jim rosenthal
Super Moderator
- Joined
- Apr 12, 2005
- Messages
- 11,050
- Hatteras Model
- 36' CONVERTIBLE-Series I (1969 -1977)
My Standard Horizon depthsounder (NOT part of the chartplotter/sounder, but freestanding) finally got to the point where I couldn't read the digits. I bought two Furuno FI-70 units, and the NMEA2000 backbone and transducer, and had a marine electronics company up here do the install with me.
The install was not difficult. The hard part was getting the displays to do what I needed, which was just to put depth (and temp) in big numerals on the screen. It took about an hour on the phone with Furuno (who are semi-local) to get it done.
The setup of these units is not intuitive. The flexibility is amazing- they will do all kinds of things which I don't need, but maybe in the future. The other thing is that any NMEA2000 device can go on the backbone, as I understand it, and they will all talk to each other coherently. So if I ever have to suffer my beloved Northstar plotters being pried out of my hands, at least I will have alternatives....
The install was not difficult. The hard part was getting the displays to do what I needed, which was just to put depth (and temp) in big numerals on the screen. It took about an hour on the phone with Furuno (who are semi-local) to get it done.
The setup of these units is not intuitive. The flexibility is amazing- they will do all kinds of things which I don't need, but maybe in the future. The other thing is that any NMEA2000 device can go on the backbone, as I understand it, and they will all talk to each other coherently. So if I ever have to suffer my beloved Northstar plotters being pried out of my hands, at least I will have alternatives....