making my Navnet VX2 fault tolerant

[Anonymous]

I am the very happy owner of a Navnet VX2 system on my 4788 Bayliner

right now I have:

2 each 10" displays
1 open array radar
1 sounder
1 heading sensor
2 transducers
2 gps sensors
2 chart chips
1 layer 2 ethernet hub/switch

I plan on adding a second sounder and another display this winter (maybe two new displays).

My goal is to have a 100% fault tolerant system. Furuno equipment is extremely reliable, but all equipment does eventually fail, and I want full redundancy.

The challenge, and the question I have is how to configure the system to meet my goals? What I do not want to do is to have to reconfigure my network on the fly in the event of a component failure.

The issue I have is that from the manual you can only have one charting source and one position source enabled at a time. Can I have the system set up to automacially fail over to a second chart and position source?

The other issue I have is that the Ethernet hub/switch represents a single point of failure. If this device fails I loose connectivity to both my redundant sounder modules.

Here's what I was thinking of doing. If I divide my network into two completely separate VX2 networks that would give me the redundancy I'm after. The only issues I'd face is that Radar would only be available on one network, and routes/waypoints would only be on one network, unless I back them up to the other network using SD cards.

Do you see another solution to this?

I am very happy with my equipment and it has been very reliable. I'm just trying to meke it fully redundant.

Thanks...Kevin

 

[Johnny Electron]

Ksanders
I am glad to hear you are happy with your Vx2 units. Having two networks would offer about as complete redundancy as you can get. With you having only one radar unit, the scanner cable can be moved over to the other 10.4” display/network; if the needed ever came up. You can have the correct settings already configured in the “backup system” to support it. It would be just a simple move the radar cable (with power off) and power-on the redundant system/network. It is rare to see such an effort for duplication, but it can be done. When having two networks, only the network with the radar attached will have radar control/video. As you pointed out, your waypoints are easily moved by SD card.
When you do have one network with multiple displays; the display always looks for chart info on its own chart card first before looking over the network for data. This is automatic. If you have two networks, you will either need to move the chart card or buy a second.
With normal network hubs being fairly inexpensive, I think I would configure the system as one network and leave a backup hub in a box in case you needed a quick replacement. You can setup the display to look at their own GPS, so even if the hub went down you would still have GPS at both stations. When it comes down to it, everything depends on what you want. You could go either direction as long as you don’t have any other show stoppers… for example having two like sounders trying to operate on the same freq.
If you have two radars on one network and need to change which radar (source) it is currently looking at, there is a quick short cut. Hit DISP, then one of the softkeys on the side of the display (one with a dot) and it will show you what the radar source is and it can be changed here, without rebooting into installation mode.
Johnny.