new nav system - but which one?

[Birdseye]

My 35 ft sailing yacht has a mish mash of electronics, mostly out of date and with the radar broken beyond repair. Either I replace the radar with the oinly stand alone one I can find ( Furuno 7 inch mod 1715) which would leave the mish mash of existing electronics ( early C80 plotter, ST60 instruments and simrad pilot, or I bite the bullet and replace all but the ST60s and the hydraulic ram for the pilot. Lets talk about the second option, but with an eye to the cost please

My 8 inch plotter is down below and I dont really have a good spot on deck to move it to. So my thought was to get a new plotter with wifi and then use my tablet or phone on deck to see what was happening. Is this possible? Can it be done with either Raymarine or Garmin?

Can I get ST60 instruments to talk to a Garmin plotter? Well enough to allow the autopilot to steer to the wind?

I've developed an interest in fishing from my boat - do either company make a fishfinder that is integral to the plotter?

 

[mcanderson]

How about Raymarine E7D? It has a built in fish finder. With the seatalk to seatalk ng will convert you existing nmea signals and I found the whole process of converting my older st60 based system to integrate with the E7 easy.

 

[Birdseye]

Having seen a pals 10 inch Garmin today I amj wondering if a 7 inch is big enough. I guess its smaller than my existing C80. Does it send a wifi piccie of the screen to a tablet?

 

[Ripster]

I have a Garmin 10" at the helm, works very well. Reliable and easy to use. The Garmin backup service is very good too if you get any issues. Mind you, a mate of mine had the Garmin 750 on his Mobo and that was just as good, but just a bit to small for my liking, with the menu options taking up most of the screen when they were in use.

 

[Twister_Ken]

ST60s will talk to Garmin but need a Seatalk-NMEA translator I think.

I have Tack Tick instruments, Raymarine autopilot, Garmin plotter (on deck), Yeoman plotter (below), Digital Yacht AIS, Icom VHF radio, all nattering away in NMEA.

At the moment, B&G is reckoned to be the leading edge in presentation of information.

 

[mcanderson]

Having seen a pals 10 inch Garmin today I amj wondering if a 7 inch is big enough. I guess its smaller than my existing C80. Does it send a wifi piccie of the screen to a tablet?

Yes. Raymarine have a couple of apps. They make the e series in various sizes so you can go bigger. For me the e7 is perfect and if I want a bigger screen then I have my ipad.

 

[Elessar]

My 35 ft sailing yacht has a mish mash of electronics, mostly out of date and with the radar broken beyond repair. Either I replace the radar with the oinly stand alone one I can find ( Furuno 7 inch mod 1715) which would leave the mish mash of existing electronics ( early C80 plotter, ST60 instruments and simrad pilot, or I bite the bullet and replace all but the ST60s and the hydraulic ram for the pilot. Lets talk about the second option, but with an eye to the cost please

My 8 inch plotter is down below and I dont really have a good spot on deck to move it to. So my thought was to get a new plotter with wifi and then use my tablet or phone on deck to see what was happening. Is this possible? Can it be done with either Raymarine or Garmin?

Can I get ST60 instruments to talk to a Garmin plotter? Well enough to allow the autopilot to steer to the wind?

I've developed an interest in fishing from my boat - do either company make a fishfinder that is integral to the plotter?

Delighted with my raymarine. Save the money on the instruments etc, I have a 2013 plotter and a 1991 course computer, with varying age kit between it all integrates seamlessly.

But use the money saved to buy a pod or something - the waterproof plotter is much better suited to the deck and the iPad better suited down below. It's dry and easy to plug into 12v as key plusses.

 

[Birdseye]

OK Ellesar but can you get the plotter to talk to the tablet both ways ie inoput instructions via the tablet, not just see the picture

 

[laika]

So my thought was to get a new plotter with wifi and then use my tablet or phone on deck to see what was happening. Is this possible? Can it be done with either Raymarine or Garmin?

