Display fried. … and salmon

Well, my joy at having a functioning NMEA2000 network with a display didn’t last long. Moving the display on the inside didn’t prolong its life apparently. Today it gave out some smoke and died. After taking it apart it’s obvious that the board is fried. Must be full moon.

Now I need to find another display to replace it. Will live with that gaping hole for the time being.

I didn’t just fry the display though. My neighbor caught some fresh salmon and shared a nice piece with me so I fried some salmon as well – for me and my friend Viktar.

Time to stop sailing blind. Instruments!

One of the goals for 2025 is to get the instruments story figured out. My current situation is that I have a Raymarine mast-top wind transducer, a depth sounder with knot meter (that is not installed), and a i70s multicolor display. The motor came with its own monochrome display that shows state of charge, draw, and RPMs.

What I’d like to be able to see:

  • Temperature indoor and outdoor as well as water temp
  • Barometric pressure – current & historical
  • Humidity indoor
  • Wind speed & direction, both true and apparent.
  • Depth
  • Position, on charts
  • Speed over water and ground
  • Heading
  • Date & time
  • Battery state of charge, current draw by engine & house, estimated time/distance remaining
  • Engine/prop RPMs

For many of the above I’ll need to get new sensors. Raymarine is on a SeaTalk NG bus but I’d like to have N2K bus, bridged over to SeaTalk. I’d also like to see all that on an iPad, preferably over WiFi or Bluetooth instead of a cable.

Here is what I’m planning to put in place:

All the stuff in red is something I’d need to buy. Most is just connectors.

And that, in theory, would give me all the data I need (and more):

The only question mark is how to interface the engine to the NEMA2000 network. I reached out to Electric Yacht and they currently don’t have anything to offer. That said, there seems to be a good example I could follow. It’s so great to have people smarter than me share their knowledge (and code!)

This will be a fun learning experience!

Instruments!

Well, today was the day that my Raymarine instruments were finally working. It’s hard to believe that I ordered that set in April of 2014, installed it in 2018, and connected it all together just 8 short years later – TODAY!!! For 4 years, that masttop spinner was measuring wind speed for no reason at all and just today it was finally shown on the display.