NEW !!! Ask us about Automatic Identification System (AIS) with NMEA integration)

What is NMEA?
It stands for National Marine Electronics Association. NMEA is the only uniform interface standard for digital data exchange between different marine electronic products.  In other words, NMEA allows communication between the instruments.  With NMEA, instruments on board can be connected, the GPS (for example) can talk to and drive the Auto Pilot. 

NMEA interfacing problems usually centre on getting all the instruments to talk to one another, such as Autopilot, AIS, GPS, Radar, Wind, Log and Depth.  Up to now, many people are not realizing the full potencial of their on board equipment.  The equipment needs initial configuration and then connection together in the correct way, there is a possibility of corrupt data because: 

·         There are many different manufacturers
·         Different ages of equipment
·         Different implementations of connections of the NMEA standard
·         Different electrical connections (single ended or balanced)

There are a multitude of reasons for difficulties and disappointment, such as different electrical interfaces, different data messages, data corruption, clashing, earth loops, electrical noise, different data rates, etc.  Its not helpful being told to throw it all away and buy everything from the same manufacturer.  BoatWide with knowledge, experience and in conjunction with Actisense products, can fix these problems.  Each system is different and depends on the equipment, NMEA standard, make, age, and electrical connections, or in the case of plotters or computers, the software.

Connections of marine electrical equipment
Above all, an NMEA system can only have one emitter, the other equipment can only listen or receive.  Normally in an NMEA system, the emitter is the GPS but AIS is an NMEA emitter as well, the system cannot funcion correctly.  There is a solution and it is not necessary to replace all electronic equipment or buy everything from the same manufacturer, even with AIS in the NMEA system.

We provide a complete assessment of the NMEA equipment, NMEA Transmitter and Receivers, Electrical Interface characteristics, Data messages, Data clashing, Data duplication, Data matching and Data filtering

Generally, solutions vary from simply correcting twisted wires, re-configuring the equipment set-up, to providing multiplexers, filters, converters and buffers

We can engineer an NMEA network which works for you not against you.  We have experience of both simple and complex NMEA configurations, outlined in our NMEA Case Studies.  We also have a new product, AIS (Automatic Identification System) which requires integration using NMEA.