Would I be right to think that you intend to replace your existing plotter with one of the new Raymarine plotters?
I have a recently installed new Raymarine touch screen chart plotter which uses the current SeatalkNG communication system. In order to communicate with my older wind, depth, speed and autopilot instruments which communicate via the older Seatalk system there is a Seatalk to SeatalkNG converter. This allows information from the older instruments to continue to be shared, and in regard to my autopilot, it shows the settings and permits control of the autopilot from the chart plotter. In addition I have an Icom AIS system which outputs information on the NMEA0183 protocol and which through the use of a separately purchased and fitted Actisense converter which converts NMEA0183 to NMEA2000, it allows the AIS targets to be displayed on the chart plotter which would otherwise not be able to understand NMEA0183. Whether the new plotter will also display the output from your radar system I could not say as I don't yet have radar fitted. But so far as the instruments referred to above that I do have, it works very well indeed. One thing though is that my old chart plotter had used CMap chart software which I liked, whereas the new touchscreen plotter uses Navionics. There are differences between the way that some information is shown, where in particular some of the symbols used within the Navionics software do not conform with that shown in the Admiralty and International List of Chart Symbols chart NP5011. I find that irritating to the point of contempt. In addition some features do not show unless you zoom in, one in particular being a small island that I sail past fairly regularly. Here the island can easily be seen visually from say ten miles away, but will not actually show on the plotter until very very much nearer despite that other land masses further away are shown. Again, I find that irritating and would suggest that before you buy, that you try out the chart plotter at a local chandlery, and call up a charted area that you are familiar with in order to see whether the differences are ones that you can accept or not.
