Hello All - I have have a 08 350DA...

[Midwest_MCD]

Hello All - I have have a 08 350DA with 8.1L Horizons V-Drives (I believe aka 496s) and would like to add smart craft Vesselview. I’ve called Mercury Marine directly and confirmed the engines are compatible.   Has anyone on this forum installed this product? Is it truly as easy as they say  it is? I’m thinking of starting with Vesselview Mobile and then eventually installing a dedicated display on helm.  Thanks in advance for any suggestions. 

[TandE]

I’d recommend looking into a Simrad Chartplotter or MFD. They have the VesselView app and if you already have a Chartplotter it can integrate all of your vessel info into your NMEA2K network.

[Midwest_MCD]

Thanks

[KevinC]

Why add a "dedicated" display when you could bridge in the engine data with the Smartcraft Connect. Both Raymarine and Garmin have specialize pages on the MFDs for viewing the smartcraft info and errors/alerts.

The Smartcraft connect will bridge the data to N2K and then any of your MFDs could display the info.

-Kevin

[Solisjo]

To answer your question, yes, it is as easy as they say. I did it last year on mr 340. The only complication is that you need to have your port engine designated as “port” engine. This needs to be done by a shop that can connect to your engine control unit. Vessel view will not recognize the port engine Without making the designation change. All engines come out of the factory as Starboard designated. I got tired of waiting for a shop to put me on their work order schedule so I just bought the mecruiser diagnostic tool for $500 bucks and did it myself, took 3 minutes. Well with it for me considering what a shop would charge for 3 minutes. Let me know if you need more details. You need two cables, one for each engine harness connection, two junction boxes where the engine cables connect to, a CAN link cable connecting the two junction boxes and another cable connecting the two junction boxes (y cable) to the cable coming out of the vesselview …… Also, it is possible to hook things up with the Smartcraft connect as the previous post notes so you can display the data on your plotter via NMEA 2000, however, I hate changing plotter display back and forth so I opted to install the designated vesselview display.

[Midwest_MCD]

This is helpful, Thank you. I did not want to change chart plotters / MFD at this time which is why I wanted a dedicated display. I will keep the thread updated as my project continues. Solisjo - I’ll connect with you directly when I have questions.

[Solisjo]

Sure, contact me anytime. I have the same engines. You may already have this but look at the attached. It shows the diagram and part numbers you need for all the pieces. I chose the 403 vessel view but this diagram works regardless of which vessel view model you select. The vessel view display has a nmea 2000 port so you can also display information on other MFDs if you want. One clarification question is whether you have DTS (DigitalThrottleShift)? If you do, some of the cables are different part numbers ( I don't have DTS), so you may need to call Mercury to get those specific part numbers.