Standard Horizon CP300

[RichardTaylor]

I took the plunge and bought one recently. When talking with the sales guy in Marine Superstore, he said they had experienced problems with the NASA AIS and recommended not buying the NASA unit and recommended EasyAIS. Whether this was sales talk or not I dont know?

 

[tom52]

My 300i works fine with NASA AIS

 

[Leighb]

I currently have a problem with my SH CP 300i. It is linked to NASA AIS, and it works fine in every respect except that the Trip Log produces lunatic figures, 130NM at the end of a 15NM down the river and back for example.

I have spoken to a Tech support bod at SH and said that he had encountered the problem once before and asked if I had NASA AIS. He said that they believed that some GPS data from the AIS was being interpreted by the plotter as a yacht position momentarily and adding the there and back mileage to the Trip log.

He is sending me the latest firmware update which he says may fix it.

Seems a bit bizarre to me, but on the next outing when this damn wind stops I will switch off the AIS and see.

 

[fireball]

Hmm - didn't have that problem with the CP180i and NasaAIS - are you feeding any data into the AIS engine?

 

[Leighb]

AFAIK the only data feeding into the NASA eingine is from its own aerial?

What other data might be fed? The plotter receives NMEA data from instruments and - if switched on - Radar. This latter was not on during any of the local trips so far. None of these send any position data though.

 

[fireball]

Only if you were feeding GPS into the Engine ... as it does have a lowspeed input on pin 9 (blue wire coming out of the plug if you're using the supplied cable) which is then multiplexed into the AIS data sent to the plotter ... all it would need is spurious GPS data to confuse it...

Interesting on the Radar input into the plotter - how do you find it? Does it work well? easy to use? Cost effective? Do you overlay the radar on the chart - and does it show AIS targets at the same time? If so, are the AIS and Radar targets reasonably aligned?

 

[Leighb]

Not sure about your first comment, I had an electronics engineer install the system.

Re Radar, I have not used it in anger yet, sitting in the marina the chart oiverlay works OK, and it can display AIS targets, but I have not yet tracked one that was within radar range.

We do have shipping in the river but one has not come by when I have been trying the radar.

Hoping to get out this weekend and see how it all works in a real - hopefully not foggy - situation.

 

[fireball]

don't worry about the first comment - if you'd installed it yourself you'd know what the blue cable was ... I guess you're not putting any NMEA data in on pin 9, but you can check the data feed from the NASA box on the SH300 screen - the AIS mesgs are fairly regular and look more or less the same, GPS mesgs start with GPS (i think!) ... so again - easy to spot ... might be worth watching it for a bit to check...
In the past I've taken a parallel feed out to a laptop and logged all the data there using hyperterminal - makes it easy to see what is being sent by the NASA box - mine was a range problem in the box itself that was then replaced by NASA - all fine after that....

 

[fireball]

forgot to say - come back with some more feedback on the radar & cp300 set up - some pics of the screen in action would be good too - you're the first I've heard of that is doing it - get a good review and sell it to the mags!! /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[Leighb]

Some further info, not been out yet, but was on board today when ships went past.

Radar screen shows AIS targets also, the radar echo updates with each scan, but the AIS position only updates about every 30 secs, so is sometimes in sync sometimes not. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

Still unless you have lots of ships in close proximity it is pretty clear which AIS target corresponds to the radr echo.

A pice of general info with regard to all SH plotters.

They have produced a software upgrade with some increased functionality. Contact SH UK. 01962 866667

The list of improvements includes the following

Allows split screen on the chart page so you can have a diffrerent level of zoom or be viewing a different area on each.
Dedicated AIS List page.
3000 Marks/50 Routes/10000 Track points (This is a big increase and am not sure how they could do it with software?)
Route checking, checks for possible hazards along a route.
There are some other less useful items mentioned.

I have not run the update yet and will report further when I have done so.

Like any other update you need to save all your waypoints/routes etc onto a User C-Card else you will lose them all.