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Why would I want or need an NMEA Autoswitch?
The NMEA 0183 standard allows any suitably designed marine electronic device
to share its gathered information with any other device on a vessel. Unfortunately,
there is one very large drawback with this standard - only one device on
a connected network can actually send data (a single 'talker' device),
with multiple devices (determined by the current limit of the sending unit)
listening to that data (multiple listeners).
Secondly, for systems that have multiple NMEA devices of an identical type
(e.g. two GPS's or two depth sounders), automatic selection of the highest
priority device with valid data is normally a vital requirement. However,
the NMEA 0183 standard has no method of automatically switching between
different devices, so this requirement is usually fulfilled with a manual
changeover switch: not a very good solution, but the only one
available until now.
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The Actisense™ NMEA Autoswitch solves both
of these problems by allowing up to 4 input devices/talkers, connected
through full galvanic opto-isolated inputs, to be analysed, and the NMEA
data of the highest priority device automatically switched to
the NMEA output.
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Can I use an NMEA Multiplexer with my NMEA Autoswitch?
Yes, is the simple answer. The NMEA Autoswitch has been specifically designed
to work together with the NMEA Multiplexer / Combiner ( NDC-2 & NDC-3)
to create a complete NMEA system solution.
The normal NMEA system would have an Actisense™ NMEA
Autoswitch connected to two (or more) GPS / Depth sounder units. The NMEA
Autoswitch adds a special NMEA tag to the data that passes through
it to help identify which of these GPS / Depth sounder units supplied the
NMEA data.
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The autoswitched NMEA output is connected to one of the NMEA Multiplexer's
inputs. In this way the highest priority device's NMEA data is autoswitched
into the complete NMEA system and the actual device supplying the NMEA
data can be determined (and displayed if required and possible) to help
the user.
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Simple Plug'n'Play installation and operation makes this a perfect solution.
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