Monthly Archive: June 2009

iPhone mania, a marine app slide show 31

iPhone mania, a marine app slide show

iPhone_marine_apps_cPanbo.JPG

So there’s a new iPhone, the 3G S, and some of its new features — like a built-in compass, voice commands/feedback, and a much faster processor — will no doubt benefit marine navigation applications.  But I’ve been trying the major existing apps (thanks to a loaner 3G from Navionics), and can tell you that they’re pretty seductive as is.  None is perfect by any means but the three above — Navionics’ Mobile Gold, GPSNavX’s iNavX, and Navimatics’ Charts & Tides — each has some interesting features.  And I’ve assembled a super duper screen shot slide show to illustrate…

Lowrance “StructureScan”, sonar scanning heats up 0

Lowrance “StructureScan”, sonar scanning heats up

Lowrance_StructureScan_preview.jpg

I’ve long been interested in the ability of some Humminbird MFDs to side scan with near photographic precision, at least in fairly shallow and calm waters.  A lot of fishermen, especially of the freshwater kind, are using the technology to find the structures where their quarry like to hang out, and you can see lots of real world results on this Yahoo group.  Humminbird has virtually owned this niche for several years, and claims some patent protection, but now Lowrance is coming right at them with an HDS add-on called StructureScan. It will debut at the MAATS/iCAST show in Orlando this July (and I’ll be there), but Lowrance has started showing proof of performance images

Panbo punts, Garmin grieves 16

Panbo punts, Garmin grieves

This entry’s title is not about cause and effect; my wind sensor testing may go incomplete, but that has nothing to do with Garmin’s chart problem.  And while I had a good time on...

Electronics power feeds, what’s truly bad? 16

Electronics power feeds, what’s truly bad?

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Bert van den Berg, proprietor of Cruz Pro, writes that “Once every few weeks or so we get an instrument back or get a call from someone who says one of our instruments is acting erratically. Almost invariably it ends up that the customer (or worse, their electrical installer) has done something dumb and wired it so that the instrument is susceptible to voltage transients. For this reason I have written an article to help show how electronic installers would wire electronics into a boat as opposed to how many electrical installers wire electronics into a boat…Please have a look and let me know what you think.”