Koden Mdc 2000 Installation Manual

[Do Kieu]

TheFuruno product guys have brought up this thread and questioned

the advantage of NMEA2000 AIS Data over direct NMEA0183 when their

systems will automatically convert the AIS data and pass it over

Ethernet at 100 Megabits/second vs. 250 Kilobits/second for NMEA2000.

(According to them, the existing Ethernet network has 400 times more

bandwidth and can be easily scaled to 4000 times higher in the future).

They say that Raymarine has the same capability vs. soaking up a

relatively large chunk of NMEA2000 Bandwidth with AIS data that is only

needed by the main navigation displays?

They also say that it is much easier to push AIS data and all other

navigation data to onboard PCs via Ethernet either wired or wirelessly

instead of having to purchase individual NMEA2000 Gateway Hardware for

each PC via USB.

My question is what is the advantage of NMEA2000 over NMEA0183 AIS

Data Distribution considering AIS data only needs to go to a few select

displays on the vessel for monitoring/Alarm purposes? Their point seems

valid to me as a technician responsible for installing this stuff on a

variety of vessels.

* VHF radios that can understand AIS data, and hence make DSC calls to targets, are coming soon and will eventually do that via NMEA 2000, I think. The relationship between VHF radios, AIS, and MFDs has all sorts of potential features, as Garmin is showing, and N2K seems the right common cabling and protocol to make those happen between even multi brand devices.

I see no future for nmea2K , its technically obsolete, about 8 years to late and not capable of really being scaled up. Was at a connectfest thing run by NMEA at METS. very relucant to discuss 2K problems.

George & Dave, have you actually used it?

There really is no wired alternative to NMEA-2000 except to stay stuck in the past and continuing to use NMEA-0183. Install even a little NMEA-2000 on your boat, and your not likely to object to more as you start to view your 0183 wiring as unreliable.

No future, I disagree.

One thing almost insuring a future for nmea2k if nothing else, is that the wireless protocols under development make it hardly likely there will be demand in the near term to exclusively adopt an appropriate form of wired ethernet on boats, and as long as we need to run +12v to components, the adoption of exclusively wireless protocols into boats will be slow as well.

My friend forwarded me the link to this site since we had spoken about this subject at the end of the Summer.

-Who ever said that the Furuno AIS over Ethernet Data is closed or encrypted in some way?

I am a Software Developer who has an older Furuno Navnet vx2 System

Hi Russ,

RE Furuno opening up the data format, only the radar / sounder data formats in NavNet are propertary.

The FA-30 i have here and NavNet 3D system installed on a local boat we have interfaced other software packages using wired and wiress nmea data from NavNet.

Simply install GPS Gate and set it to read UDP Reciever from port 10021 this will give you access to all of NavNets NMEA data.

FYI if you need in a NMEA 0183 GPS into a NavNet port that data is transmitted around the network on that port along with everything the navnet has on it.

Our the vessel we take NMEA2000 wind data, NMEA2000 GPS, NMEA 2000 Depth, Furuno Depth (DFF1), NMEA 0183 Depth, Waypoint / Cross Track Error data all via NavNet and a wireless router box to the customers wireless tablet pc.

Very simple Furuno doesnt use a closed format for transfering the data around there ethernet system it just requires a little bit of digging..

Andy

Norse,

In my experience N2K has advantages and disadvantages.

If your rewiring everything for NMEA 2000 then it works well its when you start throing NMEA 2000 / 0183 into the mix (mainly because products like the Actisense gateway were not avalable when they should have been)

regarding furuno ais to n2k would a Actisense gateway not do this job? or anyone elses translator using the inbuilt 0183 output?

Furuno seems serious about the ethernet for AIS as there Class A FA-150 also has an ethernet upgrade kit you can put into it.

if people are serious like Russ saying disband NMEA etc the only way is to gather enough technical people and create an open standard.

My vote after installing electronics for years would be ethernet everything as it provides a robust easy to install system but you have the issue of a centeral hub.

Ideas guys?

If there was a standard for Ethernet the manufactures would not spend tens of thousands on developing their own packet protocols for everything when you could program one off the shelf.

The reason all our big makers have made their own formats and the rest as they say is history.

So few brands using Ethernet by terms of makes i can think of the entire Navico range, Furuno, Garmin, Raymarine, Nobeltec / Koden, that accounts for nearly all the big MFDs where high speed links are needed.

Connectors.

