Quote Originally Posted by todd22123 View Post
...Raymarine autopilot? ...apparent wind angle? Raymarine wind instrument? ...wind instrument speaking NMEA with translation to Seatalk.
Hi Todd,

Actually the multiplexer converts SeaTalk to NMEA, but not NMEA to SeaTalk. So for example, you can connect several NMEA "Talkers" (outputs devices) plus your SeaTalk data wire pair to the multiplexer (it has 4 NMEA input ports, one of which can be substituted with SeaTalk), and it will combine all the data into 1 NMEA sentence, plus it will throw out any data that piles up in the buffer. Then it send the sentence to one or more NMEA "Listeners" (input devices), or it will send the aggregated NMEA sentence via USB to the PC.

But no, it won't take a NMEA wind instrument and convert it to SeaTalk for input to the Raymarine autopilot.

So to answer your questions:
Yes, Raymarine X-5 autopilot
Yes, apparent wind angle mode
Yes, Raymarine wind instrument
Raymarine displays
Using SeaTalk between all Raymarine devices
Also sending all SeaTalk data to the muliplexer input
Sending NMEA from my Garmin GPS to the NMEA input on the course computer AND to a Multiplexer NMEA input
AIS NMEA data goes to a Multiplexer NMEA input
Multiplexer NMEA out includes everything, and that goes to my PC via a USB port
Raymarine displays show all GPS data and SeaTalk instrument data, very nicely
All GPS-related autopilot functions work okay, but not perfectly

Here's the hitch... the autopilot will steer to a waypoint, and the displays will show the waypoint data only when I've activated an actual "route" on the Garmin device. If I use the "goto waypoint" function on the Garmin unit, apparently Raymarine doesn't know what to do with the NMEA data and the autopilot won't steer to the waypoint, and the displays show no waypoint data. It's a minor bother, and it's workable.

I have no direct experience on whether the autopilot would work well with NMEA wind data. There are 2 NMEA input ports on the course computer, and as I noted, I use one of them to get the GPS data into it. So you could try sending wind data to that. But I suspect it won't work well. This is a good question for the Raymarine tech folks, who are very helpful and knowledgeable. I suspect it would need more than basic NMEA data, and I suspect it relies on specific timing of data.

Paul/Culebra