Multifunctional Gauges

[demarko210]

I have a 03 Sea Fox I was thinking about purchasing a Multifunctional Gauge such as this to reduce items in my dash panel. I would like to install my chart plotter within the dash panel. Any recommendation on a good multifunctional gauge that will work with a 03 150 merc EFI 2 stroke?

 

[Scott Danforth]

the only thing effected by your particular gauges by the fact its a 2-stroke is the tach.

 

[demarko210]

the only thing effected by your particular gauges by the fact its a 2-stroke is the tach.

I dont follow. Are you saying the Tach is the main item to focus on? I really dont need MPH and volt they will come from other items. I mainly need fuel, and rpm. The other small one is hours.

 

[demarko210]

Bump. I was looking in Selco book 2001-2014 Mercury 2strokes and found that i have the Smartcraft system available on my engine serial OT747666. Anyone have experience with these products?

 

[Scott Danforth]

first, the seloc manual has more mis-information and wrong information than correct information. what does the factory manual say?

second, so you have smartcraft...... however the only gauge shown on your dash that would be smartcraft is still only the tach. and since you dont have a digital readout for engine temp, engine hours, etc. I seriously doubt you have smartcraft.

 

[dingbat]

What size plotter are you going to install?
Don't look like you have much room to play with. Can't see the space accommodating more than 3 - 4" display.

A large percentage of multi-function displays support a full compliment of gauge functionality via NMEA 2000 interface, negating the need for individual gauges.

 

[Scott Danforth]

What size plotter are you going to install?
Don't look like you have much room to play with. Can't see the space accommodating more than 3 - 4" display.

A large percentage of multi-function displays support a full compliment of gauge functionality via NMEA 2000 interface, negating the need for individual gauges.

assuming you have the NMEA gateways, etc.

 

[demarko210]

first, the seloc manual has more mis-information and wrong information than correct information. what does the factory manual say?

second, so you have smartcraft...... however the only gauge shown on your dash that would be smartcraft is still only the tach. and since you dont have a digital readout for engine temp, engine hours, etc. I seriously doubt you have smartcraft.

Not sure how much information in this manual is incorrect however it helps out when needing to investigate something on my engine. Any confusion i come here to get advice. I will check for the purple connection this weekend for the smartcraft. I only asked because i was reading the book and saw the installation portion of the tach and speed with smartcraft and mentioned it was for 2002 and later EFI. Prior to reading this i google smartcraft and looked at some videos and wanted to ask if someone knew about this. This vesselview says that its compatible with my series engine. My serial is OT747666

 

[demarko210]

What size plotter are you going to install?
Don't look like you have much room to play with. Can't see the space accommodating more than 3 - 4" display.

A large percentage of multi-function displays support a full compliment of gauge functionality via NMEA 2000 interface, negating the need for individual gauges.

Hey @dingbat hope all is well. The instrument panel size from factory is 10" X 5" that you see in the image. I was going to cut out to refit a 10" X 7" panel and look for a 4-5" display. I was looking at NMEA prior to posting this thread because i never heard of it and most digital gauges and displays i saw was NMEA and that lead me here.

How would the RPM from engine be read from the NMEA gateway? Obvious i would need some kind of connection from the engine to connect to the backbone.

 

[dingbat]

Hey @dingbat hope all is well. The instrument panel size from factory is 10" X 5" that you see in the image. I was going to cut out to refit a 10" X 7" panel and look for a 4-5" display. I was looking at NMEA prior to posting this thread because i never heard of it and most digital gauges and displays i saw was NMEA and that lead me here.

How would the RPM from engine be read from the NMEA gateway? Obvious i would need some kind of connection from the engine to connect to the backbone.

NMEA 2000 is a standard communication protocol (language) to allow “plug and play” connection of peripherals between different instrumentation manufacturers.

The tach function is supported in the NMEA 2000 standard. All you would need is a convertor/gateway, in your case MercMonitor, to convert the data to NMEA 2000 to support the third party display of the data.

Once done, you could connect to any NMEA 2000 compatible MFD, chart plotter or device that supports engine functions.

My Garmin chart plotter supports a full compliment of gauge functions including tachometer

 

[demarko210]

NMEA 2000 is a standard communication protocol (language) to allow “plug and play” connection of peripherals between different instrumentation manufacturers.

