NMEA 0183
The legacy serial standard, done right. Sentence parsing and generation (GGA, RMC, AIS VDM/VDO and more), reliable multiplexing of multiple talkers, baud handling, and bridging 0183 listeners and talkers without dropped data.
Custom sensors, gateways, interfaces, and firmware for the protocols that run a modern vessel. From a single sensor to a fully integrated bridge — built to survive the marine environment and move the data cleanly.
Big Cove designs the hardware and writes the firmware that lets sensors, instruments, and software share data across a boat. We've shipped NMEA products across the marine industry — most of them under NDA. The ones we can name, like the Nemo Gateway (a multi-protocol bridge built for Rose Point), are only the part of the iceberg above the water.
And we don't just follow the spec — we help write it. Big Cove's founder serves on the NMEA 2000 and NMEA OneNet standards committees and co-authored the OneNet Gateway module. When you build with us, you're working with someone who helped write the rules — not someone learning them on your dime.
The legacy serial standard, done right. Sentence parsing and generation (GGA, RMC, AIS VDM/VDO and more), reliable multiplexing of multiple talkers, baud handling, and bridging 0183 listeners and talkers without dropped data.
The modern CAN-bus backbone. PGN encode and decode, address claiming, instance management, and the plug-and-play behavior end users expect — engineered for certified devices that play nicely on a crowded bus.
The Ethernet and IPv6 future. OneNet carries NMEA 2000 PGNs over IP for the high-bandwidth data — radar, video, dense sensor streams — that outgrows the 2000 bus. We build for it as the standard matures.
Bridging 0183, 2000, and OneNet; multiplexing many sources; sensor prioritization and automatic failover; and getting clean marine data into PCs, tablets, and the cloud — exactly the problem the Nemo Gateway solves.
We've put NMEA to sea many times over — most of it under NDA. The public examples tell the story: the Nemo Gateway bridges NMEA 2000 and 0183 with automatic sensor failover and data fusion; the Commercial Radar Interface puts live radar on the navigation chart. They're a sample, not the sum.
NMEA 0183 is the older serial standard — one talker to many listeners, ASCII sentences, typically 4800 baud. NMEA 2000 is a modern CAN-bus network — binary PGNs at 250 kbit/s, many devices, plug-and-play. Most new gear is 2000, but 0183 is still everywhere, so bridging the two is one of the most common jobs we do.
OneNet is NMEA's Ethernet-based standard (built on IPv6). It carries NMEA 2000 PGNs over IP, enabling high-bandwidth data — radar, video, dense sensor streams — that exceeds the NMEA 2000 bus. It complements NMEA 2000 rather than replacing it.
Yes. We design the hardware and firmware — PGN handling, address claiming, instance management, load behavior — with certification in mind, and guide the product through the process.
Yes — that's exactly what the Nemo Gateway does. We pull marine data off the bus and into navigation software, tablets, or a cloud platform. Our TrackMyWake fleet platform is an example of that full hardware-to-cloud path.
Yes. AIS (VDM/VDO), radar overlay on charts, and autopilot and instrument integration are all in scope — and all things we've shipped.
Tell me about the boat, the bus, and where the data needs to go — and I'll tell you how I'd build it.
Set a course info@bigcove.io