MEWS: Marine Electronics Wiki

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====== Actisense NGT-1 ======

After trying to use this briefly, I much prefer a plain USB-CAN adapter that does socket CAN instead of it's own proprietary encoding over USB serial port.

It's a USB to NMEA2000 adapter. USB side is an FTDI chip. FTDI talks to an ST ''STR712FR1'', then an isolation barrier, and CAN interface (''NCV7351''). CAN side of isolation appears to be powered from the CAN bus. There is very little to it, but it is all spread out a lot in an excessively large box.

The microcontroller core is an ARM7TDMI, which is a pre Cortex-M design, so a predecessor to the STM32s it seems.

The NMEA network cable is quite hefty.

Actisense sell an isolated and non-isolated version. The one I looked at says it is the normal USB version but it appears to be isolated inside.

It could benefit from [[conformal_coating|Conformal Coating]].

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===== dmesg =====

<file>
[45957.926270] usb 1-1.2: new full-speed USB device number 11 using ehci-pci
[45958.041185] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0403, idProduct=d9aa, bcdDevice= 6.00
[45958.041202] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[45958.041207] usb 1-1.2: Product: NGT-1
[45958.041210] usb 1-1.2: Manufacturer: Actisense
[45958.041213] usb 1-1.2: SerialNumber: 37522
[45958.618377] usbcore: registered new interface driver ftdi_sio
[45958.618834] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for FTDI USB Serial Device
[45958.618914] ftdi_sio 1-1.2:1.0: FTDI USB Serial Device converter detected
[45958.618958] usb 1-1.2: Detected FT232R
[45958.620317] usb 1-1.2: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB0
</file>

===== Software =====

==== NMEA Reader ==== 

Some debug software provided by Actisense, also apparently needed to configure the device. CANBoat wiki says the device won't send any useful PGNs to the network unless enabled with this software.

==== CAN Boat ====

A bunch of linux CLI programs that can work with the NGT-1.

e.g.
`actisense-serial /dev/ttyUSB1 | analyzer -raw -data`

Must be built from source.
Instructions: [[https://github.com/canboat/canboat/wiki]]

==== SignalK ====

Uses canboat to talk to Actisense and others.

==== OpenCPN ====

Unsure. Seems to be under recent development.