Have a Toshiba (bluetooth) with Fugawi Marine Navigation Software and am
buying a Garmin GPS 10 (bluetooth, just announced).

Now I need depth data for the software BUT no-one makes a bluetooth equipped
simple depth sounder. My marine software will handle shallow water alerts,
etc. if I can just get depth data into it.

What can I hook up to a depth sounder in order to send data to my laptop?
"Socket Communications" make a serial port bluetooth adapter if I can find a
simple depth sounder with an extra serial port output ???? Might work!

Many thanks guys from a very frustrated boater!

peter wrote:
Have a Toshiba (bluetooth) with Fugawi Marine Navigation Software and
am buying a Garmin GPS 10 (bluetooth, just announced).

Now I need depth data for the software BUT no-one makes a bluetooth
equipped simple depth sounder. My marine software will handle
shallow water alerts, etc. if I can just get depth data into it.

What can I hook up to a depth sounder in order to send data to my
laptop? "Socket Communications" make a serial port bluetooth adapter
if I can find a simple depth sounder with an extra serial port output
???? Might work!

Many thanks guys from a very frustrated boater!



Sounds like a case for a wireless multiplexer.
http://www.mrmarine.com.au/usb-multiplexers.htm
Dennis
Remove "nospam" from return address.

"peter" wrote in message
...


Have a Toshiba (bluetooth) with Fugawi Marine Navigation Software and am
buying a Garmin GPS 10 (bluetooth, just announced).

Now I need depth data for the software BUT no-one makes a bluetooth
equipped
simple depth sounder. My marine software will handle shallow water
alerts,
etc. if I can just get depth data into it.

What can I hook up to a depth sounder in order to send data to my laptop?
"Socket Communications" make a serial port bluetooth adapter if I can find
a
simple depth sounder with an extra serial port output ???? Might work!

Many thanks guys from a very frustrated boater!

With one or our Bluetooth enabled NMEA multiplexer, you can hook up four
instruments and get all data to your toshiba over bluetooth.
See www.shipmodul.com

Meindert

Meindert Sprang wrote:

With one or our Bluetooth enabled NMEA multiplexer, you can hook up four
instruments and get all data to your toshiba over bluetooth.
See www.shipmodul.com

Those multiplexers are nice units, they'll sure solve a lot of problems
with NMEA data sharing.

Do you know, if you had two serial to BT adapters (on two different NMEA
data sources for example) set up as slave units on a piconet with a BT
master (on the OP's Toshiba for example), will the BT master output both
of the NMEA inputs to same serial port?

I don't know much about BT piconets but if the master could take the
data from the slaves and sequence the outputs to the serial port used by
the application, it might work for the situation here too.

Jack

--
Jack Erbes in Ellsworth, Maine, USA - jackerbes at adelphia dot net
(also receiving email at jacker at midmaine.com)

"Jack Erbes" wrote in message
...
Meindert Sprang wrote:

With one or our Bluetooth enabled NMEA multiplexer, you can hook up four
instruments and get all data to your toshiba over bluetooth.
See www.shipmodul.com

Those multiplexers are nice units, they'll sure solve a lot of problems
with NMEA data sharing.

Do you know, if you had two serial to BT adapters (on two different NMEA
data sources for example) set up as slave units on a piconet with a BT
master (on the OP's Toshiba for example), will the BT master output both
of the NMEA inputs to same serial port?

No. Serial BT adapters use the BT Serial Profile, which is meant to be a
transparant cable replacement. The moment you combine datastreams together,
it cannot be a transparant channel anymore, since the virtual port now has
to know where one NMEA sentence ends and where the other begins.

I don't know much about BT piconets but if the master could take the
data from the slaves and sequence the outputs to the serial port used by
the application, it might work for the situation here too.

That could be done, but the serial to BT converters then would have to know
what data they are transporting, in order to packetize it. The same goes for
the computer end.

But your idea works, but slightly different: most BT USB dongles offer more
than one virtual com port. So you could pair multiple devices, each to it's
own virtual port and let the nav application read more than one port, which
many can do.

Meindert