marine electronics & electrical

1. Monitoring & Instrumentation

What do we mean with Monitoring & Instrumentation?

To make a measurement visible, we need wires or a multitude of wires (cable) to bring that measurement (information) to an instrument. That instrument is designed to convert that measurement, into a reading, via a dial plate or a screen.

In the old days, we were looking to a gauge, which can still be your main information center, but most people look for a screen or display, abbreviated as MFD.

With a Multi-Functional Display (MFD), you can centralize your information and status of all your equipment, devices and switches.

Imagine the following equipment and devices connected to a N2K (NMEA2000) cabling network:

• Status Engine(s) (Digital Sensors),
• Water, Smoke, Gas detection (Digital Sensors),
• Switching lights, pumps, heaters, fan's, AC and more (Digital Switching & Sensors),
• Check status of your tanks (fuel & water), standby of auxiliary equipment (Digital Switching & Sensors),
• Check status of your electric energy levels, intervention of a marine generator (AC/DC monitoring),
• Weather updates & alerts (Weather Station),
• Your course direction and boat speed (GPS & Chart plotter),
• Other boaters around you and yourself towards other boaters (AIS),
• Camera watch around your boat (Camera's)
• Internet access or Radio Communication to have contact with the shore (Sirius XM, VHF/UHF),
• Scanning the water under you for fish or watching the sea floor (Fish finder & Sonar),
• If necessary, finding your way to a marina or port in case of fog, or upcoming weather changes (Radar),
• Tune in, in your audio system to have some good music (Marine Audio) or even watching SAT TV!

The communication between all of above, can be a bundle of wires. Today, we connect, via a drop cable in the N2K Backbone.

Configuring or updating (or programming as some people like to call that) the MFD, can be done via your smartphone, tablet or PC. A Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or NFC connection is what you need. It's recommended to configure boat equipment not during a boat ride, due to possible reception loss.

There are still, plenty of boats equipped with analog equipment and/or engine control.

Here at WoodspeeD, we have experience with that, since we work on older boats. We understand that some boat owners don't like to make more holes in the dash to keep the originality intact. Therefore we recommend a N2K starter kit with a N2K gauge or display. Some N2K gauges or MFD do have a couple of analog inputs, to show you basic information, like temperature and pressure. However, when you like to have more information monitored, we recommend an analog to N2K gateway. There are several N2K manufacturers in the market, who produce these analog/N2K gateways, but at different price points. 

We make complete network designs, and do installs too. An example of a simplified network installation diagram, is shown hereunder.

Make an appointment or tell us what you have, and we make your installation a plug and play one and will ship it to you.

Be a smart person on your boat, Captain!

We work with high quality manufacturers and there products, to build N2K Networks. Some need the best, others need flexibility, but price, availability and aftersales are very important matters for us. Please understand, that every manufacturer have specific benefits depending on what you want, based on your requirements. Take a look on their websites, or if you like, take a look on our selected product portfolio.

• Garmin
• At a glance
• Veratron VDO
• At a glance
• Digital Yacht
• At a glance
• Yacht Devices
• At a glance
• Maretron
• At a glance