T&T: Interfacing autopilot and chartplotter

[Peter Bennett]

Saturday, September 2, 2006, 11:46:21 PM, Lewis wrote:

LB> An update to my auto pilot,  chart plotter problem.

LB> The Navico auto pilot will only accept APA, BWC, BWR and XTE NEMA
LB> sentences, and from that list the chart plotter will only output BWC
LB> and BWR. It also appears that the chart plotter output's NMEA version
LB> 2.3 and my auto pilot don't understand 2.3. I found the following info

The autopilot will require cross-track error, which is not included in BWC or BWR.

LB> I was looking at the info on Brookhouse Multiplexes

LB> http://brookhouseonline.com/nmea_multiplexer.htm

LB> If I understand the documentation correctly using their multiplexer
LB> the output from the chart plotter could be modified to conform to
LB> something the auto pilot will understand.

It appears from Raymarine's description of the R70RC that it will output APB and RMB, both of which will include XTE, so it should be possible to produce an XTE sentence using the Brookhouse multiplexer - you might want to write them for confirmation before ordering.

Also, MARIN ELEKTRONIK AB (link on my GPS site) make various filter/translation modules that may help.


-- 
Peter Bennett, VE7CEI    Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lien Hwa 28 (AKA Polaris 30) "Sea Spray"
GPS and NMEA info: http://vancouver-webpages.com/peter 
Vancouver Power Squadron: http://vancouver.powersquadron.ca