Raymarine Depth Sounder/Speed Log

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Owd_Nell

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Hi all

I have previously posted on here a couple of weeks ago about wanting to buy a Depth Sounder and Speed Log for my dad for Christmas and needing advice.

Initially I looked at buying a NASA Clipper Duet, but then my attention turned to Raymarine (I think it was the i40 system). Having scoured the t'interweb for a while I have read a LOT of poor reviews for Raymarine products in general :(

I would like to buy my dad a depth and speed log but not without some 'solid' advice first. A lot of things I read about Raymarine was to steer clear of their products. Has anyone had any problems with their stuff and can anyone else offer some advice?

I welcome all comments.

Nell
 
Owd_Nell said:
A lot of things I read about Raymarine was to steer clear of their products. Has anyone had any problems with their stuff and can anyone else offer some advice?
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Any sufficiently large supplier will have some people who have had bad experiences with their products and want to share online. I personally have had a negative experience of their management's attitude but I wouldn't say their products are any worse than the equivalently priced competition. Look around a UK marina and I'd take a guess that you'd find more Raymarine instruments than any other single brand.

My advice would be buy a random bit of lead, duct tape some string to the top, melt a candle onto the bottom and wrap it up with a couple of tickets to the London Boat Show. Go with him, look at things, talk to people and make the decision together. A few hundred quid is a lot to spend and not get him exactly what he wants (even if he doesn't know what that is yet).

If you never need to display your instrument data on anything other than a dedicated display, the NASA would be fine.

If you want to be able to network stuff together, either now or in the future with depth/log info viewable on multiple displays, your phone/tablet or whatever then the popular choices are Raymarine/Garmin (which you mentioned before)/Navico (who own B&G/Lowrance/Simrad). Note that most of their stuff *should* interoperate but many people like to stick with a single manufacturer to avoid finger-pointing by support people if anything goes wrong.

If there are likely to be fishing enthusiasts on the boat then the more expensive fishfinder transducers (which I know very little about) may be worth the extra investment.

...but it's a lot of cash to spend and get the less-than-ideal thing.
 
I am about to go on a Round our planet tour... I chose Raymarine for 2 reasons: a friend "sparky" tells me they have the best R&D and best production facilities and cost was quite reasonable when all was done.

IMHO, NASA is the absolutely bottom of the pile.
 
With boat instrumentation, integration is four fifths of the battle. Protocols are archaic in comparison with good practice in the IT industry.

So before you buy him anything, you really need to know what he's going to do with it and what he wants to connect it to.

I don't think Raymarine are any worse than any of the others. The Raymarine kit I've fitted so far has been fine, although I've felt it was overpriced compared to non-boating electronics, I guess that's probably as much to do with a small market as anything. My own bad experience has been with NASA kit just having poor reliability. I've got one display that is practically useless two years after having been fitted.
 
I have recently paid for a complete B&G installation, although not yet received it. The depth/log kit looks very good, only has a single transducer for both functions. http://www.force4.co.uk/department/...triton-speed-and-depth-pack.html#.VIbCpiUqWcw Perhaps the most expensive option but should be excellent. At the other end of the scale I see that Force Four have this one http://www.force4.co.uk/department/...nze-trio-with-2-transducers.html#.VIbDFCUqWcw that is new to me but a third of the price. There is a big range available and in the end it comes down to price.

The last time I saw the list, Navico/B&G were not going to display at LIBS and I'm not sure about Raymarine, so check before going. I found that several local chandleries had displays of several systems, which could save you the trip to London.
 
vyv_cox said:
At the other end of the scale I see that Force Four have this one http://www.force4.co.uk/department/...nze-trio-with-2-transducers.html#.VIbDFCUqWcw that is new to me but a third of the price.
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A quick google suggests that the "bronze" here is the name of a range rather than the transducer material (so not relevant to the point I'm about to make) but given (from the OP's previous thread) that it's a steel boat, maybe worth a mention that transducer material matters and I understand that bronze transducers don't go with metal boats (though Vyv and others will know this stuff better than I). Not wanting to over-complicate things but the OP should also be aware that NMEA-0183 (as on the echo pilot) and NMEA-2000 (as on the modern B&G, Raymarine and Garmin options) are different animals. The former is point-to-point and would make it easier to connect a single instrument to, say, a laptop or a device for pushing data wirelessly to a tablet. NMEA-2000 is more like a network (well, an '80s concept of a network) and makes it easier for a bunch of things to talk to a bunch of other things. These days I'd call NMEA-2000 the best option for most people. You can still get it into a computer or punt it to a tablet but this generally requires a bit of extra kit.

