Which new instruments

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roblpm

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There are some old threads but can't see anything up to the minute.....

Just about to spend a grand on a new set of instruments.

So my choice seems to be:

Raymarine I70s pack £1162
Advantages: I fancy an EV100 tiller pilot in the next couple of years so would be logical to match?
Minor disadvantage of an adapter cable to go to nmea 2000.

B&G Triton2 pack £1070
Any better than Raymarine? In particular I need a robust wind instrument!
However no nice tiller pilot?

B&G Triton pack with 2 displays £1100
Last gen displays. But two of them! Are the new displays really any better?

Garmin?
Can't see any advantage.

Tacktick, garmin wireless.
Cant really see any advantage. Though would eliminate a troublesome deck connection.

I just bought an expensive shipmodul multiplexor so don't really care about chartplotters etc. Will all be pc, phone, tablet based. Just need some reliable wind and speed data that doesn't break every 10 minutes!

I am procrastinating......! Aargh......
 
It's been a while since I went through this process, but the Raymarine and Navico systems used to have a different approach to calibration.
Connecting PCs is simpler if the data on the bus is calibrated.
 
Chi34 said:
It's been a while since I went through this process, but the Raymarine and Navico systems used to have a different approach to calibration.
Connecting PCs is simpler if the data on the bus is calibrated.
Click to expand...

Good point that i dont understand properly. Is it possible to calibrate at the sensors somehow so the information on the bus/network os calibrated already?
 
Ok now I am worried........

Someone explain calibration of nmea 2000 instruments! Obviously the displays could correct the information on the bus. But then i would have to calibrate on pc, phone and ipad separately! Is there a a way round this? I want reasonably calibrated instruments for racing.
 
I feel your pain.
I go through this on a regular basis for customers and last year for myself and it isn't easy.

Ultimately though my advice is to go for a nmea 2000 solution as this currently offers the best future proofing.
I chose B&G Tritons with Zeus2 plotter and the wind/speed/depth pack.
Happy so far and have certainly less hassle than customers appear to have with Raymarine equiv.
I have four other bits of non navico nmea 2000 kit and they all just plugged in and worked with no problem.

I too am after a decent tiller pilot system and will probably go with the Pelagic system (https://pelagicautopilot.com/) from the states unless I win the lottery in which case I'll get the Jefa system tied up with a B&G course computer.
 
Javelin said:
I feel your pain.
I go through this on a regular basis for customers and last year for myself and it isn't easy.

Ultimately though my advice is to go for a nmea 2000 solution as this currently offers the best future proofing.
I chose B&G Tritons with Zeus2 plotter and the wind/speed/depth pack.
Happy so far and have certainly less hassle than customers appear to have with Raymarine equiv.
I have four other bits of non navico nmea 2000 kit and they all just plugged in and worked with no problem.

I too am after a decent tiller pilot system and will probably go with the Pelagic system (https://pelagicautopilot.com/) from the states unless I win the lottery in which case I'll get the Jefa system tied up with a B&G course computer.
Click to expand...

I'm halfway through most of this conversion business...
Old boat was Stowe and I added a garmin plotter to replace ancient Raymarine. No way to interface Garmin and Stowe...
Newer boat was all Navico ( B&G), though not NMEA. Hercules 3000 system - B&G Fastnet, linked to a Simrad CX 44 plotter. Nice but no AIS capability. So have gone to B&G Vulcan NMEA 2K plotter - with a link to B&G Hercules 3000 fastnet for wind /depth etc. Until everything is basically NMEA 2K - either wired or Wireless it's going to be something of a pain..
 
OK I am doing a bit of reading on calibration.

It seems it is going to be a combination of which sensor and display I get.

Does anyone know if any of the displays can write back the calibration to the depth/speed wind sensors so they put the corrected values onto the network?
 
Aha. On the I70s the calibrations are stored in the itc5 box. That might be fine for my setup as that will be before the info goes onto the network.

Please note the ST40/i40/i50/i60 and ST60+ displays cannot calibrate the iTC-5. Only the i70 has full transducer calibration. The ST70/ST70+ can calibrate the Depth, Wind and Speed/Temp transducers (not Rudder or Compass).
 
Go for a set of second hand ST60 or ST60+. Recent personal quote from a senior Raymarine technical manager ' they were the best instruments we ever made - they just worked ! '
 
So you will have worked out by now that many N2K systems use the same Airmar DST smart transducer.
This transducer can be calibrated, will store the settings itself and outputs DST data directly onto the bus. Very useful, but this capability is not fully exploited by all systems, so it's worth checking perhaps.
 
Chi34 said:
So you will have worked out by now that many N2K systems use the same Airmar DST smart transducer.
This transducer can be calibrated, will store the settings itself and outputs DST data directly onto the bus. Very useful, but this capability is not fully exploited by all systems, so it's worth checking perhaps.
Click to expand...

