The Marine Electronics Hub
Thanks to Sandy Daugherty over on the Forums, I now know that JRC has introduced a VHF radio series that can easily make direct DSC calls to AIS targets. They are most definitely big ship radios (see diagram below), and they do AIS calling in a way I hadn’t anticipated, but still…
I wished I’d clicked on one of those AIS targets before I took this screen shot, so you could see how CE 2009 displays their properties, but our focus (after the reboot affair) was...
Notice anything unusual in this photo, besides Gizmo’s wonderfully spacious fly bridge (for a 37 footer) and the odd looking RAM-mounted panel (that I had already crafted for Li’l Gizmo and brought along so...
I’m once again way behind on testing borrowed products, and my apologies to all manufacturers involved. The Airmar PB200 Weather Station dissembled above is a case in point. I mentioned how well it feeds NMEA 2000 data to the lab network back in February, and Dan Corcoran shared his beta testing experience before that, but there’s a lot more to say. For instance, I didn’t really understand how it delivered both NMEA 0183 and 2000 data — did it use one of the various junction boxes available to translate from one protocol to the other? — until I got my hands on the sample. Now I know that the PB200 flat out does it all! …
One gizmo that’s definitely coming along on the Gizmo delivery is this Garmin 640 beta unit. In nüvi mode it can navigate the highways down to Connecticut, as it’s done well twice already, and...
It was a bit anticlimatic, but I’m told that on Friday the funds moved, bills of sale were signed, and — good golly, miss molly — the Duffy Atlantic 37 formerly known as Rain...
In the screen above I was testing Coastal Explorer 2009 with AIS target data coming in from a shore receiver network via an IP feed. It was neat to watch the pilot boat rendezvous with a ship inbound to Narragansett Bay, and it showed off CE’s ability, like NavSim’s, to dead reckon targets (note how it’s using COG, not heading), as well as track them and pop up useful info with a mouse click (or finger tap). But good data and good data presentation like this could be used for very bad purposes. Despite all the discussion of Somali pirates last week, I didn’t hear anything about whether or not they use AIS to rendezvous with their targets…but I’m not surprised that they do, and that the crews thus exposed are pretty pissed off about it!
Wow, isn’t an interesting crowd of chart, map, and data suppliers gathering rapidly around the iPhone/multi-other-platform X-Traverse service? I recently discussed the velocity of this and other iPhone-related developements, but was still surprised to learn today that Navionics is officially on board (Americas charts and U.S. Hotmaps available now, the rest of the world portfolio coming “in the next couple weeks”), Hilton’s Realtime-Navigator fishing overlays will go up on X-Traverse in May, and that “agreements are in place with several other chart manufacturers to bring expanded coverage and choice (raster or vector).”
If you’re an electronics installer who’s ever spent hours wandering around a boatyard just to get a bit of wood or metal fabricated — or the customer who wondered where those hours went! — you’ll appreciate the custom install trucks put together by Voyager Marine Electronics of Essex, Massachusetts. Heck, these guys don’t even need to scrounge 110 outlets, as the vehicles are equipped with big alternators, dual battery banks, and Xantrex 3kW Freedom charger/inverters! Voyager’s shop and show room aren’t too shabby either…
It wasn’t just pirate drama (hurray for the good guys!) that had me thinking about big ship helms recently. When I was reading IEC documents about AIS target plotting last week, I came across the nifty “conning display” above. Even in greyscale it suggests how useful it is to integrate lots of usually discrete vessel data onto one screen. While I’ve seen conning displays in the past, and thought that something similar could be useful on even medium size yachts, that thought is particularly intriquing because nowadays every bit of data on this screen could be delivered over a single NMEA 2000 backbone…
