"kirwoodd" wrote in news:1168117778.260581.68120@
51g2000cwl.googlegroups.com:

Hows that Noland unit working out? The USB unit looks nice, I am in the
market for such a device, but would prefer one with NMEA filtering.
Does the Noland filter? It doesnt look like it from the web page.For
readers other than Larry:


I'm dragging my feet installing the USB Noland Geoffrey bought. It's a
logistics problem on Lionheart. There's a wireway overhead the
passageway from the helm station inside the cabinet over the galley to
the nav station on the starboard hull that's just STUFFED with all this
stuff. Designing with NMEA 0183 in mind, I installed a 25 pair cable
(also because I got it free on a 500' spool..(c The RS-232C connected
Noland is wired into this station-to-station cable and serves us well.
USB is another matter being much faster. I can't get away with this
cable on USB, so would have to completely rewire the network through the
25 pair cable and put the new Noland at the nav station, instead of where
it is, now. I'd also have to buy an adapter from its USB to RS-232C to
connect it to the wifi Webfoot Ethernet adapter or lose wifi all
together.

We gain nothing with the new Noland. I may use it to increase the input
by daisy chaining it onto one of the old Noland ports. My captain bought
it because the guy who sold him a new AIS receiver said he needed it to
connect AIS to the system at 38,800 baud. Of course, it doesn't INPUT
38,800 baud...only outputs 38,800...rendering it useless for that. The
USB adapter will have to be between the AIS receiver and a USB port on
the helm station computer, I think, so AIS will input to The Cap'n nav
software. We're still discussing its installation. He doesn't like the
self-contained AIS he bought, first, because you can't really see where
the targets are on its tiny LCD screen as there's no chart, of course.
There's also no output data from it to connect to the NMEA network. The
new receiver doesn't output NMEA AIS data, either...just 38,800 baud RS-
232C which I THINK, but don't yet know for sure, if The Cap'n can read.
It says it can, but it said other things it can't either.

Noone asked me about buying it. It just appears with, "Can you make this
work?"....(c; He loves his toys...We're gonna need bigger batteries...
(c;