Seatalkng Questions

[nveater]

When setting up my raymarine seatalk network to link in my autopilot (Raymarine) with my other raymarine instruments one of the components is a power cable which provides power to the network and some of the other instruments- this power cable comes with three wires positive, negative and an unshielded wire- can someone tell me where to hook this unshielded wire- I am assuming the negative or can I just cut it off and ignore in this application ? Thanks for your response

 

[heysteve]

In the Axiom MFD install manual, they say:
Drain wire connects to RF ground point, if no ground point is available
connect to the battery negative (-) terminal.

 

[Dennis C]

Yes, ground.

 

[nveater]

I appreciate the responses- to ground it is ! Thanks

 

[socalrider]

Note: don't just connect the drain wire to the negative thinking that you'll be okay because both go to ground. It will likely create problems down the line (as it did for me). You want to run a separate circuit straight to the battery negative (I ran it to my main negative bus terminal) with nothing but the drain wires attached.

I'm a mechE so this still confuses me but it has something to do with electrical interference caused by surges of current present on your negative wire run. The RF drain needs a "clean" path straight to battery negative.

 

[nveater]

Note: don't just connect the drain wire to the negative thinking that you'll be okay because both go to ground. It will likely create problems down the line (as it did for me). You want to run a separate circuit straight to the battery negative (I ran it to my main negative bus terminal) with nothing but the drain wires attached.

I'm a mechE so this still confuses me but it has something to do with electrical interference caused by surges of current present on your negative wire run. The RF drain needs a "clean" path straight to battery negative.

So a so run the unshielded wire to negative bus, but by itself. My negative bus is currently full with grounds from other items- would you recommend creating another bus off that so it's not sharing with anything else ?

 

[socalrider]

So a so run the unshielded wire to negative bus, but by itself. My negative bus is currently full with grounds from other items- would you recommend creating another bus off that so it's not sharing with anything else ?

You could certainly create a new bus - might as well if the existing is full. You can run all of the rf drain connections through this same wire ( other Raymarine instruments will often have RF drains as well).