- Nov 12, 2006
- 5,334
- Boat Info
- 1999 Sea Ray 330DA
Twin 7.4 MPI (310 propshaft HP) V-drives
- Engines
- Twin Mercury Marine marinized 7.4L L-29 V8s
Cast iron block w 4-bolt mains
It's nice that the network in NMEA 2000 works. It should work. It is still a negative that the protocol is proprietary because many small developers and non-NMEA members simply won't bother to build compatible devices because the sentence structure is not freely available.. Most of the most inventive ideas do not come from the companies of the established old guard. iPods and iPhones come to mind. Sony didn't invent the iPod and Motorola didn't invent the iPhone.
I would not base buying decisions primarily on NMEA 2000 compatibility. Easy of use, reliability, and performance of nav gear are more important. A friend had a Lowrance GPS on his new Cruisers that the dealer installed. It was hard to use and unreliable. After getting stuck in the fog with a useless GPS, he threw the Lowrance out and replaced it with a Furuno GPS/Radar system. Although I have experience with only one Lowrance navigation set, it was a very bad experience. Finally, if you decide to add RADAR, you're out of luck. Lowrance makes a lot of fish finders, but that have nothing in RADAR. While fog might not be a problem where you are, RADAR makes running at night, actually from dusk to dawn, much easier and safer.
Regarding Gary's post about runaway devices. NMEA uses proprietary sentence structure on the standard CANBUS network topology. CAN has proven to be pretty reliable in automotive and truck applications. NMEA 2000 appears to use the standard CAN chip sets, and electrical levels, but wiring, connectors, and the payload packets are specific to the standard and not freely available. I would imagine that hardware reliability, and network integrity is probably pretty good. On the other hand, CAN is slow. Even in automotive applications, multiple networks remain the rule. My wife's car, the newest one we have, has four networks, plus fiber optics for audio. (CAN, SCP, ISO9141, and D2B) Marine manufacturers are planning to put everything, nav, engines, environmental, lighting, ships systems, etc. on NMEA 2000. It is yet to be seen how that's going to work. Supposed to have all of that in the spec. Or so they say.
Best regards,
Frank
I would not base buying decisions primarily on NMEA 2000 compatibility. Easy of use, reliability, and performance of nav gear are more important. A friend had a Lowrance GPS on his new Cruisers that the dealer installed. It was hard to use and unreliable. After getting stuck in the fog with a useless GPS, he threw the Lowrance out and replaced it with a Furuno GPS/Radar system. Although I have experience with only one Lowrance navigation set, it was a very bad experience. Finally, if you decide to add RADAR, you're out of luck. Lowrance makes a lot of fish finders, but that have nothing in RADAR. While fog might not be a problem where you are, RADAR makes running at night, actually from dusk to dawn, much easier and safer.
Regarding Gary's post about runaway devices. NMEA uses proprietary sentence structure on the standard CANBUS network topology. CAN has proven to be pretty reliable in automotive and truck applications. NMEA 2000 appears to use the standard CAN chip sets, and electrical levels, but wiring, connectors, and the payload packets are specific to the standard and not freely available. I would imagine that hardware reliability, and network integrity is probably pretty good. On the other hand, CAN is slow. Even in automotive applications, multiple networks remain the rule. My wife's car, the newest one we have, has four networks, plus fiber optics for audio. (CAN, SCP, ISO9141, and D2B) Marine manufacturers are planning to put everything, nav, engines, environmental, lighting, ships systems, etc. on NMEA 2000. It is yet to be seen how that's going to work. Supposed to have all of that in the spec. Or so they say.
Best regards,
Frank
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