NMEA 2000 and simrad GO7 questions (not good with electronics!!)
 

So I guess I was good all year and the fiancé/santa clause got me the simrad GO7 chart plotter for Christmas. I can do my own work but this one may be out of my league. I'm going to build it into my dash and I would like to use it as a replacement for my gauges as well. I want to get rid of most of my gauges and really clean up the look. The box says in order to use the gauge feature I need a NMEA 2000 system. The boat is an active thunder 25 tantrum with a carbureted blown 468 in it. How exactly does this work? Is the NMEA 2000 a kit I can buy and wire all my sensors and tach to, then wire that to my simrad? I did a search on here and people were talking about "CAN" and "J box". Can someone simplify this?

Ok, I think I answered some of my own questions after enough searching. So the question is has anyone had luck with the Noland RS11? I saw another brand as well that was more expensive....Alba something. If I'm reading this right I have to calibrate my gauges after install. If I'm removing all my gauges how is this actually going to work? Also after it's calibrated lets say I have a sensor or sender failure, will it have to be calibrated again?

I would call Nolan and ask. Been wondering how well there units work as well.

Yeah the RS11 is probably what your looking for. Best bang for the buck in analog to digital converters.

Being a 1998 do you have digital gauges as in Smartcraft or similar?

Thanks for the replies guys. Alldodge-I just have regular gaffrig gauges. Typical gauges with numbers and a needle. Things like my oil pressure and coolant temp sensors/senders are 1 wire and grounded through the body of the sensor. I'm reading things like it depends if they read ohms or volts or resistance. That's when I stop understanding. Thinking I should maybe keep the majority of my gauges and put them around the simrad screen to keep it simple. Thought about putting either the screen or the gauges on the passenger side but I'm the one that has to be able to see them. Is there anything out on the market that is a digital screen that just functions as gauges? I'm thinking both screens side by side would work and then I can see the chart on a full screen and still monitor temps and pressures and rpm and most important....speed! Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

OK, from the write ups the Noland converter will translate your analog signals to NEMA and display on the GO7 if it has the capabilities. No actual gauges are required and can be removed or left connected. Once the RS11 is calibrated it should be up and running.

The GO7 says it can display gauges as long as we are nmea 2000 connected. So we are good there. Ok. Sounds great. I'm going to try this come spring (I'm in NY and the boat is wrapped and has no motor right now) I'll give an update in a few months

I have NMEA 2000 compliant engines (07 496HOs) but they were set up analog from factory. After a lot of parts and headaches we got everything working except for the fuel level (still working on that). It was not a simple plug and play as advertised. All I can say is good luck and get someone very knowledgeable to help.

After some thought and reading it seems the general consensus is that it is a PITA to get it all calibrated and working. I'm going to keep my gauges and just move everything around a bit. Speed I'm assuming will be displayed on the screen without anything since it is a GPS. My gaffrg gps speedo doesn't work anymore so I will remove that.



Last question is how do you guys mount the transponder? Is the Only way to do it off the back of the transom? Kinda looks ugly

Mine is thru hull. I like that better.

Any transducer which also reads temperature needs to be in contact with the water to be accurate. My thought is temp doesn't need to be that accurate, so it can be mounted in the bilge. As with any sounder it needs to be located so there is no air between the transducer and the water. Either make a box, tube of such and mount to the hull where there is clean water. To find a spot, add water inside the bilge and use a sand bag to hold the transducer in place.

Either that or get another transducer, there are several to choose from
http://www.simrad-yachting.com/en-US...s/Transducers/

Well I opened the instructions and it says my transducer can be mounted inside the hull as long as there is no wood or metal in the hull. I don't think the 98 active thunder tantrum has any wood in the hull. It also says that "down scan imaging" may be degraded if done this way. I think I'm going to use Alldodge's method with the sand bag and water to test it out. Correct me if I'm wrong Alldodge.....the only reason you put some water in the bulge is to make it read correctly for the test. Then when it is sanded and epoxyed it doesn't need the water. Also I should be doing the water/sand bag test and actually taking the boat out for a ride to make sure it's a good placement location

Yes, the water is there to remove all the air so the sound will transmit thru the hull, and yes it needs to be done with the boat in the water.

As for securing to the hull, epoxy is great, but I like to use silicone because if after installing it does work quite right it can be removed and tried again. The silicone will hold forever so long as chemicals (gas, oil and such) don't get around it

Since your recommending silicone would I still need to sand anything smooth or will the silicone filling those voids be good do you think?

I have never sanded prior to install, just made sure its clean

Awesome. Thanks for all the help guys. Love this forum!

Or coring. If there is coring you will have some more work to do.

I'm working on getting my NMEA 2000 setup working too. It's pretty easy with the newer smartcraft stuff. I have an existing NMEA 2000 backbone with my GPS and VHF connected to it. I bought the Mercury CAN - NMEA gateway. One end plugs into the j-box and the other end to the backbone. It was working fine, my engine data was displayed on the GPS. I added a .5 M extension cable to make the rigging cleaner and now I am getting a NMEA 2000 fault on my smartcraft gauges? Does anybody know if a there is a difference in the cables that are used as a trunk line versus a drop line?

From what I'm finding the nema drop and back bone cables are the same. Issues with nema is distance and voltage drop. A .5 M cable isn't much but the connector would be the only item I would thing of. When you remove the cable does the fault go away?

Edit: should mention no cable length shall exceed 20 feet (6 M)

How do I find out if there is wood or voting in my hull? I don't think there is wood. Try and contact the manufacturer?

Most boats are made from plywood, then fiber glass, then gelcoat. A sounder cannot transmit thru air, so if there is a void (air between layers) the sounder will not work. The sounder will transmit thru a solid hull. and while I'm not positive how an active thunder is made, I'm pretty sure you should not have an issue

Yes, the error goes away. Maybe I just need to double check all the connections. Everything is in pretty close proximity so I don't think it's a distance thing. The "T" that came with the Merc gateway is different than the others, not sure if that matters. It shouldn't as long as everything is up to the NMEA 2k spec. Also I didn't know if I should use the extension to extend the trunk, or the drop. I guess I can experiment either way. I also read somewhere that the gateway can pick up interference from other devices.