Standard Horizon DSC VHF

L

Laranya

New Member
Joined
9 Apr 2008
Messages
9
Location
Merseyside
Visit site
Being ignorant of anything electrical, I am at a loss to know where to make the NMEA connections to my Raymarine GPS needed by the new DSC radio. The GPS is seatalk linked to the other instruments including the auto pilot but there are only two sealed plug connections at the back of the GPS, a power connection and a seatalk link plus the aeriel connection. Should I cut into the seatalk link or is there a less drastic method? Any advice will be appreciated.
 
Bad luck, it's not that simple with Raymarine gear, because Seatalk is their own proprietary system where everybody else uses NMEA.

First things first, keep the knife/cutters/scissors well away from the seatalk cable !

You will need to buy a Seatalk/NMEA interface box - Raymarine call it a multiplex or mux, but there may be others cheaper.

Your other option would have been to buy a Raymarine VHF, but as a Std Horizon fan myself, I can understand why you didnt.

Best of luck
 
What model GPS do you have? And what model autopilot do you have? Sometimes, there's the possibility of getting NMEA out from the course computer.
 
Sounds complicated (and expensive). The Raymarine set up is about 7 years old so I am loath to interfere too much. Another idea I had was to use a laptop as a chartplotter with a separate usb gps receiver. I wonder if I could gain the nmea connections from the receiver?
 
You could buy an old cheap second hand GPS (eg Garmin GPS45) and wire it straight into the MNEA input of the radio. It'll power straight off the 12V radio supply.
 
Yes, I do exactly that. It means you have a seperate GPS signal into your VHF so if the chips are really down and you lose your Raymarine GPS, you still see your position on the radio and send a DSC distress. for the same reason, I take the independant GPS into the laptop, so I have two totally nav independant systems.

I bought an Evermore with NMEA output, for about £85 (less than the Raymarine mux). Avoid the USB version or a mouse, as it can only go into the laptop directly
 
Do you have a ST50 Tridata Repeater as one of your instruments? If so, I believe that it has an NMEA output that relays all relevant data on the Seatalk bus.

Andy
 
Sounds promising. I have emailed Evermore for advice on the best unit and whether an external antenna would be needed (as I said I have zero knowledge in this area!) When you say you have connected it to the laptop as well, how is this done - through a hub or similar?
 
You need the SA320(NMEA) which you can buy on line from JGTech. it is a simple antenna and receiver comibined, as in a white mushroom, with a bare ended cable. You will need to work out which is the right pair - purple and brown from memory. It will also need a 12v supply.

If you know how to hook it up to a serial port, and have one spare on your laptop, fine. I bought a 4 serial into 1 USB hub, as I put other things into my laptop too - output from the AIS for example, but lets not complicate things.

It takes a bit of working out how to configure the USB ports in the PC, but once done then its no trouble.

Hope I have made this clear - it is to me, but then I typed it! /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
I also have Raymarine electronics and also bought a Standard Horizon VHF/DSC. However, I have a stand alone Navman chartplotter with internal aerial and a Garmin GPS 152 also with internal aerial.

To keep things simple, I have set both the Navman and Garmin as being possible GPS sources for the VHF/DSC although only one can be connected at any one time. So, at present the Navman supplies the GPS output to the VHF/DSC but if I have a problem, it would be fairly simple to change over so that the Garmin would provide the GPS output to the VHF/DSC.

The advantage of this is that I have both a backup GPS and also an optional supply source for the VHF/DSC without and interference to the Raymarine set-up.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top