Connecting CE to ComNav 1001 auto pilot via Dell Laptop

Please advise the steps to hooking up my Dell laptop to Coastal Explorer

Hi OldSchool.

Based on the title of your post, it appears that you intended to ask how to connect your autopilot to your computer so Coastal Explorer can communicate with your autopilot. Is that what you meant, or are you asking how to install Coastal Explorer on your Dell laptop, or both? Thanks.

Yes, I was asking how to connect the AP to my laptop so CE can communicate with the AP.

CE is installed on my laptop

There are several possible ways to do it. Do you have any experience with marine electronics? If not, it’s safest to have someone that does have that kind of experience do it for you, as it requires wiring which we can’t help with.

Here are some possibilities, though.

  • You could connect it to a Serial to USB adapter, then configure the COM port as a talker. By default, Coastal Explorer’s talker options are set to work with most autopilots without having to change those settings, but in some cases it may be necessary to alter them.
  • Our Nemo Gateway is an excellent way to do that, and many other marine electronics things, without having to use USB ports, which can have reliability issues.

There are other possibilities too but, as before, doing any of these things will be best done by a marine electronics professional so it’s done correctly; doing it incorrectly can damage hardware.

Once the autopilot is properly connected to the computer, so Coastal Explorer is able to send data to the autopilot and have it arrive there, we can certainly walk you though the port configuration and talker options, etc.

The bottom line is your question is not easily answered, as it depends on things we cannot know without being aboard your vessel, and we can’t do that. There are companies that do that sort of electronics installation though.

OK, thanks for the help.