2020-02-15, 01:44 PM
It really depends on what protocol your B&G instruments, and you sensors, talk among themselves. Some more recent depth and water speed sensors output standard protocols like NMEA0183 or NMEA2000. Older ones typically are paired with the instrument. For example, my old Raymarine ST60 depth and water speed display needs the sensors plugged directly into the back of the display, and it handles depth and speed detection. I then have a SeaTalk output from the display that needs to be converted to NMEA0183 before it can go into OpenPlotter.
If you are willing to hack up some hardware and software, the speed sensor could probably be connected directly to an Arduino or ESP32 device to detect the pulses from the sensor and convert that to NMEA0183 or even SignalK. I might even have some code around here to do that. Depth is another issue - there's usually some pretty sophisticated software in the instrument that controls the sonar output pings and interprets the echos to calculate depth.
Between the B&G displays, they use "B&G Network Protocol" to communicate between systems. As far as I know, it isn't compatible with anything you can do on OpenPlotter without a translation box.
Perhaps if you can tell us what version of B&G displays you have, we might be able to help find a way to interface to them without breaking the bank.
If you are willing to hack up some hardware and software, the speed sensor could probably be connected directly to an Arduino or ESP32 device to detect the pulses from the sensor and convert that to NMEA0183 or even SignalK. I might even have some code around here to do that. Depth is another issue - there's usually some pretty sophisticated software in the instrument that controls the sonar output pings and interprets the echos to calculate depth.
Between the B&G displays, they use "B&G Network Protocol" to communicate between systems. As far as I know, it isn't compatible with anything you can do on OpenPlotter without a translation box.
Perhaps if you can tell us what version of B&G displays you have, we might be able to help find a way to interface to them without breaking the bank.