Installed!

 Yep,

I spent a couple of hours this weekend finalising the installation of the electronics.

Success! Everything now talks to each other. 

I also got to use my new Birthday present: a rechargeable soldering iron! Not the most exciting of presents, but very, very handy. Straight away a lot better than the dodgy gas-powered things. Plus you can recharge it via USB, so it can be charged on the boat. 

Not cheap: it was about £70 for the boxed kit, but you get a selection of bits, a sponge, and a reel of solder. So a neat little kit. And the battery is supposed to last 40 minutes. Which is quite a long time considering it's only working when you press the button. When you put the soldering iron down, it switches off. But press the button and it's up to heat in 15 seconds.

Anyhoo, back to the case in hand: working electronics!

I connected port 1 of the chart plotter to the NMEA output of the Quark unit. I then changed the setting for high speed NMEA and also enabled the setting to show the AIS data on-screen.

And voila! Data appeared.

The icon for Laura J is red because it's closer than 500 Metres.

You can use the clunky left/right/up/down button to move the cursor over the AIS target to get more information:

Status: Dangerous! Only because it's within the 500m limit set on the Chartplotter.

You get the same info on Navionics:

No Dangerousness on Navionics. You get a red icon and it beeps instead.

That's page 1 of the info. 

I'm pretty happy now that everything is talking to everything else. It gives you a bit more security and more information is always useful. Of course on more advanced and integrated setups, the AIS information would be passed to the VHF and you'd be able to hail the danger vessel if it was getting a bit close. But that's a bit too advanced for an 18ft sailboat.

As an aside, I know that getting Navionincs to talk to the Quark unit was a bit of a mission. Mainly getting all the settings correct to get the two units talking.

So here's the settings screen for Navionics under "Paired Devices":

The Name of the item doesn't have to be the same as the WiFi device name for the Quark unit, but it does help for completeness. The important thing is that you connect your WiFi to the Quark unit and you have this entry under paired devices. 

Navionics on your phone or tablet should then automatically connect to the quark device. Once connected you'll start to see the AIS targets appear on the screen as they transmit data. 

And that's it. All done. 

All that is left is to tin the connections to keep the dreaded green copper oxidisation at bay on the connections. That's just a case of going round all the bare copper wire and tinning it with the soldering iron. 

I now have to take the boat out for a spin and see how it all works in practice. It's about time I hanked on the new-to-me mainsail and see how that performs.