A quick pictorial of the install of the Furuno FCV587 to compliment the Aimar SS264 1kW trannies I installed over the weekend. I have been at it for the past few nights, finished last night around midnight. 

Here is the dash as delivered from the states. Pretty neat, Garmin 740S (I actually really like the Garmin touch screen interface....very surprised as I thought I would hate it), Vesselview (colour, much nicer than the earlier LCD screens) and Standard Horizon VHF (with funky AIS and DSC). A good start. 

First job, pull the tranny cable from the back of the boat to the dash....thank the Yanks for installing dedicated conduit and pull cables at the factory.

Then up through the side. Whaler is build very tough, with excellent thought put into all the wiring and fittings.

Got the cable to the dash....now what.....

Time to hack into the dash. I wanted the Furuno 587 near the centre of the boat so you could easily see it while jigging, which meant re-arranging the radio and Garmin GPS.

OK, what about the wires.......hmmm, these look interesting.

Whilst the standard  fittment of the sounder was very easy, with just the power source and tranny cable, the interaction of the GPS, radio and sounder proved to be much more interesting with NMEA 0183 communications. After much research, with The Hull Truth being a great resource, it was apparent that the yanks had not got it all right, and whilst the VHF radio recieved GPS and speed data from the GPS, the VHF was not talking back to the GPS to send AIS and DSC data, and the Vesselview not getting GPS co-coords, resulting in the dodgy pitot tube alarms that most Vesselview users get, as it was using the standard pitot speed sensor on the motor plus the paddle wheel on the transom (the Vesselview has a dedicated 235 kHz transom mount tranny so it does not interfere with standard 200 kHz frequency used in sounders, paddle wheel and temp).

So, being an engineer, I needed a diagram.......

Right, time to wire it up....decided to use a busbar with soldered lug fittings that allows wired to be easily changed. I am glad I did as there were some very interesting interactions with the radio, as it transmits high speed 38400 Hz data that requires a dedicated high speed NMEA channel to be used, which required some rewiring of the NMEA wires. Easy peasy to change with the busbar set-up.

Now I have GPS data going to:

- the VHF (for emergency DSC)

- the Furuno sounder (so I can mark waypoints on the sounder screen)

- vessel view (which provides all sorts of accurate travel data, fuel economy etc as well as removing the pitot alarms). 

Also, there is data going back to the Garmin GPS:

 - VHF AIS (ship tracking data)

- VHF DSC (safety data)

- FCV 587 depth (cant send back waypoints unfortunately, thanks to Furunos dodgy TLL language....a Furuno ploy to get you to buy their horrible GPS's.

Plan to give the electronics and Whaler a good workout on Friday......................