What good is a "Multiplexer" ??

[geoleo]

I bought a used 42 sailboat that has a "multiplexer" installed Boat also has Raymarine 6001 Autopilot , AIS, Raymarine Wind, Raymarine depth, and a Furuno GPS..... The multiplexer has mass of tangled tiny wires -would like to junk it and connect everything via Raymarine "Seatalk" at the Autopilots Computer Thanks.

[Capt.Alex]

I have a similar setup. All of my Raymarine gear uses the seatalk high speed bus, but I also have all of nmea wires going to a multiplexer. The multiplexer allows me to connect my laptop and use the data in OpenCPn or another Nav software application. I can access the position data, AIS, and wind speed/direction on my PC.

[wingless]

The NEMA 0183 data bus is used for a single talker / multiple listener network.

A NEMA 0183 multiplexer permits multiple talkers AND multiple listeners on the network.

This is an older network and new devices use NEMA 2000 instead.

[nigel1]

Might be there for the AIS, which uses a baud rate of 38,400. C
What chart plotter do you have, and what AIS.

[Auspicious]

There are a number of things that happen in various multiplexors. They can do protocol changes and speed changes. Not all do everything.

There are a lot of flavors of Seatalk: 1, hs, 2, and ng. There are speeds and flavors of NMEA protocols: NMEA 0183 at 4800 bps and 38400 bps and NMEA 2000. There are a few other protocols floating around out there (Robertson and Simrad are a couple).

Depending on what kind of hardware you have you may need some conversion somewhere. Although Raymarine pushes SeaTalk most of their chartplotters and autopilots also have ports for NMEA 0183 as well.

It's a real pain but you can get everything to talk to everything. The multiplexor you have may be a necessity or an installation shortcut.