E380 Networking Navigation Upgrade

My boat came with mixture of older Raymarine ST60+ Wind, Speed, and Depth instruments at the helm networked via Raymarine SeaTalk to the C80 MFD chartploteer and the SPX 10 autopilot as well as an original B&G Multi Data instrument display at the nav desk that was no longer networked. A new Raymarine p70 auto pilot had been added and networked to the SPX 10 using a SeaTalkNG (NMEA 2000) cable. The boat also had an old basic VHF radio at the nav desk without a DSC and a recently installed Vesper XB-8000 AIS unit. I was a little surprised when I did the survey and the "on the water"sea trial that the Vesper unit was not sending out an AIS signal or that I could see any received AIS targets on the C80 MFD.

After closing on the boat purchase I started troubleshooting and found that the Vesper unit had never been programmed with an MMSI number and without it would not transmit. This worked in my favor as I planned to obtain an FCC issued MMSI number for the new Standard Horizon GX-2400 VHF radio with DSC and for the Vesper unit after I received new USCG documentation. As a reminder if you ever plan to take your boat offshore to another country you should obtain your MMSI from the FCC as they will also provide the vessels callsign identification as well as entering it into the international contact database. The BoatUS issued MMSI numbers are only for vessels that will remain in US waters and entered in the USCG national database.

Anyway I decided to install the new VHF at the nav desk and a remote in the cockpit on the pedestal as well as new i70s multifunction displays (3 of them) at the helm and the nav dek and network everything together using a SeaTalkNG backbone. The big issue I have with the Raymarine SeaTalkNG proprietary NMEA 2000 cables are the cost! It seems their pricing is $45 for every item and the costs quickly add up as you network every device together.

Fortunately the old C80 MFD through the use of a SeaTalkNG to SeaTalk2 adapter cable can connect to the SeaTalkNG network. I now have my VHF, Vesper, SPX 10, C80 as well as the p70 and i70s displays all networked together. This setup allows for me to have multi GPS redundancy as the VHF, Vesper and C80 each have their own GPS antennas as well as sharing the GPS data and other data across the network. The i70s and p70 instrument displays are synced together so that changing the color scheme to "red night mode" switches them all to the same color mode or back, a really nice display feature that I use a lot. In the future I will likely upgrade to a NMEA 2000 DTS transducer and the C80 MFD to a newer one with WiFi radar connectivity and may install an Actisense EMU-1 engine monitoring unit to bring the engine and fuel level onto the i70s displays, but for now the new setup is a major improvement from the old setup. Attached are the before and after pictures and the networking schematic.

Which by the way I'm still selling the old working ST+ Wind, Speed, and Depth displays. PM if interested.