Furuno MFD direct to Mercury Smartcraft Joystick AutoPilot

[pete_2888]

Hi,
I have a new Furuno Tz Touch3 display and a Mercury Verado 300hp outboard with the Joystick autopilot. I think this is quite a common set up with most fast fishing boats equipped the same as Furuno is known as fishing standard system. My question is about integration of your MFD into my outboard through rhe joystick Autopilot Mercury have made- will Furuno support this autopilot? Or is it held secret / proprietary by Mercury? Simrad along others already natively support this and I can send a waypoint straight from my Simrad mfd to the joystick AP and it will tell the outboards what to do to get there. But I’d much rather use the Furuno mfd to do this as you have much better features. I know the big Brunswick group is trying to take over the market but anything Furuno can do to integrate into the AP of mercury the better. Cheers

 

[Johnny Electron]

The pilot itself is proprietary but it allows most MFDs to steer it. Normally you will have a 2000 connection from the vessel view system that you can drop to standard 2000 bus for you engines etc. In cases where there is no 2000 connection from the devices like the vessel view and pilot, you will need one of their 2000 gateways. It is important that you get the unit onto the standard NMEA communications. Once the pilot is on the 2000 bus, you would simply go to the MFD and turn on the the three needed PGNs to drive the NavData over.

 

[lstitcher]

The pilot itself is proprietary but it allows most MFDs to steer it. Normally you will have a 2000 connection from the vessel view system that you can drop to standard 2000 bus for you engines etc. In cases where there is no 2000 connection from the devices like the vessel view and pilot, you will need one of their 2000 gateways. It is important that you get the unit onto the standard NMEA communications. Once the pilot is on the 2000 bus, you would simply go to the MFD and turn on the the three needed PGNs to drive the NavData over.

What are the three needed PGN's. This is one of the last items I need to get done. Most everything is working perfect.

 

[Johnny Electron]

Posted here on the forum many times the PGNs to run a pilot are 129283 (Cross track error), 129284 (Navigation data), and 129285 (Navigation route and waypoint info)