The tach function is supported in the NMEA 2000 standard. All you would need is a convertor/gateway, in your case MercMonitor, to convert the data to NMEA 2000 to support the third party display of the data.

Once done, you could connect to any NMEA 2000 compatible MFD, chart plotter or device that supports engine functions.

My Garmin chart plotter supports a full compliment of gauge functions including tachometer

@dingbat Ok I am looking at the SC1000 kit. Only issue I think I will have is connecting to my current plotter/sonar (Humminbird 858c hd di). It supports NMEA however I was reading this post from amazon review. The review was in 2014 I think around the time the unit came out :

For those with 1XXX, 9XX and 8XX series units, this device is supposed to allow you to "use" NMEA 2000 data on the network. What were my expectations in buying this: 1) gather data from my other NMEA 2K devices on the network, 2) create a custom readout on my HB unit (similar to what's shown on pg. 35-37 in the installation guide), 3) being able to see navigational information on my remote gauge not associated with my console. All seems reasonable, right? You'd get this with Lowrance, Simrad, Furuno, Garmin, etc. The reason I hate it: 1) It only reads engine RPM from my network. Fuel flow (see page 36 in the installation manual) and all other data (fuel level, engine temp, etc) can not be selected. The HB rep said the manual is erroneous - can't be done. 2) the unit is one-way only. So, even though the HB obtains GPS lat-long, vessel heading, speed, etc - it DOES NOT output this information to the NMEA 2K network. In fact, when you go to the data box view, that information isn't included -even though the unit records the information internally!!!! Is that insane? So my bow gauge won't show depth, speed, heading, etc - all gathered by the HB unit! I have the latest firmware loaded (as of Jun14).
Do yourself a favor. If you have a newer HB unit, it presumably comes with NMEA 2K compatibility built in. If you have an older unit (like my 8XXc SI), you might as well start saving for a replacement - vice buying this garbage for $160. No Lowrance sensor or device is this expensive and they actually do something. HB needs to update their firmware to "Truly" support NMEA 2K on older units (as their numerous press releases imply). Take a look at a reputable marine electronics forum (hulltruth for instance). It's now apparent why no one appears to use HB sounders.

​

 

[dingbat]

@dingbat Ok I am looking at the SC1000 kit. Only issue I think I will have is connecting to my current plotter/sonar (Humminbird 858c hd di). It supports NMEA however I was reading this post from amazon review. The review was in 2014 I think around the time the unit came out :

For those with 1XXX, 9XX and 8XX series units, this device is supposed to allow you to "use" NMEA 2000 data on the network. What were my expectations in buying this: 1) gather data from my other NMEA 2K devices on the network, 2) create a custom readout on my HB unit (similar to what's shown on pg. 35-37 in the installation guide), 3) being able to see navigational information on my remote gauge not associated with my console. All seems reasonable, right? You'd get this with Lowrance, Simrad, Furuno, Garmin, etc. The reason I hate it: 1) It only reads engine RPM from my network. Fuel flow (see page 36 in the installation manual) and all other data (fuel level, engine temp, etc) can not be selected. The HB rep said the manual is erroneous - can't be done. 2) the unit is one-way only. So, even though the HB obtains GPS lat-long, vessel heading, speed, etc - it DOES NOT output this information to the NMEA 2K network. In fact, when you go to the data box view, that information isn't included -even though the unit records the information internally!!!! Is that insane? So my bow gauge won't show depth, speed, heading, etc - all gathered by the HB unit! I have the latest firmware loaded (as of Jun14).
Do yourself a favor. If you have a newer HB unit, it presumably comes with NMEA 2K compatibility built in. If you have an older unit (like my 8XXc SI), you might as well start saving for a replacement - vice buying this garbage for $160. No Lowrance sensor or device is this expensive and they actually do something. HB needs to update their firmware to "Truly" support NMEA 2K on older units (as their numerous press releases imply). Take a look at a reputable marine electronics forum (hulltruth for instance). It's now apparent why no one appears to use HB sounders.

​

While I’m not a HB fan for a number of reasons, electronics are constantly evolving. I would check to see if there where any software updates done to make the unit fully NMEA 2000 compliant.

If not, Garmin offers a number of ways to do this including a stand alone display specifically for instrumentation monitoring

 

[demarko210]

Will do thanks again.

 

[demarko210]

I think I found the SmartCraft link. First time I looked around could not find it. I started caulking items attached to the bow and came back to the engine to look again and found it.