Panbo

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Panbo News and Reviews

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Navigation / Safety & SAR / Charts

Simrad NSS 4, preliminary on the water testing

Simrad’s NSS 4 (and Navico stablemate B and G Zeus SR) is the second major installment in Navico’s march towards their new Neon Android based operating system and C-Map X series charts. NSX, the first Navico MFD with Neon showed very well at launch. I am a fan of the visual presentation, new charts, and overall look and feel of the new operating system. So, I’ve anxiously awaited Neon making its way to the rest of Navico’s line. NSS 4 sits atop Simrad’s line and serves as an indication that Navico sees Neon as ready to tackle the biggest of their installs. Now to find out if NSS 4 and Neon back up that belief.

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Safety & SAR / Electrical & Engines

WIF-Pro’s water in fuel monitors, keeping a watch on your fuel

WIF-Pro is my favorite kind of company to cover, a relatively new startup with a fresh take on an old problem. I first learned about and met WIF-Pro’s founder, Brian Benedict, at IBEX 2023. Brian, a mortgage banker by day and water in fuel alerter by night, founded WIF-Pro because of his own experience with water in his outboard engine’s fuel filters. Many, fuel filtration systems make it difficult or impossible to know when the filter is full of fuel and when it’s full of water. Even filters that employ a clear bowl are generally mounted in a location that makes checking them regularly difficult. So, more often than not, we first become aware of a watery problem when our engines either sputter or die altogether. WIF-Pro looks to change that with proactive monitoring of water in your boat’s fuel system.

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What's on board... / Electrical & Engines

Lenco Pro Control, effective and affordable trim and roll control

What do you call a system that mounts on the stern of your (generally planing) boat hull that influences how the boat rides through the water? For decades, a default answer of trim tabs described just about all such systems. But not any more. Now, we have systems with traditional tabs, vertical intercepters, and at least one system that fits none of our definitions. One company calls their system a vessel attitude control system or VACS for short. Hmm, maybe that’s what we should call these systems? Wait, no, that won’t work, they’ve trade marked it. So, what are we going to call them? My current best option is pitch and roll control devices or PARCD for short. It’s a mouthful, but at least it describes the function of these systems. So, with that out of the way, let’s take a look at Lenco’s Pro Control.

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LiFePO4 / Network & control / Electrical & Engines

Mastervolt MLi 12/1250 premium system integraged LiFePO4 battery

Mastervolt’s MLi batteries are some of the most capable, premium batteries in the marine marketplace today. With features like native MasterBus, CZone, and NMEA 2000 support they underpin some of the most complex marine installations you can find. These batteries are built on a foundation of quality, engineering, and reliability. The 12-volt, 1250 watt hour battery is the smallest entry into the line but gives up nothing to its larger brothers and sisters. The obvious question is, how do I benefit from this battery and how is it different from others in the marketplace? Let’s take a look at the battery and what it can do.

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Wireless & Apps / Network & control / The future / NMEA 2000, 0183 & Signal K / Monitoring & Tracking

DBMIBS 2025: Digital Yacht’s NjordLINK developer friendly boat monitoring solution

Digital Yacht’s streak of specialized and interesting NMEA 2000 products continues with NjordLINK. NjordLINK is a $139 gateway that connects to a boat WiFi network and shares data from the NMEA 2000 network with Digital Yacht’s Njord cloud. But, NjordLINK and the Njord cloud aren’t just a one way repository of data. Digital Yacht plans an entire ecosystem of cloud apps that can alert the boat owner and send data back to the boat.

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Wireless & Apps / Communications

Starlink 2025, here we go again

I’ve run out of ways to say that Starlink changes things a lot. My most frequent refrain about SpaceX’s low earth orbit satellite internet offering is the only constant is change. For a while, it looked like they were going to make a liar out of me. We haven’t seen much change recently. But fear not! Starlink is back with another round of major changes. This time those changes affect their mobile priority data and plans and most notably, eliminate unlimited high speed data from those offers.

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Cabin & deck gear / What's on board...

DBMIBS 2025: Dometic DG3 Gyroscopic Stabilizer

Dometic made quite the splash at the Discover Boating Miami International Boat Show this year. They introduced the DG3 gyroscopic stabilizer and with that introduction launched an advertising blitz. Ads for the DG3 were everywhere: on the floor of the convention center, on the walls, and seemingly everywhere you looked. Obviously, Dometic thinks the launch of a new gyro is a big deal and I agree.

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Sailing & Racing / Navigation / Charts

Simrad NSS 4, a new Simrad flagship chart plotter

It’s been three years since Simrad introduced the NSX at the 2022 Miami International Boat Show. That chart plotter was the first to run Simrad parent Navico’s new Neon operating system. At the time, I expected that Simrad would introduce new models across their line running the Neon. Although that took a bit longer than many, myself included, may have expected, that’s just what they’ve done. The new NSS 4 — and corporate sibling Zeus SR — updates the flagship of their lines with new hardware and a crisp, modern operating system.

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LiFePO4 / Electrical & Engines / The future

DBMIBS 2025: Lithium Pros’ sodium-ion starting battery

Lithium Pros regularly pushes the state of art in marine batteries forward and they’ve done it again. This time with, to the best of my knowledge, the first sodium-ion in the marine marketplace. Their S2460 is designed primarily as a starting battery. Sodium-ion batteries have grabbed attention for their temperature flexibility, tolerance for deep discharge, and improved raw materials availability. Although it is early days for these batteries, it is quite exciting to see them available for purchase.

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Wireless & Apps / Navigation / Safety & SAR

DBMIBS 2025: FLIR Ocean Scout Pro

I’m trying something a little different for my coverage of this year’s Miami show. I am going to try and produce a series of short videos with company representatives introducing their products. First up is FLIR’s Ocean Scout Pro thermal monocular. FLIR’s Jim McGowan gives us an overview of the new thermal scope.