Interfacing Electronics

[JD5652]

I've been wanting/needing to interface all my electronics for some time now. I have a general idea of what I need to do, but wanted some input from those that have done it before. Here's my list of electronics...

Chartplotter/GPS - Garmin 3010
Radar - Furuno Model 1942MK2
Bottom Machine - Furuno FCV-585L
VHF (Primary) - ICOM 604
VHF (Secondary) - ICOM 504
SSB - ICOM 802

My goal is to interface the Chartplotter/GPS with the Radar, Bottom Machine, both VHF's and SSB so that the radar and bottom machine will display coordinates and the VHF and SSB will display and have coordinate data for MMSI operation. My thought is to wire a dedicated signal bus for the output of the Chartplotter/GPS and then tap off the signal bus to each device.

Will this setup work? Does anyone have any other tried and true interface setups?

Thanks!

[Banshee]

Yes what you want to do will work. Just get the colors straight for output and input. All the companies change the colors, they are all different.
Then you need to get the nema sentances right, less is better. I managed to get some added electronics to talk to each other, next project to get the Tll buttons on My Furuno FF and my radar to talk to the plotter. It wokred grat on my old boat , it a button and the target was displayed as a waypoint on my plotter.
Youll get it.
JW

[clt_capt]

I'm assuming that your electronics are like mine - a few years old and don't support the newer ethernet (NMEA2000) stuff...

All of my electronics have NMEA 0183 serial interfaces.

The output feeds from the GPS/Chartplotter (Furuno 1650) connects to the first bus, My radar, Autopilot, Scope, and VHF have their Receive leads attached to that bus.


If you'd like more info, please let me know