Raymarine sea talk converter E22158

[Nick_H]

I see what you're saying Nick, but the thing is that Raymarine just create confusion with their terminology. These days if you do a big install you only need the following cabling:

12/24v power obviously to the big items like MFD and radar (but not the little items like 110m sq screens)
12v power to the N2k backbone
You link some of the machines (MFD, radar, sonar and a few others) with Cat 5 cable
You link pretty much everything with N2k cables (everything is spurred using T connectors off a single continuous backbone)

Occasionally you might run a couple of nmea0183 wires here and there, but hardly any

And that's it. The rest is Raymarine jargon

It was a bit more complex in my case as I didn't want to replace the autohelm, VHF or transducers, which aren't N2K compliant, but I take your point that trying to plan it all out with the added complexity of Raymarine's own terminology wont have helped.

 

[jfm]

Should be do-able Nick, though I see the PITA aspect because of the made-up complexity from some manufacturers. Not sure about transducer (depends what you have) but the others would just plug into NMEA 0183 input ports on the MFD or other hardware, as would the transducer if it outputs nmea0183, and then that data would be converted by the MFD into N2K, then the data would slosh around the N2k network perfectly happily. Likewise, the nmea0183 output from one of the new MFDs would connect to your DSC VHF and tell it what your GPS position is

 

[jimmy_the_builder]

Well, fwiw this is the proposed Raymarine schema for my really very simple installation. There's a mixture of SeatalkNG (which I now understand as NMEA2000) and Raynet (Ethernet) plus a handful of transducer-specific cabling. I imagine a similar diagram for Match2 might perhaps not quite squeak on to one side of A4 like this

 

[jfm]

Will reply later jimmy ref the diagram. Just on a vintage bit of aluminium owned by BA

 

[jfm]

That lot will work after a fashion jimmy but it highlights nicely the slicker approach garmin takes

1 if this was garmin you'd need only two cat 5 cables. One to the radar and one to a single dinar box that would do whT both the ray boxes do including chirp. And because the 8012 garmin mfd has two cat5 inputs you don't need an Ethernet switch

2. The GPS in that set up is slow 1 hz going along slow sea talk 1 ie nmea0183. With garmin it would be on the n2k bus at 10hz for same money

3. The dedicatedness of Ray small instruments and clinging into nmra0183 makes it clumsier. For example, the wind sensor has dedicated cable back to a small instrument that shows wind only. With garmin the wind sensor clicks into the single n2k backbone that runs from the mast to the helm and engine room. Similarly the garmin depth transducer ( combined depth speed temp) plugs into the backbone if you have no sonar and isn't cabled to a dedicated display. With garmin each 110mm square instrument is then generic so will display anything you want, wind, depth, a graph of barometric pressure, etc x100, or even cycle thru multiple screens.

3a if you have garmin sonar the transducer connects to the black box which ether nets to the mfd. that's it.

4. Intrinsically an n2k drop cable is same thing as a length of backbone and with industry standard connectors as used by garmin the parts are same part number ie interchangeable. But raymarine they create a distinction. Backbone is blue, spurs are black/white, not swappable. Daylight robbery in my book and typifies annoying raym bespoke cabling pita

5 with garmin the nmea0183/seatalk 1 part of your picture disappears

6. With garmin the fusion connects via n2k not Ethernet ( you obviously don't need Ethernet data rates to control a radio!) and here you DO have to buy one extra cable £20 IF you have an older fusion 700 without "i" at the end of the model number whereas with raymarine it is a straight Ethernet connect whether old or new model fusion ( fusion changed this detail and added the i about a year ago)

7. With either ray or gar you might want to add wifi to the ethernet. Then you replicate mfd onto iPad via an app so can control fusion from iPad which is obviously cool

There's more detail but I've ranted on long enough. You sort of see why I think raymarine has gone a bit blunt at the edges. Though of course no major deal generally- either system will work well even if you end up wasting a few quid on cables due to raymarine tricks to get you to buy too many bespoke cables. And you get reset XTE with raymarine

(For some reason my iPhone "corrects" Ethernet by adding a capital E, in case you thought I was doing it!)

