Panbo

The Marine Electronics Hub

Yearly Archive: 2010

Garmin visit #2, GPSMap 78 6

Handheld / The Trade

Garmin visit #2, GPSMap 78

Garmin_78_industrial_design_evolution_cPanbo.JPG

Today Garmin introduced the GPSMap 78 series, an apparently major refresh of the 76 series long popular with boaters.  While I only got to fiddle with a pre-production unit for a moment, I did learn a lot about the industrial design process behind it.  The ID department in Olathe — aka “The Skunk Works” or “Area 51” —  has a tool collection that would make all sorts of craftsmen and artists drool, but I’ll save that story for another day.  What’s particularly notable about the exhibit shown above and below is how many design iterations were created and modeled for the 78, and how detailed they were…

Garmin visit #1, making stuff 9

The Trade

Garmin visit #1, making stuff

Messy maybe, but this is how marine electronics get made, and Garmin HQ in Olathe, Kansas, is all about making stuff.  The engineer who leads the hardware side of the marine department told me...

MTA Survey #1, brand awareness & perception 6

Panbo & misc. / What's on board... / The Trade

MTA Survey #1, brand awareness & perception

Panbo_MTA_survey_brand1.JPG

Please don’t jump to conclusions about this first real slice of the finished Panbo/MTA survey until you better understand what it represents. The questions quoted at the top of the table above were “open ended”.  The 950 people who spent time taking the survey (thank you all!) got no check box guidance toward their answers.  In fact, no brand names were specifically mentioned anywhere in the survey.  So the 1,558 positive responses, along with the 773 negative ones — no, almost none of you ornery cusses did as asked, naming three of each — are purely the brand names that came into nearly 1,000 minds when asked in privacy which marine technology products had either pleased or displeased them. The individual response totals then are a mix of at least three factors:  market share (how many of the survey takers own, or have owned, some of a brand’s products); brand awareness (most may remember whose MFD they use, but not necessarily whose inverter); and brand perception (the emotion that brings a brand name to mind).  And there are more complexities beyond…

Raymarine’s Virtual Sea Trial, more please 1

Zany

Raymarine’s Virtual Sea Trial, more please

Raymarine_Virtual_Sea_Trial_cPanbo.JPG

Raymarine introduced its Virtual Sea Trial system at the Miami Boat Show, and I was one of many who got quite a kick out of it.  Note the twin wide open throttles (or WFO, an acronymn that will gather more meaning next week).  When I wasn’t driving the big simulated RIB over waves off the well detailed port of Marseille, France, I tried some slow speed docking maneuvers and was pleasantly surprised to find that the faux twin outboard backed and filled quite realistically.  Of course having this high quality simulator integrated with twin E-14 Widescreens plus ST70+ autopilot and instrument heads meant you could really get a feel for how those devices work.  But boys will be boys…

Helping Heloise, to preserve digital charts 4

History

Helping Heloise, to preserve digital charts

PINS_9000_courtesy_UK_NMM.JPG

This, friends, is a screen shot from a circa 1980’s Offshore Systems PINS 9000 digital chart system. And it’s a rare image indeed.  One of the odd things about the fast moving world of electronic charting is how ephemeral it is.  To get the best historical sense of what early digital chart plotting was like you really need the hardware powered up on a moving vessel, or at least connected to some simulated inputs.  But the truth is that even decent photographs and/or screen shots of early plotters are hard to find.  That’s the problem Dr.
Heloise Finch-Boyer of the UK National
Maritime Museum has run into, and I’m hoping that some Panbo readers can help her…

Coastal Explorer & ActiveCaptain, YES! 59

Navigation / PC & peripheral / AIS

Coastal Explorer & ActiveCaptain, YES!

Garmin just announced several new products which will be shown when the doors open at METS tomorrow morning. The 6000 and 7000 series are very much like the successful 4- and 5000 series except that apparently they’ve got enough processor speed to warrant a new expression for how fast and smoothly they pan and zoom charts — Garmin G Motion. They’ve also got …

Garmin’s latest, in Serbia 11

Electrical & Engines / AIS / NMEA 2000, 0183 & Signal K

Garmin’s latest, in Serbia

Garmin_720_in_Serbia_courtesy_InfoTeam.JPG

Just yesterday, in my blogging birthday post, I commented on Panbo’s international reach, and today I’ve got some interesting evidence (and more tomorrow).  That shot of the new Garmin 700 series above was recently sent to me by Petar Maksimovic of Info Team, Garmin’s Serbian dealer.  And there’s more of interest on that screen than just the language.  Info Team has been working for nearly a decade to create Serbian road and waterway maps under Garmin’s MPC system, and says that its latest SCG RoadMap includes official Plovput data for about 1,600 kilometers of rivers and canals.  Apparently that effort was not only an innovation for inland European, but also helped Info Team create a market for marine electronics.  In fact, the company, which also is doing some things I haven’t yet seen right here in the world’s largest ME market, as Petar explains…

Panbo at five, fun with demographics 19

Panbo & misc.

Panbo at five, fun with demographics

guys_in_boat.JPG

Five years ago today my first Panbo entry entered cyberspace, and some 1,300 entries later I could hardly be more pleased about how the site has evolved.  It arguably has become “The” marine electronics blog that founder Yme Bosma envisioned, and that’s largely because such a boat load of readers visit on a regular basis.  According to StatCounter, Panbo topped 90,000 unique visitors in March, and according to Google Analytics about 27,000 of those visited more than 25 times during that month.  Wow, and thank you, thank you, thank you all!  And now, thanks to the MTA Survey, here’s a bit about who you are…

The Class B AIS filtering myth revisited, arrrrrgh! 74

AIS

The Class B AIS filtering myth revisited, arrrrrgh!

Sailing_Anarchy_AIS_BS_cPanbo.jpg

Click above for a readable image, and see how blithely an anonymous Sailing Anarchy poster spread AIS misinformation, reinforcing a myth that threatens to curtail adoption of Class B transponders.   After first establishing himself as a sailor who uses an AIS receiver, he writes knowingly (but ignorantly) about specific AIS requirements around the world.  And then comes the doozy: “My recollection is that AIS Class A transceivers fitted to commercial
vessels have a big red IGNORE CLASS B Transceivers button to declutter
their displays and concentrate on avoiding vessels that will do more
than smudge their paint in a collision“.  That’s unadulterated BS on all counts — the big red button DOES NOT EXIST, the watch standers who don’t care about small vessels are rare, and this blowhard has probably never seen a ship’s bridge to “recollect” — but the myth continues to spread…

Shore power #1, Marinco GalvanAlert 10

Electrical & Engines

Shore power #1, Marinco GalvanAlert

Marinco_GalvanAlert_closeup_cPanbo.JPG

I’ve had a Marinico GalvanAlert “Shore Power Corrosion Detector” for a year, but I only got to use it briefly at first.  That was time enough to see how handy it is to have a power tester right in hand as you hook up your shore cable.  At minimum, a green LED will tell you that a dock receptacle is live.  Plus you’ll get a red LED if the polarity is reversed, and two yellow levels of warning about stray current in the ground line, i.e. the stuff that can eat metal parts off your boat’s bottom.  By now I’ve used the GalvanAlert, which costs about $140, a fair bit at a dock and even in a shed, and have seen how its steady monitoring can reveal shore power mysteries…