Have a FULL Suite of Maretron devices and a NMEA Backbone on my older Morgan Out Island 416.
Still using the older Autohelm and it seems to be working AOK - but, it may fail !
What supplier of Autopilots, Simrad or Furuno, (or other ?) would be most compatible to integrated with my ....
Hynautic hydraulic steering
Type 1 reverseable hydraulic pump
Maretron compass, rudder angle indicator, GPS, wind sensor, USB-100, DSM-250, depth/temp/speed
Looking for the most compatible and using cable standards, looking for a system the does not rebroadcast PGNs, one that I can suppress and turn off a PGN, etc.
Garmin is out because they say you MUST use their "brain" which integrates key signals. Many are NOT true NMEA compatible when you go to the NMEA.org site and look !
Ideas, Best Bet ? Best buy ?
Thanks
Mike Barnes
SV Dadidoc
I am using a Simrad AC12 autopilot computer (with AP24 control head but this is of no importance in this context) with an Airmar H2183 compass and Airmar PB200 wind sensor with pretty good results - significantly better than with my previous Simrad/Robertson J300X autopilot computer and the RFC35 compass.
I cannot vouch for your specific hydraulic hardware (I have Robertson HDL2000) but I was told that pretty much any autopilot controller works with any linear hydraulic drive and nearly any reversible pump. The reason, I think, is that the interface is so simple. The are 2 power wires from the autopilot controller to the hydraulic unit and nothing else. The feedback (how far the rudder has moved and in which direction) is provided to the autopilot computer only via the rudder feedback sensor. For this sensor you will have to use the one or two devices compatible with your autopilot computer.
The H2183 and PB200 are interfaced to the AC12 via N2K. I get good to very good performance for steering to course and resonable performance for steering to wind.
I just recently replaced a Garmin 3206 with a Garmin 4208. I had the 3206's NMEA 0183 output talking to a Raymarine Autohelm ST5000+ and everything worked dandy. I could see my 3206's waypoints on the autopilot and the Raymarine would take me to the waypoint. Now that I've changed to the 4208, I can't get the newer Garmin to talk to the autopilot. I've talked to Garmin, checked all the wiring and have exhausted all options. Are these two compatible?? Is there something I am missing here??