Advice on installing NMEA 2000

[OneDown]

First off, hello everybody! This is my first post and I'm very excited to be here and get and share advice with fellow Sea Ray owners. My wife and I just bought our first boat and we couldn't be more excited!

with that being said, let's get to the fun stuff. My main question is how and what do I need to do/buy for a NMEA 2000 system? To make this simpler let me explain my goal.

Our boat came standard with Navman 5500. I know they have problems and I know they've been bought out so I'm fixing issues before they occur. My vision is to buy the Raymarine A68 with chirp to replace Navman. I'm next looking to buy a dsc and ais equipped vhf (possibly icom's) and then since boat already equipped with external gps I'll swap that out with NMEA 2000 compatible one. I want the ais to be visible on my plotter. Now since my boat has nothing NMEA 2000 I know I have to bring all 3 devices into it. That is where I get lost. Do I need a backbone or can I simply run it into a power supply Navman is already connected to and leave it at that? I'm not interested in fuel consumption or engine diags as I'll use the current smartcraft system in place.

Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

 

[JVM225]

NMEA 2000 was a straightforward install in my boat when I did it a few years ago. I have my GPS chartplotter, vhf, and fuel flows all tied in together.
All of my stuff is Garmin, I don't know how well everything would play together if they were from different manufacturers though.
You need to have/build a backbone up and connect all the stuff together. It really just plugs all together. Very easy.

 

[ttmott]

Yes, you need a backbone, connectors, terminators, and drop cables. There is a protocol on hooking the backbone to power then what end device connects to power also and what do not. Maretron has a NMEA starter kit that is really good. The site sponsor has them which you might consider getting -
http://www.boemarine.com/maretron-nmea-2000-starter-kit/

 

[OneDown]

Thanks for your replies and advice!

 

[Mike Blake]

Before you start anything, you need to figure out what you are buying. Not all backbones are equal. ray has theirs and Garmin has there own.

 

[OneDown]

Before you start anything, you need to figure out what you are buying. Not all backbones are equal. ray has theirs and Garmin has there own.

Good to know, I'm really leaning towards Raymarine a68 bc it fits almost perfectly where navman currently is plus as a shipwreck diver I love the chirp sonar. I'll obviously go with Raymarine external gps at that point but vhf is the wild card I'm not sure of yet.

 

[fc3]

Raymarine's NMEA 2000 implementation uses proprietary connectors... Just to make interfacing via "the standard" more fun. At least they're not as bad as Microsoft and Oracle are when implementing standards.

 

[ttmott]

Before you start anything, you need to figure out what you are buying. Not all backbones are equal. ray has theirs and Garmin has there own.

My Garmin equipment uses the NMEA standard connections. The only ones different are the Garmin end item to end item data connections; these are not a part of the NMEA backbone. My advice is to stay to the NMEA standard for future compatibility. I have never heard of different NMEA 2000 backbones, only different connectors, mini and micro and they have adapters. Why would a company claim NEMA 2000 compliant yet not be compatible with a part of the standard like the backbone or interfaces?

 

[fc3]

http://www.raymarine.com/view/?id=5536
[h=3]SeaTalkng[/h]Raymarine’s proprietary cable system for use in NMEA 2000 networks. The design provides two advantages. First, the connector collars are retained on the product which allows for a smaller cable diameter making installations easier. More importantly, the cable can include a sixth wire which allows for backward compatibility with SeaTalk1 equipment. Products with SeaTalkng connectors can be used on NMEA 2000 networks that use Devicenet cabling through simple connector adaptors and conversely equipment with Devicenet connectors can be used on NMEA 2000 networks that use SeaTalkng cabling through simple connector adaptors.

 

[ttmott]

http://www.raymarine.com/view/?id=5536
SeaTalkng

Raymarine’s proprietary cable system for use in NMEA 2000 networks. The design provides two advantages. First, the connector collars are retained on the product which allows for a smaller cable diameter making installations easier. More importantly, the cable can include a sixth wire which allows for backward compatibility with SeaTalk1 equipment. Products with SeaTalkng connectors can be used on NMEA 2000 networks that use Devicenet cabling through simple connector adaptors and conversely equipment with Devicenet connectors can be used on NMEA 2000 networks that use SeaTalkng cabling through simple connector adaptors.

Great - they've just got to muck up a working thing across a very good standard.
So, if you use Raymarine's SeaTalk NMEA 2000 cabling you need to adapt to everyone else's components.
What do they offer above the others that would instill a preference to their propriety?