I am going through similar anguish Francois,
B&G told me I couldn’t connect an older AutoPilot to the Zeus, but being a sailor, I am willing to spend $$ to save nickels. I am trying to connect a Simrad J300X , and fortunately I have an IT wizard in my back yard, literally, JR Farrar who also is on this list. We attached a Actisense NGW-1, (which converts NMEA0183 to 2000) to the Simrad, and magically I Now have a Rudder Sensor showing on the Zeus, which pleases me to no end. Actisense does say that you need one of these converters for each NMEA 0183 thingy you are trying to convert, so I am going to find out if I can connect another one to some other terminals on the Simrad to get the autopilot itself to show up. I believe if you have an Autopilot that is recognized, you will have a tool bar on the left side of the Zeus that you can swipe over to show autopilot control, like the bar on the right hand side of the screen. Also wondering if buying the autopilot controller might create magic on the screen. https://www.defender.com/product.jsp?path=-1|2331321|2028687|2028714 <https://www.defender.com/product.jsp?path=-1|2331321|2028687|2028714&id=3470315> &id=3470315 Eventually, after much thrashing and head banging, we will probably both end up with new B&G autopilots, because that is how these diabolical electronics companies get us. Bill Coleman Erie PA From: CnC-List [mailto:cnc-list-boun...@cnc-list.com] On Behalf Of Francois Rivard via CnC-List Sent: Friday, October 04, 2019 10:26 AM To: cnc-list@cnc-list.com Cc: Francois Rivard Subject: Stus-List NMEA 0183 - Do I really need an Opto-Islator? Good am all, I'm finally about to replace my old broken Navico wheel pilot with a similar one I found used cheap. I would like to network it with my B&G Zeus2 charplotter to allow the "Steer to wind" feature. - The Wheel pilot needs the old NMEA 0183 network connection and fortunately the Zeus2 has a built-in feature to output NMEA 0183 in addition to the new NMEA 2000 standard. Question is: Do I Really need to put an opto isolator between the two? I've heard scary stories about ground loops destroying equipment. NMEA 0183 has a + and - side / the wrong return current could go into the networked device and ruin it. The instruments and auto pilot are on separate circuits but on the same common ground bus behind the switch panel. I'm worried that the 25 year old power wire going to the autopilot could somehow be a bit more resistive / something goes wrong with the replacement auto pilot and ruin my expensive chartplotter. Anyone has experience with that? - Francois Rivard 1990 34+ "Take Five" Lake Lanier, GA
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