Choice of electronic equipment

[rw58ph]

I see you are in France/Netherlands, so I would check what brand is common in your area. In the US, Furuno, Raymarine and maybe Garmin are the brands that offer the entire electronic package. I think Furuno is still the most popular in the world, especially with commercial. Raymarine, Garmin and Furuno are popular with the pleasure US boaters.

15 years ago I choice Rayathone, now Raymarine. Today I would go with Furuno. Also I would still go with individual units rather than bundled. However, the picing for bundled is significantly lower.

[CAELESTIS]

Actually Navico, which owns B&G, Simrad, and Lowrance, is the largest by far.

There are lots of good ones out there. Consider which cartography is most accurate for your area as a selection consideration. I would look at a MFD that uses wifi to talk to an iPad, as opposed to two MFD's.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by colemj

There is no need to refit with a single manufacturer. You won't be gaining any "interoperability" or "compatibility" if you simply choose N2K-compliant gear (which leaves out at least Raymarine's Autopilots). Our system consists of gear from many different manufacturers - each piece chosen based on our needs and preferences and not on fear it wouldn't work with other components. Even our autopilot consists of mixed manufacturers. Everything works perfectly together.

My suggestion is to shop for each part individually and make your decision on what features, cost, size, performance etc you like. Make sure they are all fully N2K compatible (I think a few pieces of Raymarine gear is the only hold out on this), and hook them together. Your radar and chart plotter will most likely be the same manufacturer because they will use the same display. Radar is the only thing that is not mix and match.

We were struck by lightning with our old NMEA0183 instruments (including wind), and it took out everything. I don't see why N2K would be considered more vulnerable.

Mark

At the present state of play , I won't say mixing NMEA 2k gear is the greatest advice. There are lots of example where MFD integration and particularly device configuration don't work across brands. Your advice is " ok " for sensors and transducers , but not for higher order equipment like autopilot to mfd integration. Etc. for example the very fine Simrad mfd based autopilot control software will not integrate properly with non simrad autopilots.

This is because there are large areas of nmea2k that are not standardised

Dave