NMEA connections Questions ?

[Time To Relax]

I am putting in some new electronics and don't know how to hookup the NMEA wires. This is what I have:

1 Smartcraft Vessel View
2 Garmin 500 Series chart plotter
3 Garmin 100 Series VHF radio

All have the 4 NMEA wires. How do they get connected ? Thanks Fred

 

[jason78]

I recently installed a Vessel View for a friend. See the thread here- http://clubsearay.com/showthread.ph...View-Installation-Swap-out-System-View-SC5000

I was told at the time by Merc that the VV supports only NMEA IN, not OUT. I wanted to get plotter data to his VV and VHF so I figured I would go from plotter to VHF then to VV. I was told this is not an ideal situation by the same Merc guy. He told me putting the VV at the end of a series of devices could cause problems so I just went from his plotter to the VV and it works fine. Just make sure you follow the wiring diagrams and it is no problem, only 2 wires. As I recall it was all NMEA0183.

 

[Phlorida]

I am putting in some new electronics and don't know how to hookup the NMEA wires. This is what I have:

1 Smartcraft Vessel View
2 Garmin 500 Series chart plotter
3 Garmin 100 Series VHF radio


All have the 4 NMEA wires. How do they get connected ? Thanks Fred

Assuming that you want to do an NMEA 0183 connection your plotter is going to have four NMEA wires - Port 1 TX, Port 1 RX, Port 2 TX and Port 2 RX. The VHF and the SmartCraft each have NMEA TX and RX wires. Connect one to the Port 1 wires and the other to the Port 2 wires.

 

[ZZ13]

I recently installed a Vessel View for a friend. See the thread here- http://clubsearay.com/showthread.ph...View-Installation-Swap-out-System-View-SC5000

I was told at the time by Merc that the VV supports only NMEA IN, not OUT. I wanted to get plotter data to his VV and VHF so I figured I would go from plotter to VHF then to VV. I was told this is not an ideal situation by the same Merc guy. He told me putting the VV at the end of a series of devices could cause problems so I just went from his plotter to the VV and it works fine. Just make sure you follow the wiring diagrams and it is no problem, only 2 wires. As I recall it was all NMEA0183.

Everything I have read says you can tie 3 NMEA0183 slaves off of one master. I put that to work on my boat last year by tying both the Smartcraft speedo NMEAin and the Ray215 NMEAin off of my Raymarine chartplotter's only NMEAout. Been working just great. Maybe Vessel View is an exception of some kind.

 

[jason78]

Here is the page from the install manual stating that NMEA0183 OUT is not supported on the Vessel View at this time. This was only a few months ago and it was a recent build date model so I guess it could have changed between then and now but I would check first. As for the VV being at the end of a NMEA0183 series with other devices attached, not working well, that is just what I was told by the Merc tech so I went with it.

 

[Time To Relax]

I just checked my instructions on the harness same as yours wow i missed that ! Saved me again ! THANKS!!!!

Still not sure of how to connect them

 

[jason78]

I just checked my instructions on the harness same as yours wow i missed that ! Saved me again ! THANKS!!!!

Still not sure of how to connect them

All to have to do is go NMEA0183 OUT from Plotter to the IN on the VV NMEA0183 Harness. If you want to try and go through your VHF, just do as Phlorida described in Post 3. Just make sure to connect the OUT or TX + to IN or RX + and do the same with (-) and it shoud work. You may have to go in to the settings on the plotter and tell it to send out NMEA0183 as it may be off by default.

 

[jason78]

If you are connecting multiple devices, it is essentially a Daisy Chain Type setup. Each device (except VV) takes in the NMEA data then passes it back out for the next device downstream. It is a 2 wire system. All the wires should be either labeled or color coded with a description in the device manual as to what the function and (+) or (-)

 

[Time To Relax]

Got it !

 

[Henry Boyd]

If you are connecting multiple devices, it is essentially a Daisy Chain Type setup. Each device (except VV) takes in the NMEA data then passes it back out for the next device downstream. It is a 2 wire system. All the wires should be either labeled or color coded with a description in the device manual as to what the function and (+) or (-)

Not necessarily true. Yes, you can daisy chain devices, if they are both listener, as well as talker devices (in on the listener side and out on the talker side). The issue with this is that some devices will accept all data sentences, but may filter out what it does not use. I ran into this last spring while trying to integrate a DSC/AIS VHF, heading sensor and Smartcraft with our Raymarine set up.

Rather than daisy chain, take the output pair from the talker device to a terminal strip. Then run multiple pairs to all of the devices set up to be listeners. This only works on the talker side. If you want to have multiple talkers going into one listener, you then need to consider a multiplexer. That does not seem to be required in this case.

Also to set the record straight, Vessel View, as well as the older System View, is a NMEA 0183 listener device only. The only way to get NMEA 0183 out of a SmartCraft engine is to install a Merc Monitor.

Henry