 

[jimmy_the_builder]

That lot will work after a fashion jimmy but it highlights nicely the slicker approach garmin takes

1 if this was garmin you'd need only two cat 5 cables. One to the radar and one to a single dinar box that would do whT both the ray boxes do including chirp. And because the 8012 garmin mfd has two cat5 inputs you don't need an Ethernet switch

2. The GPS in that set up is slow 1 hz going along slow sea talk 1 ie nmea0183. With garmin it would be on the n2k bus at 10hz for same money

3. The dedicatedness of Ray small instruments and clinging into nmra0183 makes it clumsier. For example, the wind sensor has dedicated cable back to a small instrument that shows wind only. With garmin the wind sensor clicks into the single n2k backbone that runs from the mast to the helm and engine room. Similarly the garmin depth transducer ( combined depth speed temp) plugs into the backbone if you have no sonar and isn't cabled to a dedicated display. With garmin each 110mm square instrument is then generic so will display anything you want, wind, depth, a graph of barometric pressure, etc x100, or even cycle thru multiple screens.

3a if you have garmin sonar the transducer connects to the black box which ether nets to the mfd. that's it.

4. Intrinsically an n2k drop cable is same thing as a length of backbone and with industry standard connectors as used by garmin the parts are same part number ie interchangeable. But raymarine they create a distinction. Backbone is blue, spurs are black/white, not swappable. Daylight robbery in my book and typifies annoying raym bespoke cabling pita

5 with garmin the nmea0183/seatalk 1 part of your picture disappears

6. With garmin the fusion connects via n2k not Ethernet ( you obviously don't need Ethernet data rates to control a radio!) and here you DO have to buy one extra cable £20 IF you have an older fusion 700 without "i" at the end of the model number whereas with raymarine it is a straight Ethernet connect whether old or new model fusion ( fusion changed this detail and added the i about a year ago)

7. With either ray or gar you might want to add wifi to the ethernet. Then you replicate mfd onto iPad via an app so can control fusion from iPad which is obviously cool

There's more detail but I've ranted on long enough. You sort of see why I think raymarine has gone a bit blunt at the edges. Though of course no major deal generally- either system will work well even if you end up wasting a few quid on cables due to raymarine tricks to get you to buy too many bespoke cables. And you get reset XTE with raymarine

(For some reason my iPhone "corrects" Ethernet by adding a capital E, in case you thought I was doing it!)

Thanks for this. A couple of clarifications from my side:

1. GPS mushroom is legacy and already exists, hence seatalk 1 connection (and just for completeness, the dsm30 is similarly already there)

2. e125 has its own integrated gps, although this is necessarily compromised by virtue of being integrated. However in my specific application (open cockpit sportsboat) I don't think this should have much impact

3. e125 also has integrated wifi, so delivers idevice mfd control out of the box

That all said, in cost terms, about half the total cost of this installation is just the e125 and the digi radome. I'm currently trying to decide whether to do the whole project in one go now, or just do the interesting half now (new autopilot, wind instrument, ais vhf) and defer the cost of the mfd and radar until next year.

I do particularly agree your point about the use of proprietary connectors though - that's just annoying.

 

[Phoenix of Hamble]

Another one here that is replacing all my electronics, and am avoiding Raymarine as much as possible because of their determination to avoid any kind of standard and the crazy converter cable pricing.

Hopefully they read this kind of thread and pay attention.

 

[jimmy_the_builder]

3. The dedicatedness of Ray small instruments and clinging into nmra0183 makes it clumsier. For example, the wind sensor has dedicated cable back to a small instrument that shows wind only. With garmin the wind sensor clicks into the single n2k backbone that runs from the mast to the helm and engine room. Similarly the garmin depth transducer ( combined depth speed temp) plugs into the backbone if you have no sonar and isn't cabled to a dedicated display. With garmin each 110mm square instrument is then generic so will display anything you want, wind, depth, a graph of barometric pressure, etc x100, or even cycle thru multiple screens.

If the Garmin instruments are just reading nmea2000, does it follow that you could add a Garmin GMI 10 to a Raymarine STNG network?

 

[jimmy_the_builder]

If the Garmin instruments are just reading nmea2000, does it follow that you could add a Garmin GMI 10 to a Raymarine STNG network?

Actually, cancel this, when I posted my question I didn't realise that Raymarine do an i70 multi-function instrument which appears to be equivalent to the Garmin GMI 10.