There are folks who buy boats but there are also folks building them. Consequently, there may be the need to build your own electronics too.  OpenPlotter is a combination of software and hardware that can be used as navigational aid on small and medium boats. It is also a complete on-board home automation system. It is open-source, low-cost, low-consumption and it works on popular systems like the Raspberry Pi or any computer running a Linux Debian derivative. Its design is modular, so you just implement what your boat needs. Do it yourself.

The NMEA 2000 standard defines a low-cost, modest capacity, bi-directional, multi-transmitter, multi-receiver instrument network. The hardware layer is based on CAN (Controller Area Network). Typical data on an NMEA 2000 network include position latitude and longitude, GPS status, steering commands to autopilots, waypoint lists, wind sensor data, engine sensor data, depth sounder sensor data, and battery status data.

Copperhill Technologies offers solutions that allow you to easily install and use OpenPlotter on a Raspberry Pi. Besides the CPU (i.e., the Raspberry Pi), you will also need a hardware connection to the NMEA 2000 network, which comes in form of the PICAN-M HAT. 

The PICAN-M (M = Marine) is a Raspberry Pi HAT with NMEA 0183 and NMEA 2000 connection. The NMEA 0183 (RS422) port is accessible via a 5-way screw terminal. The NMEA 2000 port is accessible via a Micro-C connector. The board comes with a 3A SMPS (Switch Mode Power Supply), allowing to power the Raspberry Pi plus HAT from an onboard power source (12 VDC). See:

• PICAN-M - NMEA 2000 & NMEA 0183 HAT for Raspberry Pi with SMPS (Switch Mode Power Supply)...
• PICAN-M - NMEA 2000 & NMEA 0183 HAT for Raspberry Pi...

Furthermore, the  Raspberry Pi 4 32GB SD Card with OpenPlotter & Signal K Installed comes with the Raspberry Pi OS pre-installed plus OpenPotter / Signal K installed for use with the PICAN-M boards.

For more information on our NMEA 2000 products, see:

NMEA 2000 - Copperhill (copperhilltech.com)

espBerry - ESP32 Development Board with NMEA 2000 & NMEA 0183 HAT

The espBerry DevBoard combines the ESP32-DevKitC development board with any Raspberry Pi HAT by connecting to the onboard RPi-compatible 40-pin GPIO header. The PICAN-M (M = Marine) is a Raspberry Pi HAT with NMEA 0183 and NMEA 2000 connection. The NMEA 0183 (RS422) port is accessible via a 5-way screw terminal. The NMEA 2000 port is accessible via a Micro-C connector.

More Information...