Tag: electronics

  • Broken wind indicator

    Broken wind indicator

    Clearly on port tack, but the wind is coming from starboard 90. The wind speed indicator has been borked for a while, but direction being borked too is new. Bother.

  • Sending engine RPMs to the network, 3/x

    Sending engine RPMs to the network, 3/x

    A small re-write of the sender into a Click driven CLI, making hard-codes into CLI arguments.

  • Sending engine RPMs to the NMEA bus, 2/x

    Sending engine RPMs to the NMEA bus, 2/x

    It turns out that iNavX doesn’t support rendering ERRPM; it only supports the NMEA 2000 variant, PGN 127488. This led me down the path of trying to work out if I could send PGNs to the MiniPlex3 via the WiFi interface. The answer is sort of yes – you can send a specially crafted 0183…

  • Sending engine RPMs to the NMEA bus, 1/x

    Whilst Dad was visiting, we put his portable oscilloscope across the two terminals on the back of the tachometer, and found a very nice mV signal that changes frequency with engine revolutions. This means that a bit of circuitry plus a microcontroller will enable me to push the rev count to the boat data network.…

  • Reconnecting the GPS

    Reconnecting the GPS

    A casualty of the wiring locker re-wire was the GPS connection for the Raymarine Autohelm system. The previous install was temporary, and used two chocolate blocks to bridge the three wires for the ground. The existing cable to the GPS uses red (+12V), yellow (data), and black (power ground and signal ground). The Raymarine gear…

  • RIP GPS mushroom

    RIP GPS mushroom

    The GPS on Blue Opal has been failing recently, claiming that it can’t get a fix. The common answer in the forums is that the battery has died, and should be replaced – spot welding the tabs will be the hard bit, but doable. So, I took mine off the railing, and discovered that it…