorry!

 

[alan]

5505 NMEA In

AndyP,
Are you sure that you can see the NMEA data at the output of the mux and going toward the 5505. The reason I ask is that the Raymarine autopilots do not convert all the Seatalk data to NMEA .......... you need to check which specific sentences are translated and it does say somewhere in the user manual; sorry but no time to check at the moment.
EDIT: I just checked the Raymarine website and the Smartpilot (for example) does not output the data you are interested in to the NMEA port. It only outputs: BWC, GLL, HDG, HDM, HDT and VTG to NMEA output port#2. So, depending on which Autopilot that you have, you should check the NMEA output capability of the that unit (annoyingly Raymarine do not output all the Seatalk data to NMEA). IIRC Raymarine make an expensive Seatalk to NMEA Converter/Mux or is this what you already have??

Alan.

 

[andyp]

Some data now going IN!!!

Thanks for help guys, I made some progress today.

Alan - the Mux does all the SeaTalk to NMEA conversion for me.

I realised that I had left the Mux set to the AIS 38,400 baud rate which would probably be too fast for the Navman Tracker to accept on the NMEA IN port.

I changed the Mux to work at 4,800 bauds and I can now display the Depth data on the Navman Tracker. This means some of the NMEA 0183 data from the Mux is making it to the NMEA IN port on the Navman Tracker!

Still no sign of Wind Speed or Wind Direction to the Navman Tracker though.
This information is available in NMEA format at the output of the Mux.

Will keep trying.