Re: What is the best GPS Plotter to buy
- From: Courtney Thomas <cc.thomas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 01 Jul 2006 14:42:57 GMT
Peter wrote:
Larry wrote:Peter,
Courtney Thomas <cc.thomas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in news:txxog.2765$NP4.139
@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net:
Can I connect all this stuff together and if yes, how do you recommend ?
Where is Meindert selling his multiplexers when you need him....(c;
Meindert on the net is the manufacturer of a nice NMEA multiplexer. NMEA
is a very simply, and now archaic, serial data line that can only have ONE
talker talking to a bunch of listeners. Because the Yeoman is a talker,
sending out waypoint data for instance to the other chartplotters on the
network, you'll need a multiplexer with an input port for each talker,
separately. Yeoman, GPS, Compass Sensor, Depth Sounder, etc. Anything
that has data to contribute. Sometimes, you can get a group of same
manufacturer stuff to connect just to one port. Our Seatalk instruments
data all comes out one port on the Raymarine Radar, for instance.
But, on NMEA, you have to have a multiplexer to store the data coming in,
then spit it out, one statement at a time, to all the listeners hooked
together on its output.
NMEA stands for National Marine Electronics Association, IIRC, and
basically defines message data formats and standards for interfacing
marine electronic devices. My copy of the standard is version 3.01
January 2002.
http://www.nmea.org according to the manual, haven't accessed the site
personally.
There are all kinds of ways of doing stuff depending on what you have,
what you want to do and how baroque a solution is acceptable.
We use terminal servers and tcp/ip to avoid all the talker/listener
crap. Just feed each device into a terminal server port and go from
there. This way you can create a gyro heading sentence from a GPS VTG
sentence, for example. Usual caveats apply.
PDW
Meindert has lots of information on NMEA and how to hook it up on:
http://www.shipmodul.com/en/index.html
Peter Bennett does, too:
http://vancouver-webpages.com/peter/
Thank you for your reply and...
If you like to point me to a webpage that specifically describes what I'm trying to grasp, great, else...
Pardon my ignorance but... is a terminal server using tcp/ip a serial connection to the source of the NMEA output [RS232, e.g.] that connects to more RS232 [serial] ports, that is...is it a piece of hardware that is a serial port connecting cable that "branches" into a module having any number of additional serial ports, and whose original single input signal is then available for "processing" on each of the module's additional connecting devices ?
If yes, I assume the original device [Yeoman chartplotter] providing it's output as input to the terminal server hardware, i.e. the multiple output serial ports,... would then require software either from the original sender [the chartplotter] or each of the "attached devices" to the module, would perforce... do additional/further processing of the signal, or, all this is connected to, say, a portable PC, that handles display and needed processing.
If all this is true [basically] and in context, what will a Raytheon radar, a Garmin 75 GPS, and Autohelm autopilot, a Sailor RDF, etc... require, other than being connected to one of the terminal server ports, to process the Yeoman Chartplotter output signal ?
What is the minimal terminal server software that is required to have the formerly described hardware interacting in a suitable manner for typical sailboat navigational purposes ?
Or...should the original signal, from the Yeoman chartplotter, be input to a computer that has the terminal server ports, then be processed by terminal server software... before the connected devices, such as radar for example, gets the preprocessed signal...Or...should each serially connected device [to the terminal server serial ports] be connected to some sort of display terminal..... or what ?
As I'm sure you can see, I'm struggling to understand what an adequate terminal server setup would look like to accomplish the putative nav setup for a cruisin' sailboat.
Finally, is there any off the shelf software [better yet, free] adequate to the above described objective and what 'terminal', if required, do you recommend or is a portable computer the way to go ?
Ultimately,... what terminal [a PC ?], what software and what serial port splitter ???
I apologize for all this verbosity, but I'm straining to be clear here :-)
Most appreciatively,
Courtney
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