[CA] [CA11] NMEA2000 GPS Data

[mjhooper225]

Greetings, I am looking for some assistance in supplying certain NMEA2000 PGNs to an MFD since it appears as though certain messages are being filtered. A little background: I work for a company that does maritime simulation so we have software that currently drives radar displays / instruments with standard NMEA0183 data successfully. We are looking to expand our simulation capabilities to provide NMEA2000 data to the same type of displays / instruments in a classroom setting (not aboard actual ships). I have a bare bone NMEA2000 network with a power supply and an Antisense NGT-1 USB adapter that connects my PC to the network.

I have tested our NMEA2000 software with another instrument (Furuno FI70) and have proved that I can send Depth, SOG, COG, Time of Day, ROT, and a couple other PGNs. I was unable to get Position (129025) or Heading (127250) to function correctly however. We also have a Raymarine eS Series MFD in house that when hooked up to the same NMEA2000 network in place of the FI70, fails to receive Position or Heading Data. If I look at the debug menu for Tx/Rx buffers I can see the PGNs for both of these values making it to the display and the data is matching what I am sending.

I was wondering if anyone has successfully used an NGT-1 for supplying GPS or heading data to an MFD? When I go to System Settings -> Data Sources -> GPS I don't see my NGT-1 device as a choice like I do when I go to something like Depth. My best guess at this time is because the NGT-1 is classified as a “Inter/Intranetwork” “PC Gateway” device and NOT classified as a "GPS" device. As such, I think maybe that the display doesn't process the PGN for position despite it being formed correctly. I do not have a real GPS sensor I could hook up and test with however so I thought I'd see if anyone else has had success with this or has and other insight I may have overlooked.

My apologies if this isn't the right Forum for posting this question! If it would be better answered under a different topic please let me know where it should go.

Regards,
Mike

[Chuck - Raymarine - Moderator]

Welcome to the Raymarine Forum Mike,

I'm not aware of any who have used the Actisense NGT-1 for such purposes. However, the Actisense NGW-1 is commonly used for bridging NMEA 0183 to NMEA 2000. Whereas you have a proven source of NMEA 0183, I would recommend that you consider using the NGW-1 to bridge this data to NMEA 2000 for use by the eS-Series MFD, or that you consider simply interface the NMEA 0183 source to the MFD's NMEA 0183 leads.

It may take some time to free engineering resource to provide the requested information. If seeking to model the content of the PGNs required by the Raymarine electronics, it may be more expedient to consider interfacing the NMEA 0183 source to the MFD's NMEA 0183 port, permit the MFD to bridge the data to NMEA 2000, and then use the NGT-1 w/NMEA Reader software to capture the NMEA 2000 PGNs transmitted by the MFD. This captured PGN content may then be used as model for that which will be accepted by the MFD.

The NMEA 2000 specification may be ordered from NMEA.