iKonvert – NMEA 2000 to USB Converter

NMEA 2000 is the marine version of the CAN networks found in every modern car. NMEA 2000 allows marine electronic devices from different manufacturers to talk to each other

NMEA 2000 is a standard set of data messages, protocols and connectors that all NMEA 2000 devices must use*

* Note –   Some manufacturers have created their own “flavours” of NMEA 2000 with different connectors and cabling; Raymarine’s “SeaTalkNG” and Simrad’s “SimNet” are two examples and both need proprietary adaptor cables to connect to standard NMEA 2000 networks.

You cannot just plug two NMEA 2000 devices together with a suitable NMEA 2000 cable – they must be connected to a properly constructed NMEA 2000 network.

Each device has an NMEA 2000 interface that must be powered from the network. Some smaller low power devices, like sensors are also powered from the network

There is a small cost in setting up the network, but future expansion is very easy. A Digital Yacht NMEA 2000 Starter Kit is a cost effective way to build a small, expandable network

Yes, our iKonvert uses the popular FTDI serial to USB chip and the LINUX and MAC OSX drivers for this chip are included in the relevant operating system’s kernel. It should appear in the operating system as a serial device named “ttyUSB0” (or similar) when plugged in to a LINUX or MAC machine.

Our iKonvert can output converted NMEA 0183 sentences or the RAW NMEA 2000 data depending upon which mode it is set to (see user manual for more details). You can either set the mode by changing the four DIP switches inside the iKonvert or you can do this programmatically by sending a serial command to the iKonvert and the unit will stay in this mode even after a power cycle.

Our iKonvert/NAVLink2 gateways make implementing NMEA 2000 much easier, with no old, proprietary libraries, just a simple serial protocol that is published online at…

https://github.com/digitalyacht/iKonvert/wiki/4.-Serial-Protocol

The gateways take care of all of the complicated address claiming, network discovery and NMEA 2000 network management, simplifying and speeding up your software implementation. Here is a link to our iKonvert Developers Guide on GitHub…

https://github.com/digitalyacht/iKonvert

You will need a copy of the NMEA 2000 Appendix B in order to decode the NMEA 2000 PGN data, which is available from the NMEA organization.

If you have not already developed software to read and write NMEA 2000 data, then you might want to look at the open source CANBoat software, which supports our iKonvert as detailed in the CANBoat Wiki, see link below. The developer Kees, has over a number of years, reverse engineered the NMEA PGNs and the data is translated in to a more simple and open JSON format.

https://github.com/canboat/canboat/wiki/ikonvert-serial