[Sentoa] Sentoa Digest, Vol 68, Issue 7

[Jim Waskowich]

If you look at the models by year, Nordic has been modifying the hoods and dashboards to accomodate MFDs and add'l electronics.  Seems to be a "growing" trend.  I think it will become commonplace to expect 2 MFDs instead of the myriad of smaller, discordant single function displays of the past.  If I were outfitting, I'd be concerned with futureproofing, as you seem to be.  Unfortunately, it sounds like you're caught up in the frustration of being an early adopter and there are still too many proprietary aspects with a lot of the equipment.  A friend of mine went through a similar drill last season installing a Navnet 3D system in his boat.  What he found was that he really needed to think the system through and dig into the technical details to achieve a successful installation.  That said, the end result was very impressive both visually and in terms of the overall capability of the system.  Have you resaearched Furuno, or are you committed to Garmin
 at this point?

Jim Waskowich
Grand Adventure
NT37-142


--- On Wed, 2/11/09, SVToybox at aol.com <SVToybox at aol.com> wrote:

> From: SVToybox at aol.com <SVToybox at aol.com>
> Subject: Re: [Sentoa] Sentoa Digest, Vol 68, Issue 7
> To: sentoa at lists.samurai.com
> Date: Wednesday, February 11, 2009, 12:33 AM
> Jim,
>  
>      It's been a frustrating experience.  Although  the
> Volvo Canet can 
> provide 4 different parameters for the engine & fuel 
> usage my research has 
> disclosed that neither Raymarine or Garmin or the PC 
> suppliers of software such as 
> Maretron and Albatross can read anymore than 6 of  the
> parameters, all of which 
> are available from other sources.  In  addition, the
> instrument hood on the 
> 32 is approximately 2-inches too short to  accommodate
> Garmin's 12-inch touch 
> screen chart plotter, Raymarine's units are  even
> larger. Therefore my dreams 
> of using 1 plotter to display all of the  instruments have
> been totally 
> frustrated leaving no point in rebuilding the  instrument
> hood to accommodate the 2 
> plotters.  
>  
>     Plan B is evolving, but consists of mounting in the 
> instrument hood 1 
> Garmin 5212 twelve inch chart plotter and 4 NMEA 2000 four 
> inch displays 
> including their auto pilot and 3 general displays that
> permit  screen splitting.  As 
> to how much of the Volvo data will be translated to  the
> NMEA 2000 network is 
> uncertain.  Each only knows their own equipment  and not
> how it interfaces 
> with the other equipment.  Certainly someone must  have
> done this before, but it 
> is a well-guarded secret.
>  
>    I have added a fuel tank sending unit and a rudder
> position  display to 
> the system and am hoping that they will cross from the old
> to the new  NMEA 
> network through the chart plotter.  I am currently
> determining whether  the NMEA 
> 2000 GPS can be independently interfaced with the NMEA 0183
> network so  that 
> failure of the plotter won't take out GPS information
> from the SSB,  VHF and the 
> Pactor II modem for e-mail.  
>  
>    All of this is taking far more time than I expected.  I 
> will keep you 
> advised and of course would appreciate any comments or 
> suggestions.
>  
>     Bill Bowen
>     NT 32-287