The Marine Electronics Hub
I know a lot of salts, some of them geeks too, who’ve been using The CAPN for years, and don’t want to switch. I’ll bet they’ll be pleased to learn that this venerable charting software package will now be managed and developed by new owner Star Technologies, as announced here. I had a long chat with principals…
Here’s some follow up on Russ Cooper, the Panbot who recently commented that he’s “spent >$10,000 to get an N2K coolant water pressure gauge that works…and still doesn’t have one!” He has a legitimate gripe, I think, though…
So I’ve been testing two marine WiFi systems. First up is newcomer 5MileWiFi, pictured above…
I used Actisense’s QNB-1 Quick Network Block, above and bigger here, to create Gizmo’s little NMEA 2000 network, and it pretty much lived up to expectations…
(Psssst!…back at work but need a little distraction, preferably for a good cause?) The screen shot above is worth seeing full size, but even then doesn’t do justice to the highly dynamic GeoCoastPilot beta program I’ve been entranced with for the last hour or so…
I can tell you with some certainty that an RSSI value of -106 usually shows as one tiny bar on my Verizon Centro phone and usually means that it can ring when called but is darn flaky in terms of actual verbal communication. What I can’t tell you is whether the Cell Ranger Stix amplifier I’m testing was on or off when I took this photo…because it seemed to have no effect on the signal whatsoever!
Well, I’m impressed, and you may be too when you check out the bigger image. Repeating the image on that Garmin 5212 (via VGA cable) is a Planar LX1201PTI, one of the marine touchscreen family recently discussed. Both are turned up to max brightness and…
Big yacht IT is challenging, and thus I nearly had to tickle local marine networking ace Nik DeMaria (Blue Maple Systems) to capture his naturally grinning good nature, above and bigger here…
Now that, friends, is an antenna mast (bigger image here). By way of scale, the tubular frame radar array showing over the large horn is 24 feet wide. I also learned that while the crew of the USS Whidbey Island does get “slow” Internet access underway, it…
