TomS
Well-Known Member
With so many of the new boats sporting 150hp+, the investment in the engine is substantial and the performance envelope widens considerably. After owning performance boats, I was not satisfied with the Mercury Smartcraft SC1000 Tach and Speedo being the only gauges on my RCW. There is plenty of information there if you want to page through digital screens in the little windows, but even when I had it set up to my taste, it was a struggle for old eyes to view them at a glance while still paying attention to the attitude of the boat at speed. I longed for a proper analog trim, fuel, and water pressure gauge like the 3 in 1 on many boats.
I installed a Garmin GPSMAP 547XS last weekend as noted on another thread. With proper linkage to the Smartcraft, it can also display all of the engine data available through a NMEA 2000 interface. This is a simple matter for Yamaha's, but for Merc's proprietary Smartcraft CAN bus it's not so simple. It requires either a dedicated Smartcraft to NMEA 2000 gateway or a MercMonitor gauge with the gateway to NMEA 2000 built in. There are various versions available and I chose to go with the Premier kit that adds "Smart Tow Pro", a GPS speed managed "cruise control" for pulling skiers and wakeboarders. It is similar to the Perfect Pass control we had on tournament ski boats, but also adds programmable pull profiles for each individual. Just nail the throttle and it applies the selected acceleration curve the same every time, thanks to DTS drive by wire. There is an "ECO" mode to auto-optimize fuel burn while cruising, as well as a "Troll control" cruise mode for fishing. It goes on and on.
The install process involved replacing the SC1000 speedo gauge with the MercMonitor, plugging in the supplied harness, and patching with supplied cables to a NMEA 2000 backbone. I supplied 12v power from an existing terminal block, plugged in the existing air temp sensor, plugged the MercMonitor, supplied NMEA 2000 GPS puck, and Garmin 547XS into the bus, and that was it. Next you power up the dash, and the MM asks you to "autoconfigure", press "Mode", and it figures out what is connected and their capabilities. This whole installation and configuration process literally took 30 minutes start to finish, with a screwdriver and no crimping or wiring needed. Plug and play.
Here is the before picture of the SC1000 pair in the dash
Here is the first power up
This is one of the myriad of configurable screens. There are single screens, double, triple, triple with an analog outer ring such as RPM or speed, etc. The choices are endless but there is also a configurable favorites menu to get there quickly.
Finally, one of my goals was to get analog displays of the "normal" gauges you would expect onto the Garmin. This came up immediately, and is beautifully readable, even in bright sunlight. The gauges are totally configurable, and better yet, they're BIG!
Here is just one example while at rest. RPM, fuel flow, analog fuel, analog trim gauges. There are several pages available. I'll take some pics later while underway but you get the idea.
The Garmin 547 is also top notch, but when used together with the gateway provides much better information about what's going on with the engine. It was not inexpensive, but measured against the entire boat and engine investment I feel it's worthwhile, and it was very easy to do. Overall, I'm really happy with how it turned out and look forward to learning more about its capabilities.
Bennington has competitors who have already done away with gauges and gone to a single big screen. That's quite a leap, and is probably not without some pain. Bennington is right to play it a little conservative here, but one can only wonder what they have up their sleeve (pay attention Derrick!) as the best never rest.
Ok, yes, I admit it. I AM a gadget guy, but it was fun to do
I installed a Garmin GPSMAP 547XS last weekend as noted on another thread. With proper linkage to the Smartcraft, it can also display all of the engine data available through a NMEA 2000 interface. This is a simple matter for Yamaha's, but for Merc's proprietary Smartcraft CAN bus it's not so simple. It requires either a dedicated Smartcraft to NMEA 2000 gateway or a MercMonitor gauge with the gateway to NMEA 2000 built in. There are various versions available and I chose to go with the Premier kit that adds "Smart Tow Pro", a GPS speed managed "cruise control" for pulling skiers and wakeboarders. It is similar to the Perfect Pass control we had on tournament ski boats, but also adds programmable pull profiles for each individual. Just nail the throttle and it applies the selected acceleration curve the same every time, thanks to DTS drive by wire. There is an "ECO" mode to auto-optimize fuel burn while cruising, as well as a "Troll control" cruise mode for fishing. It goes on and on.
The install process involved replacing the SC1000 speedo gauge with the MercMonitor, plugging in the supplied harness, and patching with supplied cables to a NMEA 2000 backbone. I supplied 12v power from an existing terminal block, plugged in the existing air temp sensor, plugged the MercMonitor, supplied NMEA 2000 GPS puck, and Garmin 547XS into the bus, and that was it. Next you power up the dash, and the MM asks you to "autoconfigure", press "Mode", and it figures out what is connected and their capabilities. This whole installation and configuration process literally took 30 minutes start to finish, with a screwdriver and no crimping or wiring needed. Plug and play.
Here is the before picture of the SC1000 pair in the dash
Here is the first power up
This is one of the myriad of configurable screens. There are single screens, double, triple, triple with an analog outer ring such as RPM or speed, etc. The choices are endless but there is also a configurable favorites menu to get there quickly.
Finally, one of my goals was to get analog displays of the "normal" gauges you would expect onto the Garmin. This came up immediately, and is beautifully readable, even in bright sunlight. The gauges are totally configurable, and better yet, they're BIG!
Here is just one example while at rest. RPM, fuel flow, analog fuel, analog trim gauges. There are several pages available. I'll take some pics later while underway but you get the idea.
The Garmin 547 is also top notch, but when used together with the gateway provides much better information about what's going on with the engine. It was not inexpensive, but measured against the entire boat and engine investment I feel it's worthwhile, and it was very easy to do. Overall, I'm really happy with how it turned out and look forward to learning more about its capabilities.
Bennington has competitors who have already done away with gauges and gone to a single big screen. That's quite a leap, and is probably not without some pain. Bennington is right to play it a little conservative here, but one can only wonder what they have up their sleeve (pay attention Derrick!) as the best never rest.
Ok, yes, I admit it. I AM a gadget guy, but it was fun to do
