The DAMEs: DY iAIS, the iThing onslaught & more
So this morning Digital Yacht’s iAIS won the DAME award in the electronics category, but the thing I noticed is that four out of the six nominees chosen by the judges involve the integration of normal boat electronics with mobile apps devices. And frankly — as handy as the iAIS looks to be — I think a couple of the other nominees better illustrate where this phenomenon is headed. Heck, the RayView app on an iPhone or iPad will not only stream AIS and everything else on a Raymarine e7 screen, but is planned to eventually serve as second station, and the e7 can also easily sync routes with Navionics Mobile (and that integration may also expand). And what about the Fusion 700 Series with its trifecta of app device, NMEA 2000, and Ethernet-to-MFD control possibilities?…
Well, it’s not easy to inspect 133 entries, select 43 nominees, and then hone those down to the winners of eight categories. And I can tell you from watching the DAME all these years that even the Marine Software category with only one nominee wasn’t necessarily an easy pick, as the judges have often declined to select any winner at all. So congratulations to Nobeltec, MaxSea, MapMedia and Furuno (they’re all one, sort of) for TimeZero Trident’s award, which I think well deserved even if it is very similar to MaxSea TZ. It takes a while to comprehend how useful good 3D charting can be. (It also takes a fast PC and a good screen, as Gizmo got this summer, but now I’m even using TZ to illustrate Gunkholing columns).
Meanwhile, a nifty looking Spinlock life jacket won the DAME safety equipment category but the FLIR MS handheld thermal cam and the McMurdo/Kannad SafeLink R10 AIS SART both got Special Mentions. One nominee I’m curious about is the Seagull Security CrewFetch, an elaborate sounding new MOB system that WhiffleTech will bring to the U.S. when the standards get settled. Below is the little CrewFetch beacon that folds into an inflatable life vest pocket.
Oh, and the Scanstrut iPad case got a Special Mention in the clothing and crew accessories category. You can read all about the DAME products and awards here, and tomorrow we’ll hear about what Kees saw at METS. Do you suppose there was some news related to iThing integration?
I see a strong future in the marine intergration of on board electronics and the iPad generation of equipment. We recently installed the Brookhouse iMux with WiFi enabled NMEA 0183 to interface with the iPad 2 and iNavx software.
We used this recently during our participation in the 78th annual Nassau Cup Ocean Race… Miami to Nassau in which we (Mystiko) placed 2nd in our fleet first time in this race. The equipment worked very well for us and we are still in the learning phase of using this in conjunction with our on board systems, with the main MFD the Simrad NSe and all other Simrad via N2k.
Look forward to Kees entry tommorow !
On the whole, I am not a fan of the “walled garden” approach that is characteristic of Apple and iThings. I do not like the idea that one company can dictate what I can and cannot do with my computer, and I don’t like that anyone who wants to develop for that computer has to hand over a big chunk of their profits for the privilege.
But iOS does have two huge advantages: it’s widespread, and it’s consistent. If you’re developing for it, you only have to worry about two screen sizes and one interface paradigm.
This is a Very Big Deal for the companies that are writing all these cool programs for iOS: it is relatively easy to translate a clever idea into a piece of software that works exactly as intended on any device a possible customer would have. And the kind of customer who buys iOS devices is, in general, the kind of customer who will impulsively hand over a bit of digital cash because “Ooh, Shiny!”.
It raises brand recognition, it gets trendy spend-happy people talking about your products, it’s relatively easy to make, it can be quite profitable, and the risk to your company if it’s a complete flop is, at most, a developer’s salary for a few months. No wonder so many companies are eager to tie their products to iOS in some way.
With regard to Digital Yachts award for iAIS:
I just don’t understand why any company would spend a penny of their development budget on anything that has to do with 0183. Why didn’t Digital Yacht start off making the iAIS a NMEA 2000 product? Nice idea, but already outdated because all the engineers on this blog seem to be trying to figure out how to get the N2K data into the brand new iAIS that only hears 0183.
https://panbo.com/archives/2010/09/digital_yacht_iais_hello_apps_developers.html
Personally, I have abandon 0183 and will not go back and will not buy anything that is using the primitive 0183 network. How does the Digital Yacht, iAIS deserve an award for using old technology? As a consumer of marine electronics I’m not about to buy something that immediately requires band-aids to get it to work with the rest of my up-to-date electronics.
Richard it’s nice that you have all of the very latest upto date equipment but for the thousands or should I say the millions of mariners who still have,and will have for many more years,183 gear. I think it’s good that DY are addressing the 183 user.
183 is going to be around for a long,long time.
David
hi,
you dont need the expensive stuff from digitalyachts. I have seen a very good small developer-board(WLAN-Router with serial interfaces 9-24V) for 39€. only add the package ser2Net and all data on your own network.
look here :
http://www.8devices.com/product/3/wi-fi-4-things
here you see the serial configuration ( they use it ofr robotic)
http://www.8devices.com/wiki_carambola/doku.php/carambola_robot1
all are open source
A new video about the DigitalYacht iAIS and WLN 10..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHv_sbHaPpw&list=UUPDykqtPSoxVkVsyXOCUd6A