Task Completed.
My GPS antennas finally arrived. Having figured out the Nmea wiring with the help of the trusty prototype E series I have lying around I was very quickly able to work out the pins required for this little GPS
I removed the connection board from the rest of the PCBs. Once I had desoldered the original raymarine connections it was relatively simple to attach the wires. Its worth noting that only 4 connections are required to use this plotter with a GPS signal so next time I would simply use a 4 pin connector and blank the redundant port.
testing pins
All wired up (this is over kill but I liked the challenge. Only requires 4 wires)
With the board glued on the back, you have to mount it the wrong way round to keep the connections on the correct side as you are looking at the back of it now (sorta thing)
This meant I had to do a 180 degree turn with the backplate but there is plenty of length in the ribbon cable for that. Next time, I would do it far more simply and just cross the required wires over.
Now its all back together and hey presto. Works perfectly. Position fix, speed, date, time and the very basic charts.
I think this would be great for a small budget boat. The ability to give accurate GPS locations incase of emergency is great, but also you can use in the GOTO features, passage planning and have real ETAs.
At least the antennas came in time for corona time, now what the hell am I going to do.
PS just found an autohelm navcentre in the shed. If you know what that is, your old!
Crusader
