Thread: AIS systems
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Old 09-09-2013, 12:57 PM   #15
bobc
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City: La Conner
Vessel Name: Note by Note
Vessel Model: 34 DeFever
Join Date: Apr 2011
Posts: 147
Quote:
Originally Posted by mattkab View Post
I was thinking that a LOWRANCE LINK-8, or a similar model such as this GX-2150 would be a great way to add an AIS receiver to my navigation system.

It looks like they simply output NMEA strings that could be consumed, and that I wouldn't need to worry about a 2nd antenna or a splitter.

Am I right? Anyone have any additional comments or notes on these VHFs with built in AIS?
I've installed the Link-8. Love it! No new antenna required.

The only problem I had was getting to to work using RS-232, or RS-422, with my Simrad plotter (another Navico product!!). In the end, I fed the radio with GPS data from my old Garmin plotter. I think the problem is with the NSS8, not the Link-8. The RS-232 AIS output feeds my laptop with OpenCPN, which really does a nice job with AIS -- much better than the NSS8!

To get the Link-8 to talk to the NSS8, I finally had to build a custom NMEA N2K cable. I didn't want to go through and install a full N2K system with backbone cables, terminators etc. It would have been too large, and way too expensive just to connect two devices. In the end I bought three short DeviceNet cables off of eBay for less than $20, cut off the ends with the connectors I didn't want, spliced the two cables together with a 60 ohm resistor across the data lines, and brought out the power and ground.

It turns out that even on devices that don't get their power from the network cable, power is still required to "enable" the bus.

Now the Link-8 has two sources of GPS which I can select between in the Link-8 menus, N2K and RS-232

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