I know what you mean about too many adaptors. As to which type is being
run
as the backbone.... with the Lowrance displays comes a Lowrance backbone
(bus). I know nothing about Raymarine but guess/assume they have a
backbone
of their own design.

Lowrance has been using their own, but recent news (via panbo) seems to
indicate they're changing to use the industry-adopted Micro-C type. If/when
that's going to happen is the question.

Raymarine says they can splice right into an existing NMEA 2000 bus. Or you
can use their proprietary SeaTalk2 connectors.

I'm inclined to go with standard over proprietary so I'd prefer to avoid the
existing Lowrance Raymarine styles. Not that they're "bad", more that I'd
prefer to avoid installing stuff that drags along obsolete and/or legacy
issues.

Right now it looks like Maretron has the best range of cable and connection
options.

Wouldn't it be nice if all the connectors were made to a single
convention??
Perhaps some day interoperability between electronics manufacturers will
be
a reality.

Supposedly that's here today in the form of Micro-C connections.

As it is, one needs to be much smarter than I to consider mixing
and matching.

I'm just trying to plan far enough ahead so that I don't have the 'wrong'
style connections being used for main bus. If I have to adapt from that I'd
like to make sure the offshooting spurs don't introduce headaches of their
own. As in, if Lowranace isn't going to ship Micro-C connectors on their
fuel monitoring sensors (tank & flow) then I'll setup a LowranceNet just
between those and then stub it off a Micro-C bus. Which introduces
questions about supplying power and termination.

As in something like this: (ln being lowrancenet)

LN terminator
LN T -- LN Power
LN T -- LN EP-10 (fuel flow)
LN T -- LN EP-15 (tank level)
LN cable (between tanks)
LN T -- LN EP-10
LN T -- LN EP-15
LN T -- LN-NMEA adapter--- NMEA bus
LN terminator

NMEA terminator
NMEA T -- LN-NMEA adapter ---- LN Bus
NMEA T -- NMEA-SeaTalk splice -- E-80
NMEA T - NMEA Power
NMEA terminator

Or can the adapter between the LowranceNet bus and NMEA2k be a simple splice
and be terminated using Micro-C connections?

Ideally it'd just use Micro-C all around:

NM terminator
NM T -- NM Power
NM T -- EP-10
NM T -- EP-15
NM cable
NM T -- EP-10
NM T -- EP-15
NM cable
NM T -- splice to E-80
NM terminator

I guess about the best we can do, so far, is DSC connections
between differing manufacturers of VHF and GPS. That's a start, anyway.

Well, DSC uses NMEA 0183 so that's not directly related to this situation.
But I get your point.

-Bill Kearney