Digital Yacht to the rescue
Last year I upgraded the system to new Raymarine equipment but I did not change the AIS transponder. The AIS signal always took a long time to appear sometime as long as 30 minutes before anything would appear and even GPS used to take and age 4-5 minutes sometimes. I had another problem, Sea Crusader has its own WIFI and if I have my iPad connected to the Sea Crusader hotspot then using Navionics I could not pick up the AIS. To pick up the AIS I would have to disconnect from the Sea Crusader wifi and connect to one of the Axioms wifi and then it would work… I did call Raymarine who had no solution although they say that they have something in the pipeline so I called Digital Yacht.
Richard was very helpful and said that the NavLink 2 device can connect and be powered by a Sea Talk NG connector and if it is put into "Station mode" it can join the Sea Crusader network and then I would be able to see AIS without leaving the Sea Crusader network which is perfect. He was correct it was the easiest install and it all works. I ought to point out that you cannot sync routes and tracks etc via the SeaTalk network you still have to connect your device by joining a Raymarine network. I hope that one day RayMarine will allow this to happen via SeaTalk via a software update one day. (I can't wait for the boat show to discuss this with them).
Whilst I was talking to Richard I mentioned the problem with the AIS and he asked to see a photo of it, good grief he said that is one of ours and it is our very first model. He said that it was Seatalk 0183 and that I must have a converter somewhere and he strongly suggested I replace it and the old aerial splitter for the AIT 2500 Class B+ AIS Transponder and also an SPL 2000 Aerial splitter, to make it all work for me he even offered me a part exchange ion my old equipment.
The results could not be better not only does the GPS find the boat almost as quickly as the Axiom can boot up but the AIS is not far behind. Not only that but the range is much improved as well. First lass products and for once I was able to do the entire installation myself.
Richard was very helpful and said that the NavLink 2 device can connect and be powered by a Sea Talk NG connector and if it is put into "Station mode" it can join the Sea Crusader network and then I would be able to see AIS without leaving the Sea Crusader network which is perfect. He was correct it was the easiest install and it all works. I ought to point out that you cannot sync routes and tracks etc via the SeaTalk network you still have to connect your device by joining a Raymarine network. I hope that one day RayMarine will allow this to happen via SeaTalk via a software update one day. (I can't wait for the boat show to discuss this with them).
Whilst I was talking to Richard I mentioned the problem with the AIS and he asked to see a photo of it, good grief he said that is one of ours and it is our very first model. He said that it was Seatalk 0183 and that I must have a converter somewhere and he strongly suggested I replace it and the old aerial splitter for the AIT 2500 Class B+ AIS Transponder and also an SPL 2000 Aerial splitter, to make it all work for me he even offered me a part exchange ion my old equipment.
The results could not be better not only does the GPS find the boat almost as quickly as the Axiom can boot up but the AIS is not far behind. Not only that but the range is much improved as well. First lass products and for once I was able to do the entire installation myself.
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Ipad to Raymarine connector -
SPL2000 Aerial splitter (No loss)