Panbo