Marine Chartplotter GPS - inland lakes
 

Hi everyone... I'm having a little nightmare trying to find a good, relatively cheap (under $500) chartplotter GPS unit to mount on the dashboard... I'll primarily be using it in and around Georgia / South Carolina... Things I'm looking for are


1. Screen visibility in sunlight
2. Topography with depth contours showing on the display
3. Ability to import .loc or .gpx files into the GPS... Some lakes have their own files that can be imported.

Anyone share their GPS experiences?

Vinayak

Found one that meets my criteria
 

Got the Lowrance 5300c unit... IT does what I was looking for and also has free maps of lanier.. For those that are into fancy graphics, it supports the Navionics hotmaps platinum maps... Also supports importing the .gpx files that the corps of engineers puts out.

Vinayak

Oh well... I thought I had hit the right package.... I found that while the Lowrance 5300c unit is NMEA 2000 compatible, the Merc engines are not. Apparently, Brunswick which owns Merc runs the proprietary SmartCraft protocol that isnt compatible with NMEA 2000...

This is of interest to those of you who want to replace their analog gauges to an all digital dashboard (one or two displays only) with the same functionality and have all your info - rpm, speed, water pressure, fuel level, fuel economy, range, etc showing up on a cleaner digital display...

Now for the small tutorial on protocols for those of you interested... There are a few protocols complicating things...

1. NMEA 0183 - open standard "low speed serial" communication - old protocol...
2. NMEA 2000 - open standard "high speed bus" based communication - new protocol
3. Seatalk - Raymarine's variant of NMEA 0183, compatible with NMEA 0183.
4. Seatalk2 - Another Raymarine variant of NMEA 2000, compatible with NMEA 2000
5. SmartCraft - Brunswick proprietary, not compatible with any other protocol. Northstar makes SmartCraft compatible electronics, primarily because a few divisions of Northstar were initially owned by Brunswick...

DRAT... Double DRAT... I want my merc engine's info on my digital display... Now I have to send back the Lowrance and start my Northstar research...