[BrianH]

I have been looking at PolarView NS and I am very impressed with its capabilities. I want to inistall it on a Powerbook and would like to integrate it into a Raymarine suite (C-120W chart plotter, ST6001 autopilot, St60 and 70 instruments), essentially reading the Raymarine GPS signal and instrument NMEA data.

Is there a way to connect the PolarView program on my mac to the Raymarine SeaTalk/NMEA network?

Has anyone done this before?

many thanks

[brak]

PolarView/PolarCOM require NMEA 0183 data input. You can get NMEA 0183 input from your system in two ways:

1. Use SeaTalk to NMEA 0183 adapter. There is an official Raymarine option as well as a 3rd party adapter. See the following links for details:

Raymarine device:
http://www.raymarine.com/ProductDetail.a...ODUCT=2976

Third-party device:
http://www.gadgetpool.de/bestellen/catal...anguage/en

Raymarine bridge will likely be easier to integrate, third-party device has a number of nice features not otherwise available.


2. Your chartplotter may have an NMEA0183 port available. Generally, this port will provide GPS related data but it may not send instrument sentences. Check plotter documentation for details.

[BrianH]

Thanks for the quick reply.

Can PolarCOM function as a multiplexer to help parse out the various NMEA and/or Seatalk data? Or does the Raymarine unit do that?

thnx again.

-BH

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[brak]

PolarCOM can function as a multiplexor, however the job of a multiplexor is to forward NMEA sentences from one port to another, no parsing involved in that functionality.

The devices I listed above will convert Seatalk to NMEA and vice versa.

[BrianH]

Okay, thanks.

I have decided to take your advice and go with the Raymarine unit. I think it is most likely to play nice with the rest of my system which is all Raymarine. This also limits cross-talk finger pointing among multiple vendors when something goes wrong.

I have two questions.

Question 1: what is the physical medium between the Raymarine SeaTalk/NMEA converter and my Mac? I see from the manual that the Raymarine unit has an RS-232 output. But there is no such thing on a mac laptop. Do I add an RS-232 to USB converter or...what? It also has a two-wire (+ and -) connector labeled "NMEA". What do I wire that to on my laptop?

Question 2: Does PolarView/PolarCom need to, or benefit from, sending NMEA data back to the converter's input side?

Many thanks for your help. I am pretty sure that there are many others trying to find the same answers.

-BH

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[brak]

1. You will need a usb 2 serial adapter. Here is a link to one that seems to work fairly universally:
http://sewelldirect.com/usbtoserial.asp

2. This depends on what you want to do. PolarView/PolarCOM can send autopilot control sentences and current navigated routed data to the NMEA devices. If you want to use that - sending data back is beneficial.