Adding Raymarine autopilot to existing NMEA 2k network

[bstowers]

Anyone that can offer some advice on what connectors / adapters I will need in addition to what is included with the EV-100 wheel pilot kit in order to get it functioning on my existing NMEA 2000 (Garmin chartplotter, anemometer, depth/speed/temp) network?

Would it be better to wire up the autopilot using the supplied Seatalkng cabling and then use an adapter to wire that into the NMEA network, or would it be better to wire each component directly into the NMEA network? It seems like I would have to do a lot more wiring and supply several NMEA adaptors a T-connectors myself if I wire each device directly in, so I'd rather use all the supplied cabling and only have to make one connection into the NMEA network if that's possible.

Any advice?

Thanks,
Brad

[bstowers]

On the off chance that someone may stumble on this question and be curious, this is the info I got from Raymarine tech support:

The best way, would be to use the autopilot cabling, then connect to the end of the existing backbone, there isn't a specific adapter cable but the backbone cables of the two backbones are color for color splice, you would just get a Seatalk NG backbone cable, cut the connector off and do the same for the existing NMEA 2000 backbone cable and splice color for color leaving the terminators on the ends of the two backbones, and using the power input from the existing backbone.

I'll be giving that a try in a few weeks and we'll see how it goes.

[smac999]

instead of splicing 2 cables together I would cut the end off the ray backbone cable and attach a maretron n2k field end. to make your own 1 peice adapter cable.


and yes it'll work just fine joining the 2 systems together. just have one n2k end terminator on one side and one raymarine end terminator on the other.