New plotter

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Caladh

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New boat - more questions. There is a Raymarine R70 currently fitted with a "repeater" in the cockpit. It appears that it's a combined radar and plotter but of some age now. I'd probably keep it for its radar capability but would be looking for another plotter. I'm used to the wonderful Raymarine A70 but the previous owner of my new boat has recently fitted Raymarine I50-I60 speed, depth and wind instruments. I would be happy to buy another A70 second hand but what are OP's recommendations for future proofing my instrumention?
Oh and the autohelm is the original Simrad dating to 1996 !!
 
Raymarine i50 & i60 seems to be using SeatalkNg (= NMEA 2000 with some special cables).

If you would like to have wind/speed/depth on your plotter you should loook for plotter with NMEA 2000 / SeatalkNG.
All the big brands have support for NMEA 2000 these days.

If you stick to Raymarine it's easy to update software on the i50/i60 instruments.

I think the A70 have SeatalkNG.

There is a recent thread on the forum regarding new plotters.
 
Current generation kit is mostly N2k (Seatalk NG) and some Ethernet. Your old kit will be Seatalk1/2 and ARCnet (Raytheon radar). You can add converters for some of the old stuff like speed and log/depth, but never for radar. There is no real future proofing either, as N2k is a troubled standard and Ethernet is increasingly intruding on it due to more openness. Throw in some Wifi to make a real mess of things :cool:

Since you already have some current generation Raymarine bits, perhaps simply continue down that path if you want a real chartplotter.

Personally I'd just convert all the proprietary kit data into IP somewhere (amusingly the accepted standard for that seems to be NMEA0183 sentences - go figure) and install OpenCPN on a tablet in a plastic bag to view it. Keep the old radar until someone figures out an open radar standard and then give those guys your money.
 
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