Marine Electronics Q&A with BOE Marine - Digital Yacht ANT 200

Jim,

I am considering the Digital Yacht ANT 200 AIS receiver.

I have a Lowrance HDS7 Gen1 and HDS5X Gen1 connected with both N2K and Ethernet.
The transducer is connected to the HDS7, and the serial port on the HDS7 is connected to my VHF (West Marine VHF580).
I have an EP60 on the N2K network.

The serial port on the HDS5X is currently unused.
Will the HDS7 show AIS contacts and can I use the serial port on the HDS5X for the ANT 200?

I normally use the HDS7 for chart and the 5X shows dash info when running and FF when fishing.

You can connect it to the open port via nmea0183, and it will show targets on your display.

Jim,
I ended up going with the Digital Yacht AIS 100.

I have it connected to the serial port on my HDS5X, which is networked to my HDS7 with N2K and ethernet.
The AIS100 appears to be receiving (the LED flickers) but I am not seeing any contacts.

I did find a tech bulletin from Digital Yacht about the HDS5 & 7 having an RS422 serial port and a fix to make it compatible with the RS232 output of the AIS100, which I will try this week while I am down at the boat.

My question is, do I need to make any configuration changes to my HDS units for this to work?
I do have the serial port on the HDS5X set to the correct baud rate.

The baud rate should be 38,400.