Furuno, Raymarine HS and Garmin all use standard RJ45 cables and connectors. Its the waterproof surrounds each make as their own take on but in a non-fly bridge installation you can use your own standard cat6e cables.

NMEA 2000 issues.

Yes this was all made of airmar (LTW) or maretron cables.

Apart from the power advantages of (some) devices running off the NMEA2000 bus i really dont see the point of it, basically on most installations you can do nearly everything with NMEA 0183 and Ethernet.

The leisure / recreational market in the UK is slowly adopting NMEA2000 but this is adding lots to the install costs with one boat i work on having a seatalk network, navnet network, nmea 2000 network and nmea 0183 network the converter boxes required to make it work is silly. If we took out the NMEA 2000 network the install costs would have been significantly reduced.

The commercial market has not even heard of NMEA 2000 let alone starting to adopt it.

Maybe IMO should make the Ethernet standard and this could then be back ported to the recreational market.

I guess we will never all agree, the decisions that have been taken are now set and we have to make best of what we have..

Jon, both the NMEA-2000 and -0183 specs are available from the NMEA. Unfortunately, they cost a lot (especially -2000), and they are covered by a license so you are not allowed to make the specs public.

Thr reason that -0183 is openly documented is that it was reverse-engineered, or in some cases manufacturers published their particular data formats. Reverse-engineering was pretty simple, since the language is standard ASCII over a standard serial connection. Still, it did take a while.

NMEA-2000 is more difficult to reverse-engineer because of the binary format and less-common interface. Still, some people are doing it, and as NMEA-2000/USB interfaces become more common the reverse-engineered specifications will become generally available. This, too, will take a while.

Thanks Kees. I think the spur approach makes sense. I plan to add depth/speed/wind instruments in the cockpit (Furuno FI-50 or Simrad IS20) and that could be a spur as well.

Where can I find the Simrad 7 port concentrators you mentioned?

Noel

John K,

You are confusing NMEA0183 with NMEA2000. Yes, NMEA0183 is quite easy to troubleshoot because it is NOT a network system! Instead, NMEA0183 is a Point-to-Point or Point-to-Multipoint protocol.

Isolating the problem can be quickly determined by looking at the Talking product or the Listening product. It is true that NMEA0183 is a ASCII Serial protocol which is why Hyperterminal is a good tool as described in the link you posted.

NMEA2000 on the other hand is based on a CAN BUS infrastructure combined with non-isolated DC power. Hyperterminal and RS232/422 serial ports are useless with NMEA2000! If and when there is a problem with the NMEA2000 BUS network, troubleshooting will be much more complicated and require special software and hardware in most cases.

This is the argument against a single backbone, multi-sensor NMEA2000 BUS presented by some in the comments of this post.

The iKonvert NMEA 2000 to USB converter is a smart and flexible gateway. Therefore allowing software applications (apps) to read/write NMEA2000 data. This can be either for ultimate analysis and control as RAW binary PGN data. Otherwise for conversion to the older and more commonly supported NMEA0183 data.

Every popular Marine Navigation app that runs on PC/MAC/LINUX computers can read NMEA0183 data. iKonvert provides a simple, reliable and cost effective way to access the navigation data on an NMEA2000 network. Simply set the DIP switches inside iKonvert to the required data mode that you want to use. As a result, iKonvert will extract the selected data from the NMEA2000 network. The data is then provided to your marine app in a format and at a baud rate they support.

Yes, our iKonvert uses the popular FTDI serial to USB chip and the LINUX and MAC OSX drivers for this chip are included in the relevant operating system\u2019s kernel. It should appear in the operating system as a serial device named \u201cttyUSB0\u201d (or similar) when plugged in to a LINUX or MAC machine.

Our iKonvert can output converted NMEA 0183 sentences or the RAW NMEA 2000 data depending upon which mode it is set to (see user manual for more details). You can either set the mode by changing the four DIP switches inside the iKonvert or you can do this programmatically by sending a serial command to the iKonvert and the unit will stay in this mode even after a power cycle.

The gateways take care of all of the complicated address claiming, network discovery and NMEA 2000 network management, simplifying and speeding up your software implementation. Here is a link to our iKonvert Developers Guide on GitHub\u2026

If you have not already developed software to read and write NMEA 2000 data, then you might want to look at the\u00a0open source CANBoat software, which supports our iKonvert as detailed in the CANBoat Wiki, see link below. The developer Kees, has over a number of years, reverse engineered the NMEA PGNs and the data is translated in to a more simple and open JSON format.

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