Maretron Weather Station, first impressions

Maretron WSO100

As you may have noticed from the antenna farm, I’m trying the Maretron Weather Station announced last fall. It’s hard to imagine an easier physical install…unscrew a T in the NMEA 2000 backbone, add new T and the WSO100 sensor, power and data done. The Raymarine E, plus RayTech 6.0 on the SeaTalk HS bus, immediately got the ultrasonic wind speed and direction data. Coastal Explorer got it too, as no doubt other PC programs would, via the Maretron USB Gateway (in other words converted into NMEA 0183 messages). Air temperature, barometric pressure, and relative humidity are a different story. There are NMEA 2000 and 0183 sentences for this data but so far nothing I have reads them all except Maretron’s own display. Obviously that’s also true for derived values like wind chill and dew point. At any rate, the display did need updating to understand the WSO100 and put up new screens like the one above, and Maretron has developed a nice program called NK2 Network Analyzer (below, and bigger here) that can update any device on the backbone. (PS: Just noticed that Maretron has put up a demonstration program).

Maretron N2K NA



Ben Ellison

Ben Ellison

Panbo editor, publisher & chief bottlewasher from 4/2005 until 8/2018, and now pleased to have Ben Stein as a very able publisher, webmaster, and editing colleague. Please don't regard him as an "expert"; he's getting quite old and thinks that "fadiddling fumble-putz" is a more accurate description.

3 Responses

  1. alexus309 says:

    Did you ever get the problem with temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure fixed? I just installed a WSO100 to my Lowrance network and it can’t seem to give accurate values to those issues either.

  2. Ben Ellison Ben Ellison says:

    Yes, the very next day. See “Ultrasonic Weather Wars” link top of middle column.

  3. Mike says:

    I’m VERY interested in the longevity (accuracy, reliability, etc) of the WSO100 sensor. What are your thoughts? Thanks in advance, Mike

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