ST 50 GPS aerial (The little white dome) are they still available/manufactured.

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mocruising

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All my ST 50 stuff is OK (7 instruments in all so reluctant to replace them) but I am getting and intermittent No fix signal. I guess the aerial is going on the bum. I opened it up so sign of moisure inside, are they still available.
 
You don't need something ST50-specific, just a means of getting position data onto the Seatalk bus. So this could be a newer Raymarine dome, or a non-Raymarine GPS and an NMEA->seatalk bridge.

Pete
 
I have the same problem. Mine is 11 years old and is a Raystar 120. According to raymarine the unit should get a fix instantly if it has the lithium battery working. Otherwise, if the boat is stationary, it should take less that 20 mins. It can take forever if the boat is moving. The problem is the the lithium battery has a life of 10 years and keeps the fix of the last position in memory. Unfortunately the lithium cell is soldered to the circuit board. I have just left my instruments on and have a permanent excellent fix. We are 10 days into our 10 week cruise. The new RM GPS is for Seatalk2 and requires a new wiring loom and costs £270 plus fitting.
Any NMEA 0183 device should work id you have an NMEA input on your system. Or get the soldering iron out and solder a new battery in a holder to the circuit board. Best of luck.
 
If there's enough interest I'll do a replacement Seatalk GPS receiver YAPP based on a BR-355. These work inside the cabin on a GRP boat. Total cost would be about £45 including the GPS receiver. It could do the normal GPS stuff (lat, long, COG, SOG) but probably not the HDOP and number of satellites stuff as I'm not sure that the BR-355 puts that out.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GlobalSat...7?pt=UK_In_Car_Technology&hash=item4ac3d431cf
 
AngusMcDoon said:
If there's enough interest I'll do a replacement Seatalk GPS receiver YAPP based on a BR-355. These work inside the cabin on a GRP boat. Total cost would be about £45 including the GPS receiver. It could do the normal GPS stuff (lat, long, COG, SOG) but probably not the HDOP and number of satellites stuff as I'm not sure that the BR-355 puts that out.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GlobalSat...7?pt=UK_In_Car_Technology&hash=item4ac3d431cf
Click to expand...

What do you get for the £45 in addition to the GPS receiver? How does it connect to seatalk and where? I don't know where my present GPS connects, the wires just disappear into the loom. Perhaps it is behind the instrument panel that is inaccessible! How is it mounted? What is HDOP and is it necessary? The number of satellites I assume refers to the GPS setup screen on the SL70 plotter? I may well be interested, but later.
 
TonyS said:
What do you get for the £45 in addition to the GPS receiver? How does it connect to seatalk and where? I don't know where my present GPS connects, the wires just disappear into the loom. Perhaps it is behind the instrument panel that is inaccessible! How is it mounted? What is HDOP and is it necessary? The number of satellites I assume refers to the GPS setup screen on the SL70 plotter? I may well be interested, but later.
Click to expand...

the seatalk gps plugs into the system on any suitable connection within the daisy chain
 
TonyS said:
What do you get for the £45 in addition to the GPS receiver?
Click to expand...

The BR355 is a generic GPS receiver that outputs NMEA position data. I use one for my DSC radio. Angus is offering to custom design and build a microprocessor module that will take the NMEA data and convert it to the Seatalk that you need. Commercially-available boxes to do just the conversion (Raymarine's own, Brookhouse, a handful of others) cost upwards of £100. Since he is also including the price of the GPS (£25 to £30) and the 12v to 5v power converter it needs, he's offering to design the special interface, write the software that runs inside it, buy the required parts, and build the device, for a little over a tenner.

You'll never get rich that way, Angus! :D

Pete
 
TonyS said:
What do you get for the £45 in addition to the GPS receiver? How does it connect to seatalk and where? I don't know where my present GPS connects, the wires just disappear into the loom. Perhaps it is behind the instrument panel that is inaccessible! How is it mounted? What is HDOP and is it necessary? The number of satellites I assume refers to the GPS setup screen on the SL70 plotter? I may well be interested, but later.
Click to expand...

I think everyone else has said it, but you'd get a BR-355 GPS receiver which is connected to a 50mm x 50mm circuit board that you can mount in a small plastic box, or I could supply one. There would be a 3 way screw connector that you connect your Seatalk cable into. The whole lot can sit behind a panel or in a locker. You will get all the navigation data you need, but if you go into your GPS information page on your chartplotter which shows strength of signal and which satellites you are receiving data from you won't see anything.

You can mount the GPS receiver anywhere inside. It's so small a piece of double sided sticky foam holds mine in place. The converter box can similarly be mounted with sticky stuff in a hidden place.
 
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Thanks Angus. Yes I would be very interested to keep the rest of my 10 year old RM kit going. Hope to be back in UK by the end of July. If you make one before that, please let me know and we can arrange delivery/payment.
 
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