The Marine Electronics Hub
Like so many CruzPro instruments, the CS-60 fits a 54mm hole, comes round or square, and has a three-button interface (with a surprisingly deep menu structure behind it). But what’s a “Clocked Switch”? Actually that “gauge” contains four solid state switches each capable of handling a load up to four amps and each programmable to its internal clock in two ways…
Zounds! When we last checked in on Steve Roberts, he was installing a Simrad AP20 with a rudimentary NMEA 2000 network, and waiting on a Furuno NN3D MFD12. It was pretty standard stuff for a guy who’s into “geek expressionism, gonzo engineering, gizmological expeditions, and applied technomadics.” Well, check out Steve’s current vision of the network that will eventually reside on his 44-foot steel pilothouse cutter Nomadness…
Lest you think I’m just about big diesels, check out the good Annie G.’s auxiliary propulsion power system. Years ago I bought the cheapest Minnkoda electric trolling motor I could find (visible on Annie here) and moved the control switch to that battery box where the ‘custom’ wooden shift/throttle gives me five speeds in forward and three in reverse. None exactly makes the 18′ iron-keeled sloop jump, but the rig is handy for getting into the Camden Inner Harbor slip I often use. But I always had a problem knowing if I had enough charge to use the motor as needed. That was neatly solved last summer with the addition of that solar panel and most especially the Argus Analyzer Battery Bug…
Thanks to the April editon of Sailing World, I now know about the interesting and nearly free iPhone app MotionX-GPS. It’s more a GPS than a plotter, and not specific to boating, but, as you can see above, it’s got some boating fans. MotionX purportedly uses…
I think I got this diagram right, and I think it’s important to understand if your boat might end up with more than a few NMEA 2000 powered devices on its network…
Sigh, that’s my first NMEA 2000 network, circa Spring 2005, when there wasn’t much more than Maretron to hang on it, and not many boaters were interested anyway. Now many N2K devices have joined these on the lab’s snaking backbone (and there are many others I’d like to try), N2K is an active topic on Panbo forums and elsewhere, and the network for my maybe-new Gizmo boat is going to be a serious undertaking. The Standard has come a long way, and methinks it’s time to reveal a little drama that went down along the way. Yes, those gray Micro cables and the yellow powertap did incur drama, even soap opera…
So it turns out that within my big old head still lurks the boat lust of a younger man, even when confronted with tangles of wires and other system complexities. No problem, I thought to myself, I can deal with this stuff! But was that the irrational voice of a love stricken boy speaking? I’ve been missing from Panbo for a couple of days because en route to NYC yesterday I checked out a boat I’d been admiring online…and fell much deeper under her spell. Today I’ve been consulting trusted advisors who know more about this sort of boat, and the used boat buying process, than I do. And I’d like to know what Panbots think…
No, the new FLIR M-Series and its controller are not the same size, but here’s my attempted graphic point: That sexy dual-payload pan and tilt camera casing — at only eleven inches tall — is smaller than your eye might presume. While that’s still taller than the competitors’ search light casings, the M-Series can pan +/-90 degrees, has a horizontal swept volume equal only to its seven inch maximum diameter, and it…
If graphing, say, wind speed or depth data on a little Garmin GMI 10 is useful — which it is — how about visualizing every desired vessel sensor trend on a big monitor? Krill Systems has been showing off demo screens like the one captured above and intends to include the feature in a coming update of its SoftDisplay. And Krill has kept past promises…
I’m pleased to report that wind speed and direction data from Garmin’s GWS 10 NMEA 2000 wind wand shows up fine on all the N2K instrument displays and MFDs in the lab….
