Has anyone upgraded engine monitors?

[brimanst]

I have been looking at getting more information from my 1998 CAT 3196 engines without breaking the bank, or doing too much intrusive work. I have seen the Murphy's Helmview, as well as the powerview instruments. The Helmview is around 2k and supposedly plugs into the normal bus to read the J1939 protocol. I think this will give me lots of information that you newer guys probably already have access to. I have e-mailed the company to see if I can just plug it into an unused connection in the dash, but they have yet to e-mail me back. So I am looking for anyone's experience in this matter. Thanks in advance. If I get answers, I will post them here.

briman

 

[Pirate]

briman- if you're looking at $2k for that unit, why not go with C-Series Raymarine and use the J1939 info on that screen? That way you can get the updated GPS & radar.

 

[brimanst]

I am kind of married to the Furuno solution on my boat. The Helmview product retails for around 2k and comes with its own chart-plotter. I am assuming :smt021 that the powerview product will be less expensive since it does not have that feature. It may be worth the $$$ to have the Helmview product as then I could have a secondary chart-plotter. For even more diversity, I could run Navionics on the Helmview, and C-MAP on the Furuno to get a different view of the same charts.

 

[wkearney99]

Using engine data on the chart plotter never quite works. I've got that data available on my E-80 and find I never, ever use it. I prefer to have a separate gauge for the fuel flow. I already had tachs, temp and pressure gauges. Trying to cram them into viewing on the chart plotter ends up making it difficult to use the chart plotter for actual CHARTS. That and some engine data should be monitored constantly, preferably on an analog gauge. That way you only have to glance at the gauge and make note as to whether the arrow has moved from it's normal position. Putting that on the plotter would mean changing pages, which would mean not having them in front of you constantly. Now, if you have a second chart plotter at the helm it might be worth it, if just got gadget's sake. Trust me, I'm a gadget fanatic and after having put all the time and money into rigging it all up, it never proved to be all that useful (compared to the existing gauges).

But it's really hard to beat the price point and reliability combo of traditional gauges. They do fail, of course, and they get be out of calibration, but replacing them is a LOT less expensive than black box engine components.

Even if you already have a new engine setup that has NMEA2000 sensors I'd still recommend going with multifunction gauges. You still want to be seeing each engine's tach, temps and pressures along with fuel. Some gauges allow upwards of three valudes all on the same display, so in a twin setup you'd probably end up with a minimum of three display. One for fuel (showing each tank and combined flow rate) and then one for each engine showing tach, water temp and oil pressure. You could then use the paging function to dig deeper for other stuff like engine load, fuel trip consumption, alternator, etc. Some displays also allow rotating through pages so you could keep some of the other stuff being presented without tying up a whole gauge for it.

 

[brimanst]

Just for clarification, I plan on leaving the existing guages in the helm. These guages, however do not give me fuel burn (easily) and do not tie into the GPS to get a MPG number. Also, I would like to have the ability to see all of the engine faults in an easy to read format. My analog fuel guages are not accurate, and would like a little better system of tracking what I have left in the tank. The extra GPS ability would be a backup type system. Thanks for all of your info.

 

[wkearney99]

Does a 1998 engine setup even provide the data you're looking for?

I added a pair of lowrance fuel flow sensors and a 2" display to my Raymarine setup. The lowrance display automatically picked up seatalk data for depth and gps. The 2" display isn't terribly convenient for seeing "everything" but that's all that would fit in the space I had available. And it's good enough for showing me fuel flow rates for each engine. I can reset the fuel data manually when I fill it. But most of the time I don't bother. I just reset the fuel trip counter and keep track of total consumption in my head. The larger 4" display makes it less tedious to do this but it's still a bit tricky. I didn't add tank level sensors as my gauges are reasonably accurate.

So unless your engines already have network compatible fuel data then you might find it cheaper and easier to just add a pair of new flow sensors and a display for them. If your existing network already does NMEA2000 then you can just tie into it to get the GPS data. If not then consider just adding a second GPS antenna, it'll give you a backup too.

I'm guessing two fuel sensors, a display and even a GPS antenna will probably be a LOT less than trying to extract it from your engine setup.