NN3D setup new to me

wkearney99

Furuno Super Fan
I've just bought a boat with four MFD12 displays and a wide variety of additional gauges and sensors. I'm embarking on the process of determining what's plugged into where and entertaining upgrades/changes.

All four displays are coming into a Furuno Hub-101, in addition to the Furuno radar, BBWX1 weather and FA-50 AIS. There's a PG-700 into on of the MFDs via NMEA2k. I'm not entirely clear on how GPS is coming into the system yet. The FA-50's GPS antenna lead is not connected, so that's not it.

I note that not all data is available on all displays unless they're all turned on. While this boat has a generator and reasonably large battery capacity, I find that I prefer to be able to run with as little consuming power as possible. So having all four running seems a bit excessive. I'd like to be able to run with just any one of the four instead of all of them.

I've had other boats in the past and appreciate that not all sensors/gauges/interfaces have been compatible with each other. And sometimes various bridging schemes have been utilized to get from one to another. I'm seeing some of that with this boat. To my surprise there's a Raymarine ST60 mounted UNDER the helm panel. Yep, completely out of sight, but powers on with everything else. Um, ok, probably there to either bridge or allow configuring "something". Likewise, I have a pair of B&G H1000 gauges with some interfacing boxes down under there too. I'm likely going to replace these with some NMEA2k gauges. One because the buttons on the B&G are hard to operate, two because they're kinda ugly and three because they can't show Local Time with a timezone offset.

First question, 7 of the 8 Ethernet ports are being used on the hub. There's a rubber plug in the 8th port. Does the hub support using all 8 ports? And the plug is there just to block dust/dirt?

2nd, what cable pins need to be left out to use a regular hub with the Furuno? Realizing that the Furuno units use some pairs to handle power on/off signalling. Which pair get used for the power feature?

Next question, clearly the MFDs are sharing 'some data' across the Ethernet bus. Is there anything that would prevent sharing NMEA2k data across that connector instead? As in, move the data from the sensors to NMEA2k and attach the appropriate NMEA2k cables to each of the MFDs. Is there any problem with the data being available on both busses (nmea2k and ethernet)? Can I string the NMEA2k network across all four MFD12 units? What adapters or cabling would I have to add to allow this? I'm assuming I'd have to block the MFDs from providing power to the network and to inject power elsewhere, correct?
 
First question, 7 of the 8 Ethernet ports are being used on the hub. There's a rubber plug in the 8th port. Does the hub support using all 8 ports? And the plug is there just to block dust/dirt?

The rubber plug is to block dust, if you need the port you can remove the rubber plug and use the 8th port.

2nd, what cable pins need to be left out to use a regular hub with the Furuno? Realizing that the Furuno units use some pairs to handle power on/off signalling. Which pair get used for the power feature?

Normal Ethernet communications use Pins 1,2,3, and 6. Furuno uses two wires (4 and 5) for power sync. For the MFDBB black box keyboard pins 7 and 8 are used to provide the 48v power.

Next question, clearly the MFDs are sharing 'some data' across the Ethernet bus. Is there anything that would prevent sharing NMEA2k data across that connector instead?

NMEA 0183 and NMEA 2000 items are automatically shared over the Furuno Ethernet bus. With the NN3D, you are not allowed to have the same NMEA 2000 bus connected to more than one machine. If you do; you will encounter data loops and problems. This only applies to the NN3D series.

Can I string the NMEA2k network across all four MFD12 units?

Not unless you want problems. You can only connect a NMEA 2000 bus to one MFD, then the data is automatically bridged to them all via the Ethernet.

What adapters or cabling would I have to add to allow this? I'm assuming I'd have to block the MFDs from providing power to the network and to inject power elsewhere, correct?

It isn't something you can do. You are trying to fight against the original system design. What you are trying to do would work fine with the TZT or TZT2 series but not NN3D.
 
Johnny Electron":2j1odrlv said:
What adapters or cabling would I have to add to allow this? I'm assuming I'd have to block the MFDs from providing power to the network and to inject power elsewhere, correct?

It isn't something you can do. You are trying to fight against the original system design. What you are trying to do would work fine with the TZT or TZT2 series but not NN3D.

No fight intended. Now that I understand it better, thanks to your replies, I'll work within the limitations.
 
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