NMEA colours

[Bigmuz7]

Trying to connect a Yeoman plotter to a lap top and give it a GPS signal from a Raymarine GPS pickup (small white mushroom type). Its on a yacht, and I dont know what Raymarine unit it is, but there are 4 wires coming from it white, purple and black, cant remember the 4th colour.. (green )

Question, does NMEA have a colour standard ? or has the original installer of 8 years or so ago just used a handy bit of 4 core ? cos I need to know which way to conect up to the 232 to usb interface to let the laptop get a gps position to work the plotter, I have another way of doing this, but would prefer to hook into the ships original gps receiver

[Polwart]

Originally Posted by Bigmuz7

Question, does NMEA have a colour standard ?

nah that would make life too easy!

[Chris]

No chance even when you buy a new plotter and a new VHF they have different colour coding for the NMEA interface.

Generally there is one wire for transmit, one for recieve then a common wire which may well be the braided outer bit.

You need to dog up on old user manual to check whats what.

[Nasher]

Bigmuz

I thought perhaps you were talking about a Raymarine Raystar 125, but the wires coming out of that would be different colours. Red, yellow, Brown, green, and the shield.

The Technical sections of Raymarines website are very good with handbooks and installation guides available to download for lots of older models of kit.
It may take some time to find, but its probably there somewhere.

Good luck

Nasher.

[codprawn]

Originally Posted by Polwart

nah that would make life too easy!

Especially when Navman mix up their colours!!!

[Bigmuz7]

The original installer has wired some kind of buz bar for gps use which commons two colours, and has replicated these dual sets about six times on a multiblock connector .. Does NMEA only require 2 signals for a GPS position or more ?

[Nasher]

In theory you need a +ve NMEA out and a -ve NMEA out from the sending gear connected to a +ve NMEA in and -ve NMEA in from the receiving gear.

So you should only need 2 wires from the GPS unit for the NMEA.
However the Raymarine unit is probably an active unit, so also requires a 12V +ve and -ve to run.

Nasher

[Bigmuz7]

OK thanks Nasher & guys.. I'll have another go at this one

[Polwart]

Muz, just to confuse things a bit more - are you certain its running in NMEA mode - some of these can be set up to run SeaTalk (different standard for doing much the same thing) as well.

[Bigmuz7]

Originally Posted by Polwart

Muz, just to confuse things a bit more - are you certain its running in NMEA mode - some of these can be set up to run SeaTalk (different standard for doing much the same thing) as well.

Full marks Polwart.... it was sea Talk after all..

Once we'd worked out what the auto helm was doing .. things started making sense plus .. the charting dongle /interface for the yeoman was wired wrong GRR why couldnt simple standards or colours be adhered to.. it would make so much more sense