Greetings,
Does anyone know, or have experience with, connecting a EV-100 wheel autopilot from Raymarine into an existing NMEA 2000 network supporting Garmin instruments? Would the EV-100 need to run on its own network?
Thanks in advance for any assistance.
Dan
s/v Gypsy Soul
Just using regular NMEA 2000 tee connectors and Raymarine SeaTalkNG-to-N2K adapter cables (not the opposite) to drop the EV-1 and control head into your existing network should work fine. Just be sure that you understand where the original backbone and terminals are before adding drops (aka spurs) to it.
I've had the EVO-1 sensor on Gizmo and all MFDs including Garmin saw its Heading output. I can't guarantee that the pilot will see wind info from the Garmin instruments but it's very likely.
Ben or anyone,
I have the same components as Dan on my sailboat. I am running the Garmin chartplotter and wind and depth and speed and additional displays on my Garmin NMEA 2000 network. The EV 100, PS70 display on the Seatalk ng network. Each network has its own 12 v supply. Can I disconnect 1 12v power supply from either the Garmin or Raymarine network and the drop cable connecting the two systems will power the whole network?
Thanks,
Rick
Rick, it's not the same situation since you already have two separate N2K networks established. You can not just put a drop cable between two networks.
You could use an N2K bridge to connect the two networks (and leave the power supplies as is) or you can reconfigure your networks so they are one. There has to be an understood backbone terminated at each end (so two of your terminators will go away) and you'll only need one power tap.
The cleanest way to do the job is either with N2K (aka DeviceNet or Micro C) to STng adapter cables or STng to N2K adapter cables. However, you could probably get away with splicing STng backbone to N2K backbone and thus save a lot of cable and connector expense.
But I think you should study how N2K networks are designed first. Both Garmin and Raymarine have good manuals on the subject. You'll see the concerns about drop/spur cable lengths, proper backbone termination, and possible voltage drops. STng is just an alternate way to do the cabling and connectors. You can mix them up but it's best to understand what the electrical goal is.