Marine Automation Systems

Hi All,

Do any of you guys out there have any experience with marine automation systems, specifically the SVC system made by Kongsberg Simrad?
I'm trying to track down some literature on their systems but the net is very vague.

Thanks,
Shaun.

I am only vauguely familiar with Lowrance's LowranceNet, which is based on the NMEA 2000 spec. I believe it is based on CAN, and if you can determine if the network you are speaking of is NMEA 2000 compliant, you should be able to find some documents that would help. The Lowrance system looks a lot like DeviceNet, with the media, tees and terminating resistors. The "brains" of their network resides in the sonar or sonar/GPS units, allowing you to select which devices you have networked (i.e. sonars sharing common transducers or GPS units sharing a common receiver). You can also add sensors such as temperature, fuel flow, fuel level, engine RPM, etc. to the network and configure customized gauges on the sonar/GPS terminals for display, eliminating the need for conventional guages. That's about the limit of my knowledge on it, I'm afraid.

You will not find much about Kongsberg systems, not even the
customer gets any detailed information. They are ment to be serviced and install by Kongsbergs own people, you cant modifie anything without the special 'dongle' that only technicians have.
But they are based on slightly modified windows xp and communicates via three indipendent ethernet lans.