NMEA 2000 to Wifi for iPad chartplotter finally

[BOAT]

I have a 2013 ETEC60 - so I guess NMEA2000 is probably the way to go on that one. It works pretty good - 16 miles per hour at 4000 RPM out in the oceans with 3 foot swells INTO the wind just last Saturday (wind was only 2 knots - really crappy wind on Saturday - thus the motor). Seemed like it was at 15 MPH at only 3000 RPM - that don't make sense.

I still don't know what my speed is at 5500 RPM - I did not go WOT on Saturday because my wife gets all mad when the water splashes up into the cockpit and makes her wet. I suspect the top speed at over 22MPH, but I have not checked it yet - could be even faster.

It would be nice to see all that coordinated with fuel and temperature in real time.

[kadet]

BOAT Yep you will never go WOT again when you see the fuel flow go from 0.2 litre per nautical mile to over 1.5

May I ask what prop you are spinning for those speeds? I am about to invest in a 14x11 Stainless as I am not getting to full RPM any more with my 13.75x13 peeks out now at about 5100RPM.

Back on topic I also think if you go down the full on electronic path stick to one manufacturer be it Raymarine Simrad Garmin etc.. I have a mix of Raymarine, Garmin and PC (and now an iPad ) instruments and even though all the Marine stuff is all NMEA 2000 the only way I could get everything to play nice was a mix of 2000 and 0183 connections. The 2000 protocol allows manufactures to tailor their own PGN statements which don't always cross over to others nicely. Several manufacturers, including Simrad, Raymarine, Stowe, the Brunswick Corporation and Mastervolt, have their own proprietary networks that are compatible with or akin to NMEA 2000.

NMEA 2000 unlike 0183 which is plain ASCII and has been reverse engineered, 2000 is binary and is also a closed protocol although the National Marine Electronics Association divulges some information regarding the standard, it claims copyright over the standard and the contents thereof are thus not publicly available.

[BOAT]

Okay Kadet - I think I will go with the NMEA200 setup on the 547XS

As for the prop? I know nothing - I am a sailboat skipper - I have zip experience with stink boats. I will try to find some info on my prop.

By the way, I made a mistake on my last post about going 15.9 MPH at 4000 RPM - I just looked at the iNavX on my iPhone and it's set to KNOTS!!! I was going over 18 miles per hour!! At LESS than 4000 RPM INTO a 2 knot wind!!

The boat does seem to be a hull of a lot faster under power than I expected, (but what do I know). Just last Saturday the wife and i were on our way to Dana Point cruising along at a speed that to me was maybe just a tad over half?? I was real careful to make sure I was not going so fast as to make a splash because my wife gets mad - but I was going fast enough to plane. She does not like the sound of the motor so I do not run it all the way up, I try to keep it down a little. It seemed to me like we were only going about 11 or 12 miles per hour - I was really surprised to see 15.9 on the iNavX - and really blown away today when I realize that's in KNOTS, not MPH! I have no weight under the rear berths - that might be helpful, but I WAS running a FULL BALLAST TANK!

I was running the RPM around 3300 to 4000 depending on what sounded the quietest to me ? We kept screwing around with it because every 10 minutes or so i would pull back to an idle to see if there was any wind. (We wanted WIND!) It never came, and after an hour motoring around we gave up our plan to go to Dana Point because the wife would rather sail at 2 to 3 knots than ride the motor for 2 hours. (I really scolded her when we got home that she will need to get used to tolerating the sound of a motor for at least 2 or 3 hours at a time because sometime that's the only way to get to any ports way out here in the Pacific Ocean!) She just hates power boats.

If I was going 18MPH the way I had the throttle set on Saturday than I'm pretty sure I can hit 23 or maybe even faster - I will try next time out if the swells are small and there is no chop.

In the meantime I better get that prop info for you.

[BOAT]

Wow! what an ordeal! I finally got this stupid chartplotter nailed down - they keep saying on every web page you see it has G2 CHARTS INCLUDED and there is a rebate Garmin is offering for the VISION G2 BLU CHARTS - very confusing because the unit with G2 charts included is 100 bucks more! 800 bucks! The unit WITHOUT a G2 chart is 700 bucks!! So spend the extra 100 to get 200 back, right? WRONG!

So, you THINK your buying the unit with a blue chart in it that is good for a 200 dollar rebate, but NO! Because the rebate is only good for a chart that has the word VISION in it!!!

SO- you order the 800 dollar plotter thinking your getting it loaded with a chart that's good for a 200 dollar rebate only to find out you still need to BUY a 200 dollar VISION chart to get the rebate!!!

And the guys at West Marine are clueless on this stuff, so don't go there, and GARMIN factory does not really talk about rebates - that's a retailer thing.

So, a guy from GPS CITY in Las Vegas actually called me on the phone after I placed the internet order to make sure I understood my order. Good thing he did - I thought my order already had the VISION chart (G2 vision blue chart) but in reality it had world, and US coastal G2 charts! (Like AS IF that's easy to tell the difference?) So he tells me "look, don't get any maps at all and you get the unit for 100 bucks less,, THEN, buy the G2 VISION BLUE CHART and get the 200 dollar rebate! (GEEZE! they really make it confusing) So, I did what he said.

The key to this GARMIN thing to know is that IF THE CHART IS PRE-LOADED THERE IS NO REBATE! They do NOT PRE-LOAD the "Vision" charts from the factory. Your invoice must have a SEPARATE LINE ITEM for the CHART or NO REBATE! The GPS-CITY guy said the 'Vision' chart is the one that has 3d and all the fancy cartography and mates with the ipad app and blah blah blah and you still get a world chart by default. I said fine, whatever - just make sure I get my rebate.

