Mcmurdo Fast Find PLB, Ritter tested
If the remarkably small and inexpensive GPS-equipped Fast Find PLB also works very well, what does that mean? My guess is that it makes McMurdo king of the PLB hill, at least for a...
Yearly Archive: 2009
Scanstrut Deck Pods, & a U.S. warehouse
The U.K. company Scanstrut has been making all sorts of radome mounts and similar gear since 1986, and I know I’m not the only one who’s admired their smart and handsome engineering. I learned at the Miami show that they were working on a line of universal electronics pods, and today that line is not only official, but a few nice new design twists are revealed. For instance, the preview literature for the Deck Pod above — meant to mount MFDs up to 15″ on fly bridges and the like — illustrated its heavy duty silicone gasket and other features, but showed a mount that “only” swiveled. Look what they came up with for the finished product! Apparently you can just release that lever and position the pod however you’d like. I’ve long held that such flexibility can make displays much more useful in varying light conditions, and I’ve achieved that goal often with RAM mounts, but this looks like a truly elegant solution…
Ship Finder, networked AIS for the iPhone
Should I rename the blog iPanbo? I know I’ve been focused on these marine apps a lot, but, as noted just last week, the developement velocity is awesome. I first heard about Ship Finder...
Radar teases: Garmin goes big, Panbo gets wet
Thanks to Rich Owings, who runs the excellent GPSTracklog site, we now know that Garmin will soon introduce four new open array radars. The photo above comes from deep within the FCC equipment authorization database (sorry, linkage not possible), where anyone as patient as Rich might have discovered that four new Garmin radars were granted approval on Friday. The model designations are GMR 604, 606, 1204, and 1206 — which strongly suggest that they range from a 6 kW 4 foot array to a 12 kW 6 foot unit (hello, big yachts and sport fishermen) — and which will probably be sold in two parts like Garmin’s existing open arrays. But what the heck is “xHD”…?…
Wind Meter app, & iPod Touch bluetooth
iPhone folks will notice that the one I’m holding above is upside down. That’s because the Wind Meter app shown uses the sound of wind passing over the iPhone’s microphone to measure its speed. And — would you believe it? — it actually works. I was out testing and photographing the NMEA 2000 wind rig early this morning and thus could compare Wind Meter to a consensus of five high quality sensors mounted just a few feet over my head. No, it’s not as accurate or responsive as they are (especially flaky under 3 knots or so), and it apparently can’t handle speeds over about 25 knots, but still…
Broadband Radar now shipping, installs neatly
Navico Broadband Radar is apparently meeting its promised “Q2” shipping schedule, and I’m already impressed with the install details. Above you can see how a waterproof gland fits over the scanner cable — which is just a bundle of Ethernet and power wires — before it’s screwed to the interface box. If the ultimate destination is a Simrad NX or a Northstar 8000i, you then run a proprietary serial cable to the ‘comms’ port, while Lowrance HDS units use a proprietary Ethernet cable to that orangey ‘network’ port. It all went together quickly and feels solid…
SpeedWatch, wireless wireless STW
That’s my goose-bumped knee and I’m rowing at 2.2 knots through the water, which is my true speed in terms of performance, as opposed to speed over ground (SOG), which would be my true speed in terms of getting somewhere. The distinction relates to endless discussions about what true True Wind is, which depends, but more relevantly to that JDC SpeedWatch strapped to my thigh. It would be fairly unremarkable gadget if it was a GPS (showing SOG) but in fact it’s talking wirelessly to a tough little transmitter under the boat’s bow seat, which in turn is wirelessly collecting STW data from a tiny magnetized propeller mounted on the hull a few inches away…
NMEA 2000 AIS, not yet right!
Yesterday I fired up this sample Simrad AI50 Class B AIS transponder and found it to be pretty much as self-contained and impressive as I’d hoped. I attached one of my boat’s VHF antennas, deployed the AI50’s included GPS antenna, gave the unit a little 12v juice (just 8 watts at 100% screen brightness), and, voila, Gizmo was transmitting its position and plotting other AIS targets, including another Class B I had set up as “Panbo.com Lab”. A full AI50 entry will follow, but first I’ll report on its SimNet/N2K output. I was excited about how easily NMEA 2000 could feed the AI50’s target and GPS info to all devices on the network, but nervous about that how well 2000 currently handles the data (nobody has yet tried it much). Both feelings were justified…
iPhone mania, a marine app slide show
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
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…
