with Larry Anderson
Our May/June issue included an
interview with NMEA Technical
Director Steve Spitzer aimed at
answering a few questions dealers
and boat builders have about the
installation, application and use of
NMEA 2000®. This month, we
asked Larry Anderson, vice president of Maretron, to respond to a
handful of questions. Maretron
manufactures an extensive line of
NMEA 2000®-certified products.
What do you hear from boat
builders and marine electronics
dealers about their experiences with NMEA
2000®?
Anderson:
MEJ:
It is a mixed bag if we
speak generally. For those
who have been working with NMEA 2000®
for several years and have taken the time to
NMEA 2000 ®
Successful installations require understanding
and applying the standard correctly
become educated through seminars and
hands-on experience, it is phenomenal. For
those who have heard things about it but have
no actual experience they are like a deer in the
headlights. They don’t have a realistic understanding of the “how to” or its benefits.
But probably the most disappointing and
scary are those who have assumed mistakenly
that it is like connecting products in the past
and that they can wing their way through it.
They don’t understand the underlying technology of CANbus and that one must follow
very detailed and specific rules. Nor do they
understand that every device or cable and
connector should carry an NMEA-certified
stamp of approval.
Some techs we talked to have had
problems making all of the equipment work together on the network. In your
experience with boat builders and dealers
who are installing NMEA 2000® networks,
what tends to be the most common problem?
The most common problem is similar to what I
said earlier, some assume that past experience
is good enough and they don’t want to take
time to understand the standard, its purposes
and its rules for having an ensured successful
installation. It reminds me of how in the days
of VCRs you would go into a home and see
the display flashing 12:00. In other words
they couldn’t be bothered with correctly setting up the unit if they could just get it to play
a tape—that was enough. Some boat builders
have thought that just having the cable laid
and some devices connected was good
enough, but it isn’t. If one doesn’t take the
time to correctly configure the devices and
efficiently lay the cables for the network, it
may work partially but they have rendered it
hopeless to add to or to connect diverse manufacturers’ products.
Anderson:
MEJ:
In a similar vein, what are the most
challenging problems that builders
and dealers must overcome to give customers
a network that performs well?
MEJ:
Spend enough time correctly planning a network
and ensuring that they are using NMEA-approved cabling. By the way, all approved
cabling and certified devices are listed at
www.nmea.org. Also, they must correctly
configure devices with logical naming and
location information so the equipment can be
easily identified as where I want data from.
Anderson:
It seems that a lot of boaters who
are shopping for electronics see
that a device is NMEA 2000® compatible and
buy it. The dealer installs it—and it doesn’t
work. That’s bad for the customer, but it’s also
a black eye for the entire industry, especially
the dealer who is on the hook to make things
right. Is the solution better education of consumers and/or dealers and manufacturers that
NMEA compatible is not the same as NMEA
certified? Or is the solution better policing by
NMEA? Or is it something else?
Well, policing is very difficult to actually motivate
improvement, it seems to me. People tend to
become defensive and not interested to learn
a better way. The most important change that
could occur is for every manufacturer of
NMEA 2000® products to make certain they
receive product certification and be committed to following the intended rules as laid out
in the standard. There are still, 10 years later,
electronics manufacturers that aren’t taking
NMEA 2000® seriously and thereby seem to
carelessly implement it with flaws. It is my
opinion that they have been doing things the
same way for years and don’t believe they
have to learn from anyone how to be better at
implementing NMEA 2000®.
Anderson:
MEJ:
