MFD12 and AIS source other than FA-50?

[wkearney99]

As I move forward with various network and device upgrades I come across a few points where it gets close to being more cost-effective to replace with new rather than inteface/repair old.

The question being my Icom M602 radio. I wanted to add a hailer but have since discovered that feature can't be used from the second station on the flybridge? Um, ok, that's annoying...

So if I 'really' want the hailer then I'm looking at replacing the radio. Which is flush-mounted in the lower helm and uses a remote mic. And of course the cables run hither-and-yon through all kinds of passages. Thus my upgrade for a $50 hailer would get spendy...

But let's say I do want to go that route. A number of new VHF units have AIS features built into them along with NMEA-2000 connections.

Is there any chance an MFD12 would be able to get AIS info from an N2K device instead of an FA-50? I could leave both, of course, but then I'm adding extra antennas, along with more cabling through already tight passages.

Thus my question, will an MFD12 support getting AIS info from anything other than an FA-50? If so, are there any known caveats?

EDIT: Of course after I posted this I realized the FA-50 does both, send and receive AIS data. And most of the VHF radios out there are only AIS receivers, so I'd still have to transmit. The question still remains, regarding receipt of AIS on the MFD12s, will it allow selecting a different source?

 

[Johnny Electron]

AIS data for the NN3D system needs to come via NMEA 0183 or Furuno Ethernet Network (like from the FA50). NMEA 2000 PGNs for AIS wasn't established by NMEA yet when the NN3D was developed/released. If you have NMEA 2000 AIS you wish to use; it would require a NMEA 2000 to NMEA 0183 converter like the Furuno IF-NMEA2k2.

 

[wkearney99]

Ok, so I'd have to get the data back into the 0183 format that the MFD12 understands. Got it.

I'm planning out what can/can't be upgraded without causing a lot of other cascading changes. Looks like I'll be keeping the FA-50 in the mix for the forseeable future!

Is there a canonical list somewhere of what 0183 sentences the MFD12 supports?

 

[Johnny Electron]

The specification sheet in the installation manual or the sales brochure normally list all suitable input and output data for both 0183 and NMEA 2000.

 

[wkearney99]

Yes, searching across all of the Furuno PDFs I've got for "PGN" does get me a lot of info, across many files, in lots of different table formats. 177 instances in 25 files, to be precise.

I was naively asking if there wasn't a document somewhere that condensed it. I'm guessing not. Ah well, they are obsolete and all...

 

[Johnny Electron]

From the brochure.

 

[aquabelle]

Yes, searching across all of the Furuno PDFs I've got for "PGN" does get me a lot of info, across many files, in lots of different table formats. 177 instances in 25 files, to be precise.

I was naively asking if there wasn't a document somewhere that condensed it. I'm guessing not. Ah well, they are obsolete and all...

Goodness....it is right there in the manual ! Furuno does a great job off making this kind of info easily available to us users relative to the competition in my experience.