Thread: NMEA 2000 question

Sign up on BassBoat central. Look on tin boats thread and send a PM to Basstrackeroptimax. He is very knowledgable on that stuff. He is running the Mercometer on his.

If you are looking to track hours, it might be a ton cheaper to purchase an hour meter.

That said, most of them require a harness of some kind in order to connect to an NMEA2000 network. Some boats also require additional sensors as the main harness doesn't cover all components on your boat (like trim tabs).

For my boat, I was able to find the proper harness (Suzuki 140HP). Specifically, what I was looking for was the amount of trim on my motor. My boat doesn't have a trim meter. I wanted to know if this information came with the original harness or I had to purchase an additional sensor. I was able to find out that it did in fact include that with the harness. I also wanted a better way to track fuel usage and how much fuel/ hours I actually had. The harness also would work.

In the end, I didn't purchase it. Although I would like to (and kick it around every time the topic comes up) I see it as a good product for ME. I run lowrance and their site was very helpful at pointing me to the right locations to get the proper harness that I would need. I am not sure on HB. Might be worth looking at lowrance's site. The harness that connects to the motor is the same. Make sure you are going to get what you want with the harness you are going to purchase.

I had NMEA2000 (Lowrance) engine monitor on my Yamaha 115. The problem was most stuff NMEA was manuf priority. I would have had to add a separate NMEA monitor for water, oil, gas etc. The cable was still in the boat when I sold it.

Well I received a very nice and very detailed response from a dealer. Basically Mercury talks in SmartCraft, not NMEA-2000, and the Level 1 Mercmonitor has a basic NMEA Gateway. Of course the SmartCraft gauge that comes with it includes all the data I'm interested in...RPM, voltage, hours, Engine Temp, Faults/Warning, fuel used, and water pressure. The cost, $600. If I want to attempt a connection to the Humminbird, they have an adapter for $200...but I was told HB doesn't always play friendly with NMEA-2000. I definitely won't go the HB route, but am wondering if I can justify the cost for the MercMonitor.