Grounding Electronics Question

[midexp]

Can someone let me know where to connect the bare "drain" wire? This is a NEMA 2000 Starter Kit for my Fox Marine Gateways.

Thanks

 

[Skybolt]

On DC circuits you can connect the bare wire drain with the black negative wire to the same connection. Only with AC does the green ground wire matter.

 

[dtfeld]

I’m not sure it’s required to be connected to anything, but it can be connected to DC ground.

I think an RF ground is needed to operate a HF Radio.

 

[LattitudeAdjustment]

I’m not sure it’s required to be connected to anything, but it can be connected to DC ground.

I think an RF ground is needed to operate a HF Radio.

I agree, an RF ground is critical for an HF radio but the direction I think he is headed, it is not as critical. I would still make some connection to ground as sometimes you can get stray RF noise that could interfere with your sonar, GPS receiver, that nice new stereo everyone loves messin with. It is just annoying noise that some of our newer electronics emit, just like our computers at home. Generally coming from the clock (not like a clock on the wall) circuits, but plenty of other areas on just about any marine electronics device made in the past 10 years or so. Take an AM radio and put it near your internet router and you will see what I mean. Ethernet makes a lot of noise if not shielded properly.

The ground can reduce some of the stray RF noise a fair amount, especially if you are jumping on a NMEA 2000 backbone. The NMEA 2000 Gateway is usually powered from your NMEA 2000 backbone should be galvanically isolated from Ethernet (if that is ultimately what you are doing). Reading this post back to myself, it looks a little confusing, but I will leave it as is and let you google from there.

Good luck capn.

Vince

 

[ttmott]

You can connect the drain wire with the battery negative wire. If you have multiple isolated power taps in your system only connect one drain wire for the entire NMEA 2000 network; cut all of the others off.

 

[midexp]

Thanks to everyone for the feedback. Based on everyone's input, I will connect both the drain wire (without a connector) and the black ground wire (with a connector) to an empty spot via a screw on a bus bar that has lots of other black wires connected to it.

 

[ttmott]

Thanks to everyone for the feedback. Based on everyone's input, I will connect both the drain wire (without a connector) and the black ground wire (with a connector) to an empty spot via a screw on a bus bar that has lots of other black wires connected to it.

Crimp them both together to a ring terminal then put that ring terminal on the negative terminal block. I also put a piece of shrink tube over that bare drain wire so it doesn't short to anything.