Not so familiar with Garmin but as has been pointed out the Raymarine option would be straightforward: seatalk ng backbone connecting AP, plotter with instruments connected to it via a seatalk->seatalk ng converter. transducer for the sonar feeding the plotter directly.

Issue with the wifi is that output is in a proprietary format (as pointed out by cardo in a PBO thread last month) so you only have the option of Raymaine/Navionics apps to view data with. If you're OK with that it's a pretty neat solution.

The blurb on the Garmin wifi seems to indicate that their data output is a similar deal (ie proprietary data format meaning you're constrained to use the Garmin/BlueChart apps). A rep on the Garmin stand at the boat show confirmed that but he didn't seem to be all that sure.

Network data output from the new Navico (B&G/Simrad/Lowrance) MFDs is usable by a wider range of apps (including everyone's favourite open source chartplotter). Not much supports their gofree service discovery protocol but you can plug in the address of your plotter to connect to it manually. OTOH If you don't have wifi already you need to buy an extra bit of kit which will add to cost .

 

[Birdseye]

Not so familiar with Garmin but as has been pointed out the Raymarine option would be straightforward: seatalk ng backbone connecting AP, plotter with instruments connected to it via a seatalk->seatalk ng converter. transducer for the sonar feeding the plotter directly.

It would make for one place to go for help - I well remember problems connecting an Icom radio to a Garmin plotter when boith Icom and Garmin insisted the problem was with the opposite company. Never got it sorted. But having said that, isnt it possible to use NMEA 2000 to connect the raymarine bits via converters to any other makers bits?

Issue with the wifi is that output is in a proprietary format (as pointed out by cardo in a PBO thread last month) so you only have the option of Raymaine/Navionics apps to view data with. If you're OK with that it's a pretty neat solution.

The blurb on the Garmin wifi seems to indicate that their data output is a similar deal (ie proprietary data format meaning you're constrained to use the Garmin/BlueChart apps). A rep on the Garmin stand at the boat show confirmed that but he didn't seem to be all that sure.

Dont quite understand. My current C80 is navionics chart and my tablet has navionics too. Does that mean that wifi data from the plotter would appear on the tablet? What about the reverse - could I plan on the tablet and it appear on the plotter?

Network data output from the new Navico (B&G/Simrad/Lowrance) MFDs is usable by a wider range of apps (including everyone's favourite open source chartplotter). Not much supports their gofree service discovery protocol but you can plug in the address of your plotter to connect to it manually. OTOH If you don't have wifi already you need to buy an extra bit of kit which will add to cost .

For no better reason than my pilot being such a solid piece of kit, I lean towards simrad but their mfd seems to be twice as expensive as anyone elses.

 

[Elessar]

OK Ellesar but can you get the plotter to talk to the tablet both ways ie inoput instructions via the tablet, not just see the picture

yes totally. You have a choice of rayview or rayremote. The latter gives full plotter functionality, 1 one small exception, you can't change the pilot settings. So you need a pilot remote down below ideally. (you can see the buttons but they are disabled) Or maybe that's just me because I can look out safely from down below.

You can even have the bottons on your iphone and the screen full screen on the ipad.

It really is superb. I have the C rather than the E - no touch screeen - but I do all the waypoint entry stuff that needs text entry on the ipad. The physical buttons are better IMHO for navigation and pilotage once underway, and no smeary screen.

 

[laika]

Does that mean that wifi data from the plotter would appear on the tablet? What about the reverse - could I plan on the tablet and it appear on the plotter?

With the new plotters apparently yes:
http://www.navionics.com/en/news/raymarine-syncs-navionics-mobile-apps

I forgot to say that the limitation on the navico stuff is that the non-proprietary IP data interface is one way only (out from the MFD). Apparently data can be uploaded to the MFDs but the interface is not public so (unless knows otherwise) no uploading waypoints from opencpn via wifi