SIMRAD GO7 XSE & Raymarine SmartPilot ST8002

[bryce031]

So, I purchased a SIMRAD GO7 to replace an old Garmin unit of a Grady White I just purchased. When taking the Garmin unit out of the helm, I discovered a blue "Data OUT" wire running from the Garmin chart plotter to the Raymarine autopilot 'brain.' There are only 4 wires coming out of the harness of the SIMRAD which are all power wires. What do I need to do to make the SIMRAD 'talk' to the Raymarine unit? Do I need to purchase the NMEA cable to do this? Any info or guidance would be appreciated.

 

[StingrayMike]

You do.
the type of cable(s) depends on what type of auto pilot you have.
At a minimum you will need a nmea2000 cable coming from the simard to a nmea 2000 backbone that you will have make using 3 t-connections- 1 for the simrad, one for power for the backbone and then one for the cable going to the auto pilot. The nmea2000( N2k) needs power, so you will need a pwr t-connection going to a 12v source. The Autopilot might be able to accept n2k data. There should be connections that say that. If it doesn't, then it only accepts nmea 0183 data. If it does, then you will have to get a n2k to 0183 converter and that would come off the 3rd t-connection and it would go to tthe autopilot.
The Simard manual talks about how to set up the n2k backbone.

since the Garmin has the data out cable going to the autopilot already, then that is 0183 data.

what model of autopilot is it?

you can always call tech support for each one and they csn help you as well