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New Integrated Navigation System--From Scratch, 2018

Christian Williams

E381 - Los Angeles
Senior Moderator
Blogs Author
Here's the goal:

"An integrated system, operated and viewed from a portable laptop/tablet and a mounted plotter screen (down below) that gives 'local area' wind direction and speed arrows, and is integrated with GPS location, local charts, current, and ideally, lay lines to the next waypoint.

There seem to be several ways to skin this cat - too many. I'll be happy spend $3-4K on a good integrated system (B&G? Garmin? other?) - especially if a lot of it is wireless ;-) I just can't work out how to make the decision - looking to extended Caribbean cruising, but capable of expanding to further afield."


How do we get there?
 
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Christian Williams

E381 - Los Angeles
Senior Moderator
Blogs Author
Chris and Lisa ("Gadangit") commented in a prior thread:

We have a current generation Raymarine MFD at the nav station down below with wired masthead sensors, depth, boat speed, sea temp. You could do the same with a number of other manufacturers and have identical information. All of them will allow you to import polars if you have them. All of them will do more calculations and display the results than you ever knew was possible. They will calculate tack angles, current, set, true wind and display all this in ways that make sense.

Raymarine also has an app for tablets and phones, just like the rest of them. I can completely control the MFD and the auto pilot (via the MFD) from the tablet via WIFI. The display on the tablet is exact in form and function to what you see on the MFD itself. We keep the ipad in a lifeproof case up in the cockpit. It is either running iNavX or the Raymarine app.
 
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MMLOGAN

Member III
Raymarine/Android - Not so much

After spending the last 4 weekends trying to get my Raymarine MFD to talk with multiple Android based devices via wifi I'm a bit discouraged with Raymarine gear. All of the cabling and switches are painfully expensive and proprietary.

Not to high jack the thread but: I have reached out to Raymarine and typically I'm not at the boat when they can be reached. I have read all of the manuals, checked the appropriate radio buttons, checked the settings multiple times, same network, verified the passphrase, etc. Raymarine remote view app sees the wifi but can't connect. Raymarine remote control sees the wifi but can't connect. Raymarine MFD can see the internet via a hotspot and do an network update but that is as far as I can get. I'm going to attempt and Apple product this weekend and see if that's the issue.

The only good thing that came out of this was the ability to control my Fusion stereo with a tablet or phone. Nerds like that kind of thing!

Christian - good luck with the project. I will watch closely.
 
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Christian Williams

E381 - Los Angeles
Senior Moderator
Blogs Author
It ain't me (shudder the thought).

My current setup works fine. I don't intend to control a motor-driven self-steering unit via wind instrument inputs, so that simplifies things.

My $700 Garmin 7" chartplotter on the binnacle provides the GPS stuff like time to arrival, plus speed over the bottom, depth sounder and water temperature.

At the nav station below I have a Vesper Watchmate AIS which provides course and speed and anchor watch as well as AIS, without going on deck.

I have a Ray EV-100 wheel pilot, but it is controlled only by the P70 control had on the binnacle. I don't need it connected to any larger system.

I don't have the AIS info on the chartplotter screen because of clutter. I go below and look at the uncluttered Watchmate, which gives collision alerts and all the vectors.

I have a discrete Tack-Tick/Ray wireless anemometer, which is just jewelry and not connected to anything else.

The only things that talk to each other on my boat are the radio and the GPS.

Long distance phone communication by (rented) satphone, and weather and Grib files by satphone downloads to a PC laptop using UUPlus and Sailnet.

I am not up on "everything talking to each other" and MFDs.

I think that's probably the new thing.
 

MMLOGAN

Member III
I cracked the code - still disappointed

My 2015 Raymarine E127 MFD will not talk with a router. It will only allow view/remote access directly to itself. I was trying to use a router to share the interface. You can connect to the MFD directly after turning on WIFI and allowing the app to function (view/remote). I was able to repeat my screen on to a tablet and my phone, but, it's not functional for anything other then viewing. It is slow to jump back to the screen after using the remote function which is the reason I wanted to use the tablet. Picture shows the MFD (below) and tablet (above) mirrored.
20180302_070437.jpg
Unless there has been major improvements I'd look at other suppliers.
 
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