11-3 
 
1  Introduction 
1.1  General 
The purpose of this document is to define the most common serial messages that are used by 
JRC speed logs, voyage data recorders and interface units as well as specify the hardware 
used for serial communication.  
 
The document is intended to be used as a sub-document to operator manuals. 
1.2  References 
x  IEC 61162-1 / NMEA 0183 standard. 
x  IEC 61162-2 / NMEA 0183 (HS) standard. 
1.3  Background 
The National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA) has developed a specification that 
defines the interface between marine electronic equipments called NMEA 0183. This 
standard is closely aligned with the standard IEC 61162-1 from International Electrotechnical 
Commission (IEC) which is specified by International Maritime Organization (IMO) to meet 
the International convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) regulations. 
 
In this document, we refer to this standard as IEC 61162-1/NMEA or IEC 61162-2/NMEA 
for the high speed version of the same standard.  
 
The idea of IEC 61162/NMEA is to send a line of data called a sentence that is self-contained 
and independent from other sentences. There are standard sentences for each device category 
and a capability exist to define own / proprietary sentences for use by manufacturers.