Need electronics help .. which 5-8 inch chartplotter/combo unit to buy ??

[zurk]

I have the following :
hummingbird piranhamax 175 fishfinder/depthfinder with display/dual beam transducer
mercury mercmonitor with level 3 data feed
Standard Horizon GX2200 VHF DSC and AIS with 8' shakespeare antenna
Blue Sea Add a battery kit with ACR/dual circuit plus switch
ACR GlobalFix PRO GPS / EPIRB, Category I Automatic Release

I'm hoping to integrate all these things into one single glass screen with chartplotter so i can get sonar/ais/engine status/battery status etc in one interface ideally no more than 7 inches across.
Is there anything that will hook up to all these systems and monitor/display them ? Also something that will feed data back (e.g. the mercmonitor needs a GPS input feed).

 

[Sentinel]

Almost all the new combo units will accomplish your goals. I would stick with Raymarine, Garmin, Lowrance, or Simrad. To me Garmin touch screen models hands down are the easiest to use. It is all mostly nmea 2000 interface now so pretty much plug and play with a nmea backbone.

 

[JAC]

Buy a kowrance HDS 7" and a p66 transducer and your set. If you have the budget I would get the touch screen you could add structure scan but not need

 

[uclueletcharters]

Raymarine touch screen they are sweet and very user friendly, if you use an Ipad you will feel right at home as the options show up like app icons. You can also create your own custom app to run a split screen with a couple taps on the screen. Amazon has some good deals time to time.

 

[sly_karma]

Not sure what you mean by "battery status". Are you wanting to see which battery/s is receiving charge or being discharged? The Blue Seas ACR doesn't have a data connection. Your Merc control package will likely have the ability to display battery voltage, so there is some implied info there, with engine running you should see 13.5-14 V.

 

[zurk]

going to buy an elite 5 CHIRP. will it work with all these and how should i wire it ? It is supposed to have both NMEA 2K (for the mercmonitor) and NMEA 0183 (for the AIS).

 

[sly_karma]

Check carefully, pretty sure the Elite series doesn't have NMEA 2K data capability, you need to go to HDS series for that.

 

[TenMile]

Zurk -- I had most of what you're trying to do on my last boat. I had a Gen-1 Lowrance HDS 10 & 8 on the boat with both an Ethernet and N2K network and the rest of my gear was almost the same (AIS Standard Horizon radio, Mercmonitor, ACR, but no EPIRB)

Mercmonitor will output all engine data to N2K sentences. The Lowrance has an "Info" screen that will then display all the engine data live (RPM, Temps, Pressures, Voltage, Alarms etc...). All this is done via the N2K backbone.

AIS to the Lowrance via NMEA 0183 or N2K if the radio is equipped. Shows AIS overlay on the chartplotter (very handy)

For Battery monitoring for both the House and Start -- on any of the Lowrance pages you can modify the Data Overlay. Assuming that the Chartplotter is connected to your House battery bank, you can have it display the voltage from the source it's connected to (i.e. the House Bank) -- you can then add a second Data Source to pull voltage from the Mercmonitor -- that will provide you with the Start Battery voltage -- thus allowing you to see the status of the voltage of both your House and Start systems (of course, only when your Mercmonitor is switched ON). The alternative is to wire an LED into your dash that shows when the ACR Combines your House/Start batteries. In that case, the voltage is going to be equal between the two systems anyhow.

If you were going with a Lowrance system, I'd also suggest adding the Point-1 -- this is a Course/Heading sensor that allows you to both Overlay Radar on your Chartplotter plus, can act as a heading sensor in the event you want to add an AutoPilot in the future.

I've just purchase an HDS 9 Gen-3 Touch. Holy crap it's fast compared to the Gen-1. It has built in WiFi (acts as both an AP and a WiFi client) -- using the Navco GoFree WiFi app, you can view/control the chartplotter from either an Android or IOS smartphone/tablet which can save you the cost of a 2nd or 3rd station.

 

[Marko]

Id suggest a caution with a touch only unit for navigation unless your boat is quite large. With a small screen device, you may need to zoom a lot as your running, partularly in Rocky areas such as the mouth of Esperanza. Doing this on a 5" touch screen at 20+ mph in a bit of sloppy water can be very challenging. I did for two seasons and then replaced my plotter with one which included a rotary control....WAY easier to alter the chart view when running.

 

[Reeltime]

I was close to ordering the Raymarine touch screen and that's exactly what i thought about to, if it's bumpy out and trying navigate through the touch screen yikes ,like you said unless your in a big boat it would be a lot better , i'm in an open boat and when my fingers get wet some touch screen devices get a bit fussy on finger temp and dryness .just got me worried also on that part . Touch screen would have been awsme . went with an Elite 7 burp ! .

Id suggest a caution with a touch only unit for navigation unless your boat is quite large. With a small screen device, you may need to zoom a lot as your running, partularly in Rocky areas such as the mouth of Esperanza. Doing this on a 5" touch screen at 20+ mph in a bit of sloppy water can be very challenging. I did for two seasons and then replaced my plotter with one which included a rotary control....WAY easier to alter the chart view when running.

 

[sly_karma]

Not to mention touch costs a good bit more. You can just about go up a screen size by staying with button control compared to the touch version.

Still baffled by Tapatalk

 

[finaddict]

Not to mention touch costs a good bit more. You can just about go up a screen size by staying with button control compared to the touch version.

Still baffled by Tapatalk

Last year I bought a barely used HDS-8, structure scan, server, all the wiring to hook up everything including my already mounted Airmar transducer and mounts for $800 all in from HC. Great deal. Only problem is that electronics is a sickness and since then I have HAD to spend several hundred dollars for the Yamaha motor link, NMEA 2K cabling, Point one antennae for even MORE satellites and of course I absolutely NEEDED the AIS capable VHF. The addiction is hard to break...........

 

[sly_karma]

Mahahaha same here. Aft station sounder just replaced by smaller HDS for networking, fuel flow sensor being installed this weekend...

Still baffled by Tapatalk