vyv_cox said:
The last time I saw the list, Navico/B&G were not going to display at LIBS and I'm not sure about Raymarine, so check before going. I found that several local chandleries had displays of several systems, which could save you the trip to London.
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Yup: weren't attending last time I looked and they didn't attend last year but there were still sufficient stalls demonstrating their kit that I was able to sit in a corner and debug my gofree code. Raymarine and Garmin are there I think, and there'll still be a lot of options on display and plenty of people to talk to.
 
laika said:
NMEA-2000 is more like a network (well, an '80s concept of a network) and makes it easier for a bunch of things to talk to a bunch of other things. These days I'd call NMEA-2000 the best option for most people. You can still get it into a computer or punt it to a tablet but this generally requires a bit of extra kit.
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I'm finding that there is more to NMEA2000 than is immediately obvious. My dealer has been helpful in pointing out the pitfalls, which has been a good reason for using him rather than just buying boxes of kit from the big internet suppliers. I have needed nearly £300 worth of additional stuff, cables, T-connectors and suchlike, which I would not otherwise have known about. This on a complete system, not just log and depth that the OP is looking for.
 
vyv_cox said:
I have needed nearly £300 worth of additional stuff, cables, T-connectors and suchlike, which I would not otherwise have known about. This on a complete system, not just log and depth that the OP is looking for.
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This is a good point: terminators, t-piece and a short backbone are going to bump up the price a lot unnecessarily if you never need to network the stuff to anything else, but I noted the link to the B&G kit you posted mentioned "backbone kit". Not clear even from the B&G site just what that includes though.
 
laika said:
This is a good point: terminators, t-piece and a short backbone are going to bump up the price a lot unnecessarily if you never need to network the stuff to anything else, but I noted the link to the B&G kit you posted mentioned "backbone kit". Not clear even from the B&G site just what that includes though.
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Yes, that has been the major problem for me in trying to design the system. Nowhere on the B&G site can I find info about cable lengths, for example how long is the gps transducer cable? The dealer told me but I cannot find it. There are various limiting lengths but they are not in the installation manual. Not very satisfactory.
 
vyv_cox said:
There are various limiting lengths but they are not in the installation manual.
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IIRC max spur length is 6m (I could be wrong) but that doesn't tell you what length of cable (if any) is supplied with a given product.

Edit: Not contradicted after a few minutes of googling. Page 8 of this (apparently garmin) doc gives various limits:
http://www.michaelkintner.com/interesting/boating/GPSMAP4008_NMEA2000NetworkFundamentals.pdf

Presumably you have to pay the NMEA to get the definitive document. Is this another good opportunity for a rant about the anachronism of the NMEA keeping "standards" a secret?
 
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Wow, thanks for all your responses folks!

You've certainly given me a lot to think about! I agree that I may just have to wait and see what he has in mind for his complete system (I don't think even he knows yet as he's only done very light research on it). As some of you have said it is probably best to see what he wants to connect to.

I posted this same thread on the PBO forum and someone has suggested to me maybe to just get the NMEA2k transducers for the Depth and Speed which does seem like a fair idea really. I have done a leeeetle bit of reading up on these and at least know the type that is designed for a steel hull. Just seems a bit 'meh' tho as an xmas pressie cos there's no 'end product' so to speak.

We have been LBS a few times, I may just go myself and chat to the people on stalls, get some advise.

I emailed my Competent Crew instructor too as he's a bloody sound bloke (north wales power and sail, if anyone's interested) to see what he uses on his Westerly Falcon. He has a Stowe Depth/Speed log he's had for 20+ years and its still good, so I have been looking at these too. I had never heard of them as a brand for marine electronics but he think they are as good as any so maybe there's an option.
 
Owd_Nell said:
He has a Stowe Depth/Speed log he's had for 20+ years and its still good, so I have been looking at these too. I had never heard of them as a brand for marine electronics but he think they are as good as any so maybe there's an option.
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Sorry, Nell, but you probably haven't heard of them since the company is long gone. If you think you dad would appreciate some antiques, I'll probably be getting rid of mine soon.
 
macd said:
Sorry, Nell, but you probably haven't heard of them since the company is long gone. If you think you dad would appreciate some antiques, I'll probably be getting rid of mine soon.
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Stowe still exist as a brand. Owned by Tinsley I believe. They seem to do a lot of premium stuff these days.

I've twenty-odd year old Stowe kit on my boat. A fair few bits and pieces have stopped working and I'm slowly replacing with mainly Raymarine, if only because it doesn't look cheap to refurbish the old kit.
 
laika said:
Apparently still alive.
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I stand corrected. Sorry.
I knew that someone was at least repairing old Stowe kit, since when we bought our present boat 2 1/2 years ago, there was a refurbished anemometer to be fitted (and a large receipt for refurb'ing it). It behaved faultlessly for about a month. Since then, we've always been on a dead run, which is great with twin headsails...
 
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