Development of Embedded Vessel Monitoring System Using NMEA2000

Abstract

NMEA2000 became the de facto standard of the communication protocol for the instrument level network in vessels, and it is anticipated that most of the vessels will be equipped with the sensors and actuators based on this protocol. The conventional serial communication specifications such as RS-232, RS-485, or even NMEA0183 are single-talker/multiple-listener and interconnection among multiple sensors and/or actuators usually results in a bundle of wires. On the other hand, NMEA2000 is a true bus type(multiple-talker/multiple-listener) protocol and theoretically up to 256 instruments can be hot-plugged. With the advent of the protocol, it is necessary to consider a new type of monitoring system for the instruments in vessels: In most traditional serial communication environments, a dedicated monitor or user interface was necessary for each sensor or actuator as it was simply not easy to collect data in a single place. With NMEA2000, the collection of various types of information is simple. An embedded system can be employed to combine, to arrange and to display informations from various types of devices. Assuming that the actuators and sensors on a vessel are interconnected by NMEA2000 standard, we devise a tentative interactive vessel monitoring system in which the following 4 kinds of informations are collected and delivered: the navigation, engine, weather and tanks informations.