NMEA 2000, two pieces of equipment off one drop link?

[Ceirwan]

Okay, so I tested it on the bench.

I've tried to keep it as close to the actual installation as possible therefore:
- All lengths of wire including the backbone are the lengths that will be used on the boat.
- One resistor built into the masthead transducer
- The other fitted at the T-Piece at the cockpit end

The only differences from the final setup and I don't believe these would make a difference are.
- B&G Triton display fitted instead of Vulcan 7 plotter (still waiting for B&G to post me it)
- Additional B&G Display would be fitted off a spur, at the moment its installed on the boat.

The ZG100 compass and DST triducer are both fitted off one spur of the network using a T-Piece.

Works perfectly, as soon as I ran the automatic data selection setup on the display it picked up the wind direction and speed, the triducer, and the GPS position and heading. These are all working correctly.

So I can confirm that despite the categorical statements that it would not by some people it does in fact work.
And additionally it does not require cutting and hacking the cable, just a t-piece.

Anyway, hopefully this information will be of help to others.

 

[JohnGC]

Okay, so I tested it on the bench.

I've tried to keep it as close to the actual installation as possible therefore:
- All lengths of wire including the backbone are the lengths that will be used on the boat.
- One resistor built into the masthead transducer
- The other fitted at the T-Piece at the cockpit end

The only differences from the final setup and I don't believe these would make a difference are.
- B&G Triton display fitted instead of Vulcan 7 plotter (still waiting for B&G to post me it)
- Additional B&G Display would be fitted off a spur, at the moment its installed on the boat.

The ZG100 compass and DST triducer are both fitted off one spur of the network using a T-Piece.

Works perfectly, as soon as I ran the automatic data selection setup on the display it picked up the wind direction and speed, the triducer, and the GPS position and heading. These are all working correctly.

So I can confirm that despite the categorical statements that it would not by some people it does in fact work.
And additionally it does not require cutting and hacking the cable, just a t-piece.

Anyway, hopefully this information will be of help to others.
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The other thing worth doing is to test at the extremes of the supply voltage range. You should consider both the equipment specs, don't exceed them and the expected range on the boat.

John

 

[Ceirwan]

The size of my network is well within what B&G state in their literature.
In terms of loads on the network, on the whole there aren't that many.

Also the power supply I used supplies exactly 12v, if I was only getting 12v on the boat then it would be a very depleted battery, so on the whole I'm confident the system will work.

 

[Hoolie]

Well done for testing off the boat. For practical reasons I suspect most of us have to make do with testing on-board with all the frustrations that involves. I'm sure N2K is pretty robust and the specified limits have a good safety margin - not that your relatively modest system will be anywhere near them! Well worth having confidence before installing on-board.