The Marine Electronics Hub
I previewed this on my Ft. Lauderdale Twitter feed (did that thing work for anyone?), and I remain enthusiastic. HUG stands for Hybrid Universal Guardian, which is quite a mouthful, but then again this puppy can do a lot for a boater…
Check out all the vector arrows around Dan Corcoran’s Raymarine E-80 boat icon, as he steers Breeze Pleeze through Huntington Harbor as a storm closes in. Red is for heading, green for COG, blue for current, and yellow for wind. High performance sensors have made these vectors valuable for situational awareness of the current where he’s about to dock, and more, as Dan explains:
I am writing about the Airmar H2183 solid state heading sensor (covered in Panbo here) after my experience as a beta tester. Raymarine gets honorable mention in the title above for its role in making this compass especially useful at a time in recreational navigation when its too easy to cruise all day without taking a compass heading.
One of the most interesting meetings I had in Fort Lauderdale was with Patrick Shay, who fairly recently took the reins of Iridium’s data division (after much related experience at Motorola and Sirius, and a lot of boating). His message was clear: Iridium has realized that data is important, in fact the fastest growing part of its business, and wants to see its SBD modems “disappear into as many marine devices as possible!” Coming soon is a new version of the 9601 modem above which will be smaller and cheaper but still able to transmit a 340 byte message from anywhere on the globe in less than 60 seconds with very high reliability. It can also quickly receive a 270 byte burst from anywhere via the Iridium ground stations, and it’s that two-way nature that suggests so many interesting possibilities…
You may never feel comfortable about slapping a bowl of chips and a couple of beers on this coffee table, but it surely would impress the folks visiting your super yacht, and it’s wicked fun. Tucked somewhere in that table is a full on Mac computer that’s networked to a full on distributed entertainment system — curtains, lights, movies, internet, whatever! As usual, the megayacht sections of the The Fort Lauderdale show were awash in wretched excess, but also as usual, the good folks at Palladium Technologies demonstrated how creative, even joyous, cost-no-problem electronics can get…
An experiment in mini blogging the big show, via iPhone and netbook. (If you don’t see a Twitter window below, it’s probably because you don’t have Flash running right.)
Visions of Johanna is now in Ecuador, the vast Pacific beckoning. As discussed recently, Gram Schweikert has set the sloop up to test and compare the new compact satellite voice/Internet systems from Iridium and KVH/Inmarsat. Above he’s geek goofing with the KVH IP Phone and a Uniden waterproof portable which
can access four lines — Skype, cell, Inmarsat FB150, and Iridium OpenPort. But he’s sure been doing his homework. What follows is the longest Panbo entry ever, in which the good Gram details the hardware, the installation, the costs, and his first impressions of performance…
In Part I of this series, Dan Corcoran, and many commenters, got into not just the value of accurate boat speed, but the true meaning of True Wind. Click on on Dan’s illustration above and check out Part II…
I finally got the Intellian D4 sat TV system I’ve been testing to misbehave. During Saturday’s heavy rains, while trying a lot of wet gizmos on Gizmo, the D4 had trouble locking onto one of the three DirecTV satellites it tries to switch among as you change channels. Whereas the system has previously worked fine with the boat laying at my float, despite the less-than-optimal antenna location, I’m guessing that the problem was signal interference from the water in the atmosphere. Further proof: It only had trouble with 103 (aka Spaceway 1) which is not only the harder-to-get KA frequency but is also in the most distant geosynchronous orbit and hence sits at the lowest elevation with the most atmosphere between it and Camden, Maine. Otherwise, though, the D4 has been pretty much flawless…
I am a wee bit jealous. That’s my brother-in-law Richard Itkin driving his Grand Banks 42 Brilliant down Chesapeake Bay this morning, having left New York Harbor yesterday morning (and Barrington, RI, on Tuesday). As a guy who drove submarines and sub tenders for the U.S. Navy, Rich has a well developed appreciation for collision avoidance, and he’s been tickled with the ACR Nauticast B AIS transponder he installed a few weeks ago. But before I pass on his reports, please click on the screen above, so I can note something I just realized regarding MarineTraffic.com.
Does too much fantasizing about the electronics future make you too want to jump back to the practical? Well, how about cable ties! I’ve used several hundred of them in the last six months, and cut a hundred more, and have some opinions. For one thing, I’m grateful to the Cobra cable tie company for sending me samples of their low profile ties, because they’re great. The material and ratchet mechanism are strong, they look tidier than regular ties, and — most important, I think — you, or someone working on your boat at a later date, will not cut their hand on a sharp plastic snag. You can tighten and trim Cobra ties OK with a wire cutter, but that Eclipse tool works slick (and better than the Anchor version I already had, in my opinion). Cobra ties cost a bit more and don’t seem widely distributed, but the company sells direct (though penny pinchers may want to go elsewhere for the tighten/trim tool).
I also like hook and loop ties…
