It is a shame that the big guys go out or their way to squash
the entrepeneurs (sp?) like us. At least Linux is some inspration.

Doug
s/v Callista

"Meindert Sprang" wrote in message
...
"Yme Bosma" wrote in message
om...
Hi there,

It's been discussed in this forum before, but over at Ocean Navigator
they have published an article that states the NMEA 2000 standard is
'picking up steam'. Subscription is required, so here some quotes from
the article:

http://www.panbo.com/yae/archives/we...22.html#000356

I'm curious to know what you all think of this standard and wether
it's really gaining any traction. Or do you already see any rival
(non-proprietary) 'standards'/alternatives emerging?

Based on CAN, it is a robust standard, but requires quite some protocol
overhead since CAN can only transmit small datapackets.

My biggest problem is the cost involved. To get your first product on the
market, you have to buy the standard documents and test suites and apply
for
a vendor- and product ID. This will cost $10,500 total, quite a hurdle for
small manufacturers.

My 'all time favourite' would be a marriage between NMEA-0813 and SeaTalk
and some other features. Use a CAN bus driver, (passive '1' level/active
'0'
level), use the same text-based NMEA type sentences (easy to debug), use
the
collision detect feature of SeaTalk and increase the speed to a few
hundred
kbit/second. And when need be, switch to a binary variant of NMEA.

Meindert