Questions on connecting a GPS to DSC and PC

[epb00]

Just trying to avoid making mistakes in future. Here a few of the many questions I have on connecting a GPS to a DSC set.

Can all GPS units (mine is an old Garmin 12) drive a DSC/VHF radio set?

Do most DSC units have built opto isolation?

Can it also drive a PC at the same time?

If you do connect the PC and DSC set to the GPS at the same time what happens when you upload waypoints to the GPS?

Also, how good is a DSC display? Can it be used as a GPS repeater of sorts?

Any help greatly appreciated.



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[jfm]

Can all GPS units (mine is an old Garmin 12) drive a DSC/VHF radio set?............. Yes if the same nmea standard. yours are likely all nmea183 so will work.

Do most DSC units have built opto isolation?......dunno

Can it also drive a PC at the same time?...........yes one NMEA talker (the GPS) can talk to multiple NMEA listeners (ie the pc, the VHF, the autopilot, etc. Just wire everything in parallel to the NMEA-out pins on the GPS set

If you do connect the PC and DSC set to the GPS at the same time what happens when you upload waypoints to the GPS? ....... nothing. the DSC set will ignore the waypoints coming from the gps set. It's only designed to listen to certain NMEA sentences and uploaded waypoints will be ignored by it, whereas current lat/long is a sentence that the DSC will listen for

Also, how good is a DSC display? Can it be used as a GPS repeater of sorts?........depends on model, but likely no. AFAIK on our Raymarine DSC it wouldn't work easily because too much menu faffing to get the display



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[MartinJ]

1 some will some won't work check the sentence output & input requirments

2 YES

3 You can NOT connect lots of NMEA readers to one output 2 or 3 at a max.

4 Nothing happens

5 Yes it can

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