When we bought Dulcinea her instrumentation was mostly from around 15 to 25 years ago. At some point she had been fitted out for medium wave radio with one backstay used as an antenna and an auto tuning unit in the port lazarette, and lots of wiring for connection to radios and a computer, all of which were unlabelled and threaded via mysterious routes! Her basic instrumentation consisted of Raymarine equipment, either original or added during the first few years – 3 ST60 displays with wind, depth and water speed, and ST 7000 (?) autopilot, with a Raymarine C90W chartplotter. At some point a Furuno Navtex and Furuno GPS/AIS receiver had been added, plus a more recent VHF radio that had never had the DSC enabled and thus could not transmit(?). There was also a Raymarine XXXX digital radar connected to the chart plotter. All this kit worked, except for the paddle wheel log, which in my experience never work, except for a few days after you meticulously clean the wheel and the Navtex, which has a broken antenna on the port quarter.
My first priority was to get the VHF licence sorted so the radio could be used, but I also wanted to fit an AIS transponder as a significant safety feature, particularly on a sailing vessel as it gives you a modicum of priority in open water over ships! I don’t like the thought of only having one VHF antenna – on top of the mast – so I put another antenna on the davit on the starboard quarter for the AIS or as an emergenccy VHF antenna if the masthead one fails. B & G offer the V60-B VHF with AIS transponed built in, and this seemed a good solution with a separate antenna for VHF and AIS. I modified that decision later and put in a Quark antenna combiner so that I had the option of combining the VHF and AIS to either antenna – thus getting better AIS range when on the masthead compared to the 4m height of the aft antenna.
There was a Raymarine interface EB5001 to connect the NMEA 0183 output of the Furuno GPS to the chart plotter ST1 network, and to convert the ST1 to RS232 for a P.C.
My objectives for now are to keep the Raymarine chart plotter, at least for the time being, as it interfaces with the radar, is an independent chart plotter and it has STng and a handy diagnostic mode that shows all ST1 and STng messges in and out. I normally do my navigation using Navionics on a couple of tablets, and that will still be the case, although I will fit an Orca Core2 and may change to using the Orca software for navigation, although I don’t find it as useful as Navionics as the bathemetry is much less good (that seems to be the general view on You Tube!).
Adapting the system to accomodate the Core2 and the B&G V60 requires that there is an NMEA2000 network, and to connect that into the chartplotter requires that there is a NMEA 2000 to STng conversion – fortunately only a plug compatibility issue. To get the legacy Raymarine ST networked kit – autopilot, wind, depth etc onto the Core2 requires an interface between the ST1 network and either the STng or the NMEA2000 part of the new network. Since I have the STng network to connect to the chartplotter I might as well use the Raymarine XXXX to connect the ST1 network to the STng network and then link that into the NMEA2000 connections. Thed diagram might make that more understandable!
Once those modifications are done the Furuno AIS is redundant and will be removed – I have a standalone AIS receiver from my last boat that talks via wifi to a tablet, so that will do as a standby AIS receiver. I will try and get the Navtex working, although the antenna are active antenna and very expensive – otherwise it will go!
I will have a 10 inch tablet at the helm with a charging point running Orca &/or Navionics, plus the wireless handset for the B & G VHF. Under the sprayhood I will have another t9 inch tablet running Orca/Navionics that can be used to show data or charts. There will be the two ST60 displays above the companionway showing wind and depth that can be viewed from the wheel.
Questions to be addressed as I make the changes are:- 1) Does the basic ST1 network link in with the NMEA2000 and the ORCA Core? 2) Does that allow the autopilot to be controlled from the ORCA app? 3) Can I get the radar to work with the Orca system? 4) Can I get the Navtex to work and is it worth it – I may have a go at rebuilding the antenn, it shouldn’t be difficult to make a 490Khz amplifier!
here is a .pdf of the proposed wiring diagram;-
UPDATE;-
The old ST60 wind and depth/log and multi run from the Autopilot supply, the Raymarine plotter C90W is on its own supply and connects via Seatalkng. The Seatalk and Seatalkng connect into an EB22158 Seatalk to Seatalkng interface, which connects via a Seatalkng to NMEA2000 lead to a 4 way NMEA2000 junction . The NMEA 2000 junction has a connection to the ORCA Core2, the B&G V60-B vhf and the Yacht Devices engine interface. Much to my surprise it all worked first time and I could see all all the data on the ORCA app on my tablet – the only problem was the wind speed is shown on the ORCA as half of that shown on the ST60, which is itself somewhat exagerated as far as I can judge clearly some calibration to be do. The only thing I hadn’t expected was that the EB22158 is powered up from the Seatalk autopilot input. Since the EB kit comes with a separate power lead I expected it to need a separate supply input. As I want to be able to use the ORCA tablet with AIS from the VHF without having the whole Autopilot circuits powered up I will put in a power isolator between the Seatalkng and NMEA networks and power up the NMEA2000 bit separately. – .