The Marine Electronics Hub
Two days in the deadline mill and I’m tuckered. But I thought you might enjoy this rather gorgeous helm, bigger image here. It’s the custom Wesmac 50 I mentioned back in June, i.e. the boat on which I got a taste of my writing subject, Garmin’s new autopilot. So let’s forget about that for the time being and take a look at the ergonomics of this dazzling command and control center…
Today two reliable sources told me that all five FCC commissioners have now signed off on Class B AIS for US waters, though neither knows when the Order will become effective. The final step should be…
So how about a product whose details are mysterious and which may not exist, and even if it does, probably doesn’t work very well? The thing is that I’ve gotten a little Bluetooth happy, and the Deckband 4i concept looks like a particulary interesting way to use it on a boat…
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…