So mastreb will not be so proud of how well I did buying the unit without him because the way i see it I still paid about 80 bucks more that i think I could have got it for, but at this point I don't care. Kadet will be happy with me because I was damn sure I got NMEA200 by getting the 547xs (well, ACTUALLY it's a 541XS because it has NO maps preloaded). And at least Matt will be glad to know that the unit has the wifi built in and if you don't want to use wifi it also has a blue tooth connection built in - so it will talk to just about any other device you can find.

The guy in Las Vegas said they will go ahead and load the 541xs with the VISION west coast chart for me (I guess it's a chip you need to install after the fact - they said they will do it for me) and ship if FED EXP no charge so I can have it day after tomorrow (fireworks day). It's a good thing that guy called me - he also sent me an invoice that I can send to GARMIN with the rebate to get my 200 bucks.

GEEZE I was getting so frustrated I was just going to give up and buy the 1800 dollar RAYMARINE unit or the 7 inch GARMIN but really, I just don't have room for a 7 inch unit on the wheelhouse.

[mastreb]

BOAT I have to apologize and I'm glad you figured out the echomap 50 wasn't NMEA 2000 compatible. I went into a west Marine store today in New York to have a look at one in the flesh and sure enough, no port. Hard to believe they would remove that but I guess they are using it force upgrades later.

Also, Kadet you are right, the Chetco is serving up about the same thing: NMEA 2000 translated to 0183 over a proprietary protocol. So I blew that one too.

Final chart otter fail: I updated the firmware on my 421s with a blank SD card last time I was out in San Diego. Put the chart chip in my pocket and forgot a out it. Found it in my pocket that night, put it on my desk. Now I'm on the east coast with no charts.

Matt

[kadet]

Also, Kadet you are right, the Chetco is serving up about the same thing: NMEA 2000 translated to 0183 over a proprietary protocol. So I blew that one too.

I won't admit how many times I've blown it too

I did all the research to check my Raymarine SPX Autopilot was NMEA 2000 compatible so it would talk to my GARMIN plotter, The Raymarine control head sees the Autopilot over NMEA 2000 to SeaTalk NG bridge but the Autopilot only sees navigation information over the 0183 connection @#%%$#@ frustrating. What's the point of a standard if it's not a standard

[BOAT]

Hey mastreb - thanks greatly for the help - I hope they can download the east coast for you before you get wet. As for the plotter- you got me 90% there - actually the ECHO is probably the best unit for most people because it does all the great wifi and blue tooth stuff that people really want - (really, NMEA 2000 is for us power sailor people who have big motors to monitor). GARMiN told me they specifically created the ECHO for sailboat people because those people have tiny outboards and do not need monitoring and seldom use autopilots because of the energy loss and battery capacities. The ECHO is more efficient and uses less energy too. Everyone I talked to said the ECHO was the right one for a sailboat. I just failed to mention that my sailboat has a 60HP outboard and a planing hull, goes 22 MPH and has a wheelhouse!

When I give them the details then they tell me I need the GPSMAP series that all the power boaters and fishermen use. West Marine was even worse, pushing their LOWRANCE NMEA 0183 system on all sailboat owners they encounter that has no WIFI or BLUETOOTH because they have a marketing deal with LOWRANCE.

Kadet gave me the course correction on the NMEA thing so I was headed in the right direction, (after all the sales people I talked to it was KADET and the blogs that got me pointed in the right direction!)

Then, after all that you have another battle in regard to charts. That was crazy too - but that guy in Las Vegas got it straightened out.

I really must admit - those RAYMARINE units look great - Man, I was tempted to go that route - nice machines, but I just don't have the room. The M cockpit is so cramped.

Now on to the next battle, an AUTOPILOT! I'm hoping Captain Victor has that one covered.

[mastreb]

I solved my charts problem: West Marine had a one-day $200 off sale for the Garmin GPSMap 740s with built in coastal charts, so I bought that. Upgrading on Monday before the MUCK-about. The 421s will now go onto the wing sail trimaran I'm building to log instrument data.

Matt

[BOAT]

Very nice! And that should plug right in where the other one was!

[BOAT]

Update - I got the chartplotter now - the GPS City guy in Las Vegas actually sent me the 547xs even thought he only charged me for a 541xs - that was very nice of them to do that. And, as he said, there was a separate package of software called G2 vision blue chart. I already downloaded the Blue Charts app for the Ipad and Iphone and checked them out - first thing I did was send a note to Garmin asking them to add the bridge height to the charts - aside from that - the charts look great!

Let me know how the 7 inch screen works out! I bet that's really nice!

[kadet]

BOAT before you drop the coin on G2 Vision enhancements read about them here.

https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/maps/on ... d9618.html

I bought them for the East Coast of AUS and found them a bit of a disappointment as they offer a whole bunch of extra stuff I don't really use and the charts were actually older than the ones included in the standard Bluechart G2 that came with the plotter.

Your milage may vary

[BOAT]

Too late - I already have that - the software package with the eyeball on it just like the one you sent the link on is in the box with the plotter.

It sounds like it's an okay package and since it only cost 29 bucks (that's the real price after the rebate) I figure what could go wrong?

[kadet]

For $29 then that's probably what it's worth to me not the https://www.whitworths.com.au/main_item ... olutePage= they charge here

[BOAT]

Marine Cartography has always been an issue going back to when the paper charts were expensive - expensive because you needed to replace them every two years because of all the changes over here on the West Coast. The Blue Chart app on Itunes that I loaded to the IPAD and IPHONE also has the West Coast chart for 29 bucks - that's about what they are worth, not too bad because the paper one is 10 to 20 bucks each and you need ten of them to cover the same area.

Australia is SO big, someday I really want to go there. When I was a kid I dreamed of going there all the time.