LowranceNET BLUE to DeviceNET Micro Adaptors

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jimh
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LowranceNET BLUE to DeviceNET Micro Adaptors

Postby jimh » Mon Nov 13, 2017 10:27 am

Adaptors to interconnect LowranceNET BLUE connectors to the NMEA-2000 standard DeviceNET Micro connectors were in production and available years ago, but finding one today may be difficult. It is possible that you can locate some new old-stock adaptors or perhaps find a used adaptor. It is also not very hard to make your own adaptor.

To make an adaptor for interconnecting LowranceNET BLUE cables and DeviceNET Micro cables, obtain a short network extension cable of each type. A network extension cable will be terminated at one end by a female connector and at the other by a male connector. To make an adaptor, follow this procedure:

--cut both adaptor cables in half, creating four cables with connectors on one end and no connector on the other end;

--carefully strip back the outer insulating layer of all four cables at their no-connector end to reveal the inner five conductors;

--the inner five conductors will contain four insulated wires with WHITE, BLUE, RED, and BLACK insulation, and a bare wire; if you don't see this color coding, something is wrong; stop here; if you see this color coding, continue;

--select a cable with LowranceNET BLUE connector with pins (male) and a second cable with DeviceNET Micro connector with sockets (female); wire the individual conductors in these two cables together, using color-to-color connections and bare-wire to bare-wire connection

--select the two remaining cables, which should be a LowranceNET BLUE connector with sockets (female) and a DeviceNET Micro connector with pins (male); wire the individual conductors in these two cables together, using color-to-color connections and bare-wire to bare-wire connection


This creates two adaptor cables for interconnecting LowranceNET BLUE cables and DeviceNET Micro cables.

Note that you must carefully insulate all the connections. You do not have to maintain the cable and its spliced connections as an in-line splice; you can make the splice be arranging the cables in a V-shape.

If you discover that one of the cables has a non-standard color coding of the insulation of the four insulated conductors, you should stop. You will have to seek a reference for the actual pin layouts in the LowranceNET BLUE connectors.

I believe that in a LowranceNET BLUE connector, the contact arrangements are as follows

CONTACT-1 power negative (BLACK)
CONTACT-2 power positive (RED)
CONTACT-3 Data
CONTACT-4 drain wire (BARE)
CONTACT-5 Data

Unfortunately, I don't have information on the signal identifiers for the data pair.

lowraneNET_Blue.png
Contact location for LowranceNET Blue connector; I believe this is a connector with sockets; this should be verified by close inspection of the connector looking for pin identification molded into the connector body.
lowraneNET_Blue.png (8.03 KiB) Viewed 11149 times