- LOWRANCE NMEA 2000 NETWORK CABLES HOW TO
- LOWRANCE NMEA 2000 NETWORK CABLES INSTALL
- LOWRANCE NMEA 2000 NETWORK CABLES TRIAL
LOWRANCE NMEA 2000 NETWORK CABLES INSTALL
Taking a bit of extra time on the wire install will go a long way to increase the reliability and performance of your electronics for years to come. A good think to keep in mind when running any cables is how tight you make the bends in the wires, most cables don’t like to be installed under tension or have really sharp bends put into them, the system will work in the short term but after repeated vibrations from the boat the inner wire (conductor) will eventually fatigue or the outer insulation will wear allowing corrosion to destroy the wires, this ultimately leads to loads of problems down the track. I had a relatively short sounder to backbone cable so I chose to start running my wires around from the sounder and work my way back to the engine. As there was plenty of space under the gunnels for the cables to be routed nicely into the tees, under the gunnel the backbone went. This minimises the amount of water the connections are going to be exposed to from being out and about or overspray whilst hosing down the boat. Being an open style tiller steer boat, I am a fan of hiding anything electrical (especially connections) away from the water and when possible I like to tuck everything away under the wide gunnels of the boat.
LOWRANCE NMEA 2000 NETWORK CABLES HOW TO
Now that I sourced all the bits, it was time to figure out where to physically locate the backbone and how to run the interface cable and power for the backbone itself. There is a ridiculous amount of Tee’s that can be added within backbone with some information suggesting up to 200 meters worth but for me I need about 30cm (for now). This makes up the backbone itself but as the backbone requires power to operate, a power cable is required to complete a basic NMEA2000 network. The network itself is made up of terminators (nodes) at each end of a connection of Tee’s. In a nutshell a NMEA2000 network allows you to connect multiple electrical devices onto a common network (backbone) which allows for the sharing information between these devices, for example information being transferred between multiple sounders or in my case, allowing my engine to communicate with my sounder. The NMEA2000 networks have been around for a long time and there is plenty of good information out there on the benefits of having one fitted to you boat. Motorsport Marine are mine and they were able to point me in the right direction straight away with regards to the network and interface cable. The engine interface cabling will vary between outboard brands and models so if you don’t already have one installed you may need to do some research or do what I did hit up your local outboard dealer for some help. My outboard is a 70hp 4 stroke Suzuki and to get my engine data onto the sounder there are two key components I required - an NMEA2000 network and the engine interface cable that connects to the NMEA2000 network. To be honest my boat has been a bit of an ongoing project since new and seems to be in a constant state of upgrades, I’m sure this is nothing new to most fisherman LOL.
LOWRANCE NMEA 2000 NETWORK CABLES TRIAL
There are two main reasons I want to monitor the engine data - the first being I wanted to trial some different propellers to optimise the fuel used on my trips and the second reason is I have some bigger trips planned and being able to watch my actual fuel usage is key to being able to plan some bigger more remote trips away. In particular I was keen to start utilising the engine monitoring feature of this unit. As I’ve explained in previous articles these Elite units are like small super computers and have more options packed into them than you can poke a stick at. After having my Lowrance Elite Ti² fitted for a while the time has come to start utilising more of the features.
0 kommentar(er)
