CONTINUOUSWAVE

ACTISENSE has announced that their NMEA Conversion Gateway device, the NGW-1, has undergone a major revision. Many new NMEA datagrams have been added to the list of converted data, including the conversion of NMEA-0183 sentences DSC and DSE to their equivalent NMEA-2000 parameter groups. This revision will make the NGW-1 much more attractive as a device for linking VHF Marine Band radios with NMEA-0183 output to NMEA-2000 networks. The new firmware will be released shortly as a beta version. There will no longer be separate versions of firmware for the NGW-1 for standard conversions and AIS conversion sets.

In addition, Actisense are announcing a new software tool called the NGW CONFIGURATION UTILITY, which will become part of the Actisense Toolkit software. In the future users will be able to update the firmware in the NGW-1 with this utility.

Based on very recent email correspondence with ActiSense, the announced revisions and upgrades to their NGW-1 product have been delayed. The announced new firmware and the new functions it is intended to provide have not been released. When there is more news about the NGW-1, I will append to this thread with an update.

Actisense have released the new firmware for their NGW-1 NMEA2000 protocol convertor mentioned earlier in this thread. The new firmware is still in a beta version. With the new beta firmware installed, the NGW-1 protocol convertor will also be able to be configured or set up using another new software product, the NGW Configuration Tool.

The new beta firmware is available from:

http://bit.ly/2CNNHmo

The new NGW Configuration Tool; the beta version is available from:

http://bit.ly/2CMhI5N

Note the above are direct links to downloads of executable files for the Windows operating system.

The above links and some further instructions are included in the webpage at:

https://desk.zoho.eu/portal/actisense/community/topic/ngw-1-beta-firmware

A list of all the conversions available can be downloaded from the above URL. And further advice on using the configuration tool is found at

https://desk.zoho.eu/portal/actisense/kb/articles/changing-upgrading-firmware

The new beta firmware for the NGW-1 adds the much need conversions of DSC and DSE NMEA-0183 sentences to their appropriate equivalents in NMEA2000. These sentences are essential if a VHF Marine Band DSC radio with a NMEA-0183 output is to be used with chartplotters and GNSS receivers that only provide NMEA2000 data ports. However, inasmuch as this is still beta software, Actisense notes that there is still a problem with the enhanced position data associated with the DSE extension sentence. For some background, the DSC sentence only gives the position data of another vessel with a resolution to one-whole-minute of one degree. The DSE sentence is an extension sentence that enhances the precision of the position data by giving further resolution.