ST60 BFT and Cardinal Display

[KAM]

Hi

My Multi came with the boat in 2000 and a second Multi was replaced with a Graphic repeater a couple of years later, the rest of the system consists of sounder, log, wind, autopilot and radar/plotter. None of them have been updated, other than the radar/plotter which was replaced. Apart from the quirk of not showing Beaufort wind without GPS, they have all worked faultlessly, so far.

Sounds a similar vintage to mine. Any chance you could check the software version on your multi if you are near your boat. Hold the two left hand keys down for 4 seconds. I ran a check today and found that the seatalk data appears to be available as I can see BFT and cardinal wind on my Seawi display after running it through the seatalk to NMEA converter.

 

[johnalison]

Sounds a similar vintage to mine. Any chance you could check the software version on your multi if you are near your boat. Hold the two left hand keys down for 4 seconds. I ran a check today and found that the seatalk data appears to be available as I can see BFT and cardinal wind on my Seawi display after running it through the seatalk to NMEA converter.

Drat. I was down on the boat today and have just seen your post. I did check the instruments though. The Graphic Repeater always shows Beaufort, while the Multi doesn't until the GPS has got its fix.

 

[KAM]

Drat. I was down on the boat today and have just seen your post. I did check the instruments though. The Graphic Repeater always shows Beaufort, while the Multi doesn't until the GPS has got its fix.

We may be getting close here. The multi probably needs sog to calculate ground wind. My nmea is input directly to the st60 at the moment. I notice it supports a limited number of sentences. I also notice the number of satellites page is blank too and the st60 also does not support conversion of this nmea data. I am going to try rerouting the nmea in through the ramarine seatalk converter as this supports more nmea sentences including some additional sog sentences. That did not work either so the conclusion is it does not work with software revision 3.

 

[KAM]

I had given up on this but today whilst tidying up the wiring I routed the NMEA input through the seatalk converter instead of directly into the ST60 multi NMEA input. BFT wind and a few other pages now work. There must be some data needed from the GPS which is not supported by the multi input. It should only need SOG and COG so not sure why it works now and not sure why it did not work when I tried the temporary hook up. Hope this helps anyone else with the same problem.