Avia Virtual Instruments for Windows PCs

Re Windows NT, started life way back as version 3.1 1993, yes alongside the DOS/ Windows 3.0
Then went on 3.5 3.51. 4, 2000, xp all just NT with a few updates( vista was a big change)
They are still called by their numbers by Microsoft, Vista being NT 6.0 and Windows 7 called NT 6.1..thats a bit wierd?

It was used running many different types of machinery ( like cash registers but not with Intel processors )as you could always get imbedded versions and for different types of processors which made it very fast and reliable. Intel couldnt compete for speed or reliabilty and multiprocessor as the architecture is not suited to those jobs but look where we ended up!!
It has also carried with it a crap network architecture from the OS2 days, 'lanmanager' and microsoft have always promised to ween itself off it but??

The graphic module was placed into the kernal in NT4 to speed up the look and feel but that meant if there is a video hardware/driver problem it can lock up.
To me the problems with the the old blue screen of death and lockups are always hardware based.
Quality hardware just doesnt have the problems the cheaper stuff has.

If you are asking a consumer product to do what requires commercial stability and reliability you need to look elsewhere and it will be sitting on propriatory hardware as well.

 

Complaints about Windows aside (and yes, Win7 is essentially NT6/Vista with a few tweaks and an updated GUI).....

In theory, any NMEA 2000 compliant device should be able to automatically find its place in an arbitrary network of NMEA 2000 devices, and should be able to transmit data that can be understood by any device designed to read data from the bus.

In practice, there is not much the industry association can do to prevent certain manufacturers from producing equipment that is based on the NMEA 2000 standard, but might use different connectors, or some non-standard data, or proprietary configuration tools.

NMEA 2000 may be rapidly replacing 0183, but it's still a work in progress and to expect automatic, instant, full compatibility between all devices is perhaps a bit much to ask of a traditionally secretive, adversarial industry at this point in its development.

 

There are a significant number of proprietary NMEA0183 sentences around as well. It is to be expected. However, compliance with these standards require that certain data is transmitted by certain types of instrument (ie. GPS transmits $GPRMC in NMEA0183). I'm still waiting to see what will happen with ethernet-based systems.

Cheers,

Tim B.

 

I´m quite fine with Furuno´s Ethernet feature. (as with the rest of the quality)

 

Apex
Thats only ethernet between displays I thought?
How are the sensors connected to it, nmea2k and or 0183?

 

No, between the entire system. You can connect sensors by NMEA 2000 too.

 

The whole issue of NMEA 2K setup and inital config is a disaster. The fact that company A display device cannot configure Company B sensor/transducer means that in effect you have to stay within a manufacturers set of products. NMEA should have required that manufacturers release PC based config systems, ie a PC connected to the CanBus. At least this would allow interoperation.

AT present NMEA 2K is there, but its too little and arguably too late.

There is also a lot of issues is using a single bus throughout a boat,

I have used it , I understand it technically, but I'm no fan

 

There's worse
Mercury Marine did their own version so only the stuff from the electronic companies they own ( ed) will connect
So if you buy a Merc Cummins package you are stuck
Buy a Cummins from Cummins and you are ok