I have had enough of older tech mechanical gauges to my helm. I have had enough of older tech electric (32Vdc) gauges to my flybridge. My buddy wants a glass bridges (Simrad) showing 12V71TA data. I like to stay with gauges in my dashes and maybe PC or Simrad I/O later. So, I have to go thru a learning process (old caveman here) for both boats. I know these ideas have been brought up before. Anybody have a working platform yet? Can you offer a shopping list to me for these two boats? My excitement on both boats is removing tons of wires offering room for water or freon line access in the future.
I ve wondering about that too for my mechanical Cummins. The Beede gauges which came with the engines are not precise.
I replaced the mechanical helm-engine temp gauges one year ago. I felt they were not to precise and was weary of waiting for them to suddenly pop up to temperature,, minutes or more later. I'm having the same issue now; a few minutes or many minutes, they pop up and start displaying the temp. Last run, 30 minutes before the port gauge came up. Yes, these umbilicals are 12 and 13 feet long. A pain to replace. To much 46 year old wire to the flybridge. New volt meters read different between the two stations (helm and flybridge). Oil pressure readings between the two stations are crazy also. Here, I have pressure, no alarms. Life is good. This is not to smart. Oh, Stb engine temp stopped working on the bridge. This is accelerating this project a bit. I figure one or two N2K cables should replace these wire bundles (many wires within are still not used). If I could clear all of these over head wire bundles, I could install and evap station in the flybridge cowling and blow cool AC down to my helm..
I've read elsewhere about purpose-made conversion systems, but don't remember brand names or details. I think many start with J1939 (?) stuff... Anyway, a potentially easy way is to just switch from analog to digital gauges, using original senders and wiring. Aetna makes digital tachs and they work well. CruzPro makes digital most everything, and their fuel, temp, and volt gauges worked well for me when I switched over to those. I used Aetna tachs because we had a 4" hole to plug and I didn't feel like remaking the whole panel; otherwise the CruzPro 2" tachs might have been fine, too. One of the original Cummins senders -- oil pressure -- started going bad; simple replacement in kind fixed that. None of that adds any additional data, like EGT for example, but what we replaced worked very well. -Chris
For mechanical engines, such as DD, check out the actisense EMU. It does analog to NMEA 2000. There's another one out there but I can't remember the specifics. The J1939 is a CAN bus on a digital engine. There are gateways (YDEG) that convert it to NMEA 2000. But the engine already has the digital information.
I looked over the Weema/Kus web site. I may need to call them to make sure but it looks like their N2K gauges are just in those fancy cluster thingies. I was hoping to retain the old fashion look of 2" gauges but just all connected in a backbone without all those wires.
Another option is Roland Engineering Model RS-11. I have an older Viking and thinking about this as well. I'd like to keep the analogs but also have NMEA 2000 with some alarm parameters set up. I saw the Actisense set up at the Annapolis boat show and it was impressive.
Hadn't thought about alarms. Seems to me the CruzPro digital gauges, or maybe at least some of them, had an alarm capability. If that matters... -Chris
So far I see these following options… Noland rs11 converter or Actisense both of them appear to be compatible with existing sensors and can be tapped into the existing wiring harness to the the existing gauges although the manual for one of them appears to say compatible only with some VDO euro senders. displays: any N2000 MFD or Simrad IS35 or KUS KMB70 the Simrad appears to fully customizable including pages, alarms etc, not sure about the KUS a Display.
Do I need a RS11 Or Actisense interface boxes? Would N2K senders on the engine just plug into the backbone and sent to the N2k gauges on the dash? I guess some box is needed for management and troubleshooting I/O or a MFD can do this?
With RS11 or Actisense the existing senders are used. The converter takes the analog signals and converts them to N2K data. You can keep the analog gauges and send the data to an MFD or Data Display or just and MFD with no gauges. Diagram on attached link: RS11 - CANbus Engine Data Converter - NoLand Engineering
Replaced all my gauges with these "SMX DigitalView" https://www.sbmar.com/product/smx-digitalview-digital-display/ Plug and pray. Same harness, had to switch sensors on the engines, but only because I have 30+ year old "Frankenstein" Cummins 6CTA. They say the gauges can be sold compatible with any mechanical engines, but they focus on support for old Cummins mechanicals. Put some actual hours on the boat with the new gauges on a trip to the Exumas. Excellent system! All integrated with my new screens.
I understand this, But if I wanted to eliminate these A to D converters, can I just install N2K engine senders onto the backbone or drop?
I have a concern about overwhelming the data stream with too much data, creating instability. I did land my WEMA senders to N2000, and in doing so I had You may also want to maintain the redundancy of electric or mechanical gauges apart from the N2k. I think that would be my direction, to add a dedicated set of senders for this purpose and leave the rest plumbed. Too many times I've lost a tank sender or had a data conflict appear that took down my access to data. Duplicity at sea is king.
