1815 is about to be set on fire.

[MV Dragonfly]

I have been fighting this for two weeks now:
AIS provided by a Standard Horizon GX2150 connected to the NMEA 2000 back bone through a Yacht Devices 0183 to 2000 Converter.

Radar 1815 port 1 connected to a Yacht Devices 0183 Multiplexer port 1 (38400 baud) and Port 2 connected to the same Multiplexer port 2 (4800 baud) then the Multiplexer is connected to the NMEA 2000 back bone through a Yacht Devices 0183 to 2000 Converter.

PG700 connected to the NMEA 2000 back bone.

NavPilot 300 connected to the NMEA 2000 back bone.

GP1871F connected to the NMEA 2000 back bone.

I have seen the Radar display AIS twice over hundreds of tries. Normally I get ether Nav Data OR the AIS menu item is bright.

Everything else works fine and show NAV and AIS. Just not the 1815 Radar. I am open to any ideas before I set fire to the 1815.

 

[Sparky Wire]

The 1815 is not a newly released product and has proven well in the market. I think it might be time to get a dealer involved as it seems you are already at wits end. It is important that the heading and position data be fully established before turning on the display unit. If it is still having intermittent problems It would more likely have to do with an intermittent connection or converter than the unit itself. If you suspect it is the unit, I would recommend sending it in for testing and if it comes back with a clean bill of health the focus can be moved on to the remaining items. When dealing with NMEA 0183 one must be very careful that the certified RS422 level is used. There are still some older devices and radios using the RS232 standard which can lead to intermittent issues if a proper level converter is not used. Multiplexers receiving too many sentences can also drop data and lead to intermittent issues. Given all that it might be time to contact a local dealer for assistance.

 

[jp498]

I would use a laptop with a usb-serial converter and an Actisense opto-4 cable to wired parallel into the two terminals sending 0183 data to the radar. Use a terminal program to verify the ais sentences at a low level and/or something like opencpn to display the AIS data for testing. You basically don't know what the multiplexer is relaying without doing that.

You could also bypass the NMEA2000 entirely and hook the AIS output up to the radar using the same wires as the output to the backbone (1 sender and two receivers).

 

[MV Dragonfly]

Thanks jp498! I got it working by using the Yacht Devices 0183 to 2000 Converter on port 1 of the 1815 and filtering out the VDM. Then on port 2 wired it to the AIS radio instead of trying to move it to NMEA2000 then back to NMEA0183.