I have recently purchased a Raymarine Axiom MFD and would like to connect my radar to it as I understand on reading the documentation that the Furuno radar model 1621 (which I already have installed on my boat) outputs NMEA 0183 data. I thought that all I would need is a device to convert NMEA 0183 to either NMEA 2000 or SeaTalk (which Raymarine use) to connect to my Raymarine device but I have been told that it may not be as straightforward as that and may not even be possible depending on what the output from my Foruno radar gives. Do you have any experience of doing this and if so, could you let me know what I would need to achieve this please.
Hello Clive,
I'm sorry to say that there's no way to get the image from one manufacturer's radar on another manufacturer's display: as yet, there is no industry-standard equivalent of NMEA2000 that is capable of carrying radar imagery (NMEA2000 itself is much to slow for graphical data like this.) Every radar uses a manufacturer-specific proprietary communications language at present. The NMEA organisation's OneNet protocol may allow this in the future, but that's a way away at this stage. You can connect Furuno radar displays over NMEA0183 or 2000 using appropriate connections or interfaces (depends on the specific devices in question) but that will only share things like MARPA target data and cursor position, not the radar image itself.
Regards,
Tom