Yes thanks. However it really isn't clear......

So I am erring towards the Raymarine offering as it seems to me that the instruments plug in to the itc5 box. The display i70s can then do calibration but the calibration is stored in the itc5 i think. So the nmea 2000 data that is splurged on to the network is corrected. Thats for wind as well as DST. I think......

I will have a look at the wind that is supplied with the triton.

But as i say I think i understand the Raymarine proposition so will go with that. I will call them tomorrow and see if they can confirm my understanding.
 
So four hours later and I am none the wiser.

If I get the raymarine package and calibrate the speed for example it appears that when i send the data over wifi it will be the uncorrected data.

So the DST800 seems the way to go. Then buy something that will calibrate it.

However wind doesn't seem so easy.

What would you do if you wanted to build a pure nmea 2000 network with no display?!
 
Ok so let me restate my question now I understand a bit more......

On my boat I will have some sensors, and a cockpit display.

The shipmodul will then convert nmea 2000 and broadcast nmea 0183 on WiFi.

I like gadgets so potentially on different types of trip there will be a pc with opencpn, an ipad with inavx, an intel edison racebox with its own display, my phone with sailracer.

Obverse it would be nice if all these agreed!

So my understanding is that if I have a system based on the DST800 this sensor can be calibrated and then put the calibrated data onto the network for speed and depth.

However I am getting nowhere with wind. If the wind instrument is off by a couple of degrees and I calibrate it from the cockpit instrument display I think some systems (raymarine?) will store that offset in the display. So that display will show the correct wind angle but I would then have to enter that offset in all the other gadgets of they accept an offset?

So I need a system that will calibrate a dst800 directly and has a wind instrument that is calibrated at the sensor.

Seems impossible to find out?

Does anyone know?!
 
So I just spoke to Garmin support.

He assures me that the gwind has a board on it that stores any offset etc calibration settings. Also comes with a DST 800 that I already know can be calibrated at the sensor.

So I may go for this:

http://rowlandsmarine.co.uk/garmin-gmi-20-gwind-dst800-bundle/

Just called Raymarine and I am not confident the guy knew what I was talking about........

And B&G don't seem to have a number to call!! Only email which I have done.

Its a shame as the Garmin displays aren't as nice and they don't have a nice tiller pilot but it seems for what I want to do, ie have a system where the cockpit displays are really not the main deal, that they have a better system.
 
I bought the Garmin Wind/depth/speed combo pack with an extra GNX20 so had 2 x GNX20 and 1 x GMI20 as I moved away from my old Stowe kit. It was easy to install and set up and has worked fine for the last 18 months or so. I also got a GPSMap 751 to replace my old slow Garmin 550. As the sensors are all on the NMEA2000 bus you can display what you want on whichever instrument. Wind graphics on the GMI and or plotter. The 751 has two NMEA 0183 ports so it acts as the multiplexor between NMEA 2000 and 0183 so my AIS/GPS/Radio are also connected. With the 751 you can wirelessly link it to your tablet/phone as well and with the Helm app your tablet/phone becomes a plotter extension with full control over it including touch display.

I spent ages at the boat show playing with all the instruments from Raymarine, B&G, Simrad etc and there did not seem a lot to choose between them to be honest. I bought all my Garmin stuff from Cactus as they have always seemed to offer the best deals.
 
Your profile doesn't say where you are.. but if you're near the Solent you'd be welcome to see my setup and compare (and try recalibrating)..
I have a Raymarine i70 display and a B&G Triton T41 display together with a couple of Raymarine i60 Analogue wind displays above the companionway. I also have a Garmin GMI10 that is has been relegated to the chart table and a Simrad IS20 analogue wind in the spares cupboard. The GMI10 is a smaller older display and not as good as the new but I don't have a GMI20 to compare it with.

I do find the i60 analogue wind so much easier and natural to read than the digital displays. The i70 digital wind display I'd say is fractionally easier to read than the B&G but the B&G shows the true and apparent wind and other information nicely.

I calibrated the depth on my DST800 transducer using a separate Zeus chart plotter and it seems to have stored the offset because I did not need to set up separately on the other instruments.

I seem to think that the wind calibration was the same (B&G 508 at the masthead) but I can't remember and I've not connected the laptop recently. A good test would be if I connect the laptop up next week and see if the wind angle alters on the laptop and on the Zeus plotters whilst calibrating on just one instrument (e.g. using calibration mode on the Raymarine i60 for example).

Another good feature of the Raymarine small displays is that each display can be powered off individually. Some other displays cannot and are therefore powered on all the time the NMEA2000 bus is powered up.
 
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