Raymarine Seatalk / Garmin Interface

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jamiepyoung

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Garmin/Seatalk Integration:

I’m looking for advice again… We’ve recently bought a new boat. I’m pretty familiar with NMEA connections, but the new boat has some Raymarine kit fitted that I want to try and integrate.

Existing kit:
Raymarine ST60 Depth
Raymarine ST60 Speed
Raymarine i60 Wind

The Raymarine kit was networked (via Seatalk) to a RN300 GPS. This has just broken, so there is now no GPS data, so the ST60 speed instrument won’t display COG etc.

I’ve got a ‘new’ Garmin 4008 that I want to integrate with the above, assuming the RN300 is not refitted.

So, my questions are….

1. How do I interface the 4008 with the Raymarine instruments, primarily so the ST60 displays COG.
2. Conversely, can the ST60s and i60 send their info to the Garmin, so it gets the depth and waterspeed info, wind speed etc.

I’m not clear from extensive googling if the i60 will repeat the info from the other instruments and work in both directions.

Any help much appreciated!

Thanks
 
Davegriff said:
Can't help much, but pretty sure seatalk is not nmea
Click to expand...

I think the OP is well aware of that!

The obvious answer is a Raymarine "NMEA Bridge". It connects to the Seatalk bus and has one NMEA output and one input. It also has an RS232 connection for a PC and a pair of contacts for an external alarm sounder.

Some ST60 displays also have NMEA connections on the back, but they are notorious for sending or accepting only a very limited set of NMEA sentences. Raymarine only seemed to bother doing a proper job with the dedicated bridge.

There are also third-party boxes which do the same job as the bridge for less than its rather silly list price.

Pete
 
I have the Raymarine box and my ST60+ instruments happily talk to my Garmin 5012 plotter.I also have an Autohelm 4000, Raymarine Radar, Digital Yachts AIS, and Icom radio all talking happily together through a combination of NMEA 0183 and 2000.
 
I think ST60+ uses Seatalk NG which is basically NMEA2000 which Is compatible with modern Garmin plotters. Earlier ST60 units use standard seatalk which is proprietary and would need a converter to make it compatible. Some Seatalk devices such as autopilots have a Seatalk to Nmea converter built in and allow some exchange of info. It is a complex subject and confusing with all the manufacturer specific names for their protocols.
 
I have Raym wind, log and depth and VHF all talking to Garmin 4010, additionally, a Y2K network connects a Garmin Radar, AIS and Garmin AP. Sea-talk converter box translates the messages.
 
prv said:
Nope. My wind instrument is ST60+ and it just has the standard flat 3-pin Seatalk 1 sockets (and similar terminals for the sensor cable, connected via individual spade terminals).

Pete
Click to expand...

Ah, in that case it must be the ST70 that uses Seatalk NG.
 
The earlier ST50 Tri data has an inbuilt NMEA0183 convertor to send the data from the seatalk bus out only as talker. I think the Seatalk NG data format is virtually compatible with NMEA2K, but doesn't comply with the strict protocols of NMEA 2K (if I am wrong I am sure someone will correct me).
 
The disclaimer is that I've never been very clear on the whole seatalk1 to seatalkng compatibility/conversion thing and I don't have a seatalkng network so I would be very appreciative if someone would fill in the gaps here. Raymarine's documentation tells you how to make certain scenarios work but not *how* it works.

As I understand it seatalkng contains a 6th wire which carries seatalk-1 data. This seems to imply that seatalk-1 can be carried alongside what is effectively N2K. Raymarine's networking docs talk about using "certain products" (the diagrams all seem to show an i70) to bridge seatalk-1 onto seatalkng. I think one question the OP is very reasonably asking is if the i60 can be used for that. But what does that "bridging" mean? Carrying on the 6th wire? Converting to N2K PGNs? Converting to proprietary raymarine PGNs? Raymarine state that if you bridge seatalk-1 onto seatalkng like this you can't then connect N2K stuff because it "may compromise the integrity" of N2K data. Whatever that means. The implication is certainly that using the i60 to connect seatalk-1 to pure n2k won't work.

So what about the E22158 seatalk-1 to seatalkng converter? Does that do the same as the i70 et al or does it actually convert? between seatalk 1 and seatalkng? Some googling suggests it might do the latter and there was at least once conversation I turned up on the raymarine forum which seems to show success at sending ST60 data to an N2K device, albeit with the restriction that the backbone is seatalkng with the n2k device attached on a spur cable:
http://raymarine.ning.com/forum/topics/seatalk-1-to-nmea-2000?xg_source=activity
So that looks like it might be a solution. Create a seatalkng bus using an E22158 kit, attach your seatalk-1 bus with the supplied cable, the n2k device using a device net adaptor cable and presto. Although I have no idea if that would work but it might.

Wouldn't it be nice if they were just a bit more explicit about how it actually worked?
 
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laika said:
The disclaimer is that I've never been very clear on the whole seatalk1 to seatalkng compatibility/conversion thing and I don't have a seatalkng network so I would be very appreciative if someone would fill in the gaps here. Raymarine's documentation tells you how to make certain scenarios work but not *how* it works.
Click to expand...

I wasn't even considering SeatalkNG / NMEA2k :)

Just suggesting the old-school "NMEA Bridge" to convert to NMEA0183 on the assumption that the new GPS can work with that.

I have an NMEA Bridge on Ariam to allow an ICS Nav6 to act as a multi-data repeater at the chart table. It don't know exactly what sentences it emits, but the Nav6 seems to be receiving every type of data it can display so it must be a reasonable set. I've heard of other Raymarina instruments that purport to output NMEA but in fact only emit a couple of sentences, or use really obscure ones, or are malformed in some way as if Raymarine in the early days didn't really "get" NMEA.

Pete
 
prv said:
I wasn't even considering SeatalkNG / NMEA2k :)
Click to expand...

Yes, sorry: completely different tangent. Seatalk to NMEA-0183 converter as you propose is indeed the simple solution if nothing else is going to need the nmea-0183 port on the garmin thingy. I believe Raymarine don't sell the E85001 any more but they can be had second hand or there's AngusMcDoon's very cost effective yapp. The OP mentioned using the i60 to bridge which took me down the path I followed (which took me back to wondering how that stuff worked...)
 
I'm still confused!

I'll get to the back of the instruments this weekend and see what connectors they have.

Raymarine really have made it difficult!
 
I have looked in the manuals, but I'm just not clear if the i60 will act as a bridge for the data from the ST60s and the manuals don't clarify this. I also don't know how they are all linked currently.

I'm also not clear if the bridge (if it does work) will be 2 way, ie the GPS data from the Garmin will go into the ST60 for the SOG...
 
The i60 has seatalk and seatalkng interfaces. The ST60s have seatalk. If they're connected together it will be via seatalk (aka seatalk-1).

The garmin has nmea2000 and nmea0183 interfaces. prv's suggestion was to stick a bi-directional seatalk-nmea-0183 box between the seatalk bus to which all your instruments are probably connected and the nmea-0183 interface on the plotter. That should get you what you want.

Raymarine's docs talk about using certain instruments (including the i70 but I'm unclear if it includes the i60) to "bridge" between seatalk and seatalkng but they don't say what this "bridging" means. SeatalkNG is compatible with NMEA2000 but Raymarine say that when an i70 is used to "bridge" seatalk-1 data onto seatalkNG, the seatalkNG bus is not longer compatible with NMEA2000. This suggests to me that rather than converting seatalk-1 information to something NMEA2000 compatible, it's doing something funky with the additional wire which is one of the things which distinguishes seatalkNG from standard N2K stuff.

The implication is that although you could connect the i60 to the plotter via NMEA2000, you couldn't use it to bridge seatalk-1 from the ST60s.

Raymarine do sell a seatalk-1 to seatalkNG converter but again are not explicit about what it does. If this is the same kind of "bridging" as the instruments you're SOL with using it for connecting to N2K. If however it is genuinely converting data between N2K and seatalk-1 then this might be another option for your connectivity. The article I linked to would suggest that this is in fact the case. A more complex solution but potentially more expandable.
 
I am afraid much of this debate is over my head. However, with my set up (ST60+ & Garmin 5012), I do get SOG on the ST60+ Log. However, I think that I need the ST4000 switched on as well so this seems to have some function in the conversions.
 
richardbrennan said:
I am afraid much of this debate is over my head. However, with my set up (ST60+ & Garmin 5012), I do get SOG on the ST60+ Log. However, I think that I need the ST4000 switched on as well so this seems to have some function in the conversions.
Click to expand...

Most of the raymarine autopilots can bridge nmea onto the seatalk bus. That's probably what's happening here.

Pete
 
jamiepyoung said:
Garmin/Seatalk Integration:

I’m looking for advice again… We’ve recently bought a new boat. I’m pretty familiar with NMEA connections, but the new boat has some Raymarine kit fitted that I want to try and integrate.

Existing kit:
Raymarine ST60 Depth
Raymarine ST60 Speed
Raymarine i60 Wind

The Raymarine kit was networked (via Seatalk) to a RN300 GPS. This has just broken, so there is now no GPS data, so the ST60 speed instrument won’t display COG etc.

I’ve got a ‘new’ Garmin 4008 that I want to integrate with the above, assuming the RN300 is not refitted.

So, my questions are….

1. How do I interface the 4008 with the Raymarine instruments, primarily so the ST60 displays COG.
2. Conversely, can the ST60s and i60 send their info to the Garmin, so it gets the depth and waterspeed info, wind speed etc.

I’m not clear from extensive googling if the i60 will repeat the info from the other instruments and work in both directions.

Any help much appreciated!

Thanks
Click to expand...

Yes. You need a multiplexer / converter _ I used one from Brookhouse ( mail order ex NZ) and it works well. Link http://brookhouseonline.com/. Thats assuming that you arent using the very latest seatalk ng - some st60 late models did use this and its simply a renamed nmea 2000 which is what your plotter will use.
 
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