This thing is cool, Chartplotter, VHF w/ AIS DSC

Yesterday I completed the install on my Standard Horizon GX 2150 linking it to my 4210 Garmin. What a great improvement on information and safety available. We moore in a commercial area with fishing, shipping, and other commercial ships so I can see a huge advantage during inclement weather. As well when traveling with others I can see an advantage of having DSC available to call others in our group. I have another separate system to install on the fly. Maybe someone can chime in here. I have a Garmin 740 and SH GX2150 to be installed on the fly what might be the advantage to have those two systems installed on NEMA together? Can I as the manuals state only to have one NEMA 183 in the system and the way I am wiring is each will stand alone with AIS and DSC. Should I consider wiring it up differently? In addition to auto pilot what other features should I think about adding to the system? Thoughts?

If I remember correctly, the 740 is a stand alone unit, and not networkable (via the Garmin marine network) with your 4210. So, you should have no problems connecting the SH radio to the 740 at the upper station.

That being said, I think the 740 is NMEA 2k compatible. You'll have to check with Garmin to see if the AIS data will share via N2K- I don't think it will, as N2K shares info from directly connected sensors. Also, the SH radio operates on a different baud rate (input and output) from N2K.

On our installation (Raymarine) the SH 2150 is at the lower station, connected to the e127 MFD. The system share the AIS data to the upper station e125 MFD via the Seatalk HS network. I ran a RAM mike from the lower station radio to the upper station.

I have two separate SH2150 but was wondering what if any benefits there are in hooking up the two chart plotters?

The major benefit is redundancy- if something fails, you have a backup ready to go. Be sure to program the same MMSI number in both radios!

I have 2 radios onboard- the SH at the lower helm, and a Uniden/WestMarine at the upper helm. Both have remotes, so I have 2 effective radios at each helm station.

bshillam said:

I have two separate SH2150 but was wondering what if any benefits there are in hooking up the two chart plotters?

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I talked with a SH tech about this. My plan is to wire both displays & the 2150 into a buss, he thought this would work ok but I can only have 1 display powered on at a time which isn't a problem. I'am using a SH cp300i & a cp1000.

If you would like to be able to have it on your NMEA2K network so you could have multiple chartplotters viewing you could always get one of these NMEA0183 to NM2K converters. NMEA Converter

N4712 said:

if you would like to be able to have it on your NMEA2K network so you could have multiple chartplotters viewing you could always get one of these NMEA0183 to NM2K converters.
NMEA Converter

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Perfect!

Have you talked to Garmin and asked them what you would like to do? We have Simrad, using their cabling and connectors, you can input NMEA183 to their NMEA2000 system for less than $100 per input. You'd think Garmin would do the same. Let us know what you find out.