As previously posted, I’ve been collecting pieces and parts for my upgraded navigation set up. Most of the old gauges and dials on board are old and outdated; some don’t even work. But, many of the transducers in the hull are still fine, so it’s simply a matter of adding a few minor interfaces and we enter the digital age.

Some stuff is new, like the GPS and the LCJ Capteurs wind vane, which replace actual systems on board. I spent the night wiring up what I had here at the house and it all worked exactly as planned.

Here’s a shot of the messy setup:

The speed/water tempature transducer feeds into the Actisence DST (depth/speed/temp) module, which in turn feeds, into the NMEA network multiplexer. The Garmin GPS antenna and the LCJ Captuer vane are stand alone items and interface directly with the multiplexer. The multiplexer sends data directly in to Mac Mini, which interprets the data and does all the heavy lifting, using Polar Navy’s Polar View software:

PolarCOM , then, acts as a server and broadcasts all this information via WIFI, which is available on my laptop:

And on my iPad and iPhone through an app called NMEARemote:

Yes, I know I am a geek. Thank you.