New to Mac nav issues. Want to interface Macbook Pro with Raymarine C80. According to posts I've found, I need the Keyspan serial to USB adapter, and the Raymarine GPS to serial cable. I've looked at both online and I don't like the look of the Raymarine cable: three bare wires that need to be attached somewhere. There is an unused NMEA port on back of C80, so I thought there must be an NMEA to serial cable that I could just plug in? But then I read that Raymarine doesn't support uploading of waypoints and routes, which is all I really wanted to do anyway, so what's the point of bothering to figure out and connect cables? Somewhat frustrating.... Thanks for any and all enlightening responses.
Interfacing a Mac rig to a Raymarine system is pretty straightforward. You don't necessarily want to actually connect to the C-80 but rather to the brain of the raymarine system, it's course computer, the electronic component of the autopilot. If you have no autopilot, you would connect to the C-80.
The easiest way is to get a NMEA multiplexer (ShipModul is my preference) which will do the Seatalk to NMEA conversion.
In terms of uploading waypoints and routes, the Mac would actually be dumping the waypoints and routes to the Raymarine system thru the multiplexer. I've not used the C-80 but I don't see why it wouldn't be able to accept a standard NMEA stream.
Where are you located?
I'm not able to get my powerbook to talk to my c80. I have tried both via a keyspan USB adaptor directly to the c80 and via a shipmodul usb41 multiplexer. The only data that comes through the nmea port is speed and depth. no heading or wind info and no transfer of waypoints or routes. Has anyone succesfully done this?
I have worked with the customer to resolve the waypoint transfer problem. MacENC is displaying speed, wind, depth, heading in the Instruments panel. The C-80 is not displaying wind or heading from the interfaced B&G System. That is a problem Raymarine would need to address.