Quick Start Guide USB to NMEA Serial Adaptor Cable 1. Introduction

Quick Start Guide
USB to NMEA Serial Adaptor Cable
1. Introduction
Congratulations on the purchase of your USB to NMEA Serial Adaptor Cable. It is recommended that your cable is
installed by a professional installer. You will need to connect the wires to a suitable electrical connector or terminal block
(not supplied).
2. Before you start
This cable is designed to connect conventional NMEA 0183 or RS232 serial ports to a PC via a USB port. It does not
provide any optical isolation and should full opto-isolation be required, then this cable should not be used. However, in
most pleasure boat marine installations, opto-isolation is not necessary and this cable will allow good electrical interfacing
between the PC and Marine Navigation Equipment.
The adaptor cable has the interfacing circuitry built-in to the USB connector and when plugged in to the PC will be seen
by Windows as a USB device, which will trigger the “Found New Hardware Wizard”. It is important that you have the “AIS
Resource CD” supplied with the cable, in the PC when you first plug the cable in to the PC – see installation section.
3. Installation
The adaptor cable is a bi-directional interface and also has the extra “hand shaking” signals required by some RS232
devices. These are not necessary for NMEA 0183 and only three of the six wires are used in most marine installations.
The cable wiring colours are shown on the reverse of this page along with a typical marine connection diagram.
QUICK START USB-NMEA-VR1.01
DIGITAL YACHT LTD
USB to NMEA Adaptor Quick Start Guide
Prior to plugging the USB connector of the NMEA Adaptor in
to your PC, insert the “AIS Resource CD” in to your PC’s CD
drive and wait for windows to recognise it. Then plug the
USB connector in to an available USB port on your PC and
wait for the Windows “Found New Hardware Wizard” to start.
Follow the on-screen directions and when given the option of
searching automatically or browsing for the driver, select
browse and direct windows to the Driver folder on the CD.
Once the driver is installed correctly, it should appear in the
Ports (COM & LPT) section of the Device Manager and you
will be able to see what COM port number has been
allocated to it, COM3 in this case (varies from PC to PC).
The USB to NMEA Adaptor features signal status LEDs built-in to the clear plastic USB connector. These are very useful
for checking connections to other equipment and flash as data is transmitted (RED) or received (GREEN).
Wiring Colours;
COLOUR
NAME
TYPE
DESCRIPTION
Black
Brown
Orange
Red
Yellow
Green
GND
CTS#
TXD
POWER
RXD
RTS#
GND
Input
Output
Output
Input
Output
Device ground supply pin
Clear to Send Control input / Handshake signal.
Transmit Asynchronous Data output
Not Used – connected to GND
Receive Asynchronous Data input
Request To Send Control Output / Handshake signal.
Note: Only the wires highlighted in grey are used in most marine installations
Connection Diagram;