Nmea0183 to BlueTooth

[Oceanride007]

Have a project to monitor Nmea 0183 info. Race boat I'm on at the moment badly needs a Polar diagram to assist us in becoming more competitive.

I successfully connected Nmea 0183 out from a C120W (Raymarine plotter), using a RS422 to USB connection.

Skipper and crew request is for bluetooth so they can play with their tablets. As a first step, I tried RS232, it didn't work. Now I know that Nmea 0183 is differential signal, But I have tried different ways of connecting without success, my last attempt was using Yellow +TX of the C120W and Battery -ve across terminal 2, 3 or 5 of DB9. I also tried the bluetooth, Which had been paired but all possible connections seems to unpair the bluetooth. My laptop is on battery power so should not be a ground loop issue, eventually I'll use opto isolation.

Starting to think I need a "cro" to understand better whats going on, but any pointers on recommended connections or signal conversion.

[Oceanride007]

Me again,
One of the solutions that I tried was a RS422 to RS232 converter between the C120W (Raymarine Nmea 0183 output) and Serial cable or Bluetooth but the info that came with the converter is in Chinese and I do not know how or if it should be powered. Any advise.

[travellerw]

Why not use OpenCPN on a laptop as an NMEA server to send it out over WIFI. I think it would be much more useful as Bluetooth is usually limited to a single connection at one time. This way you could have multiple tablets accessing the data.

Not to mention it would be super easy since you just need to download and configure OpenCPN (you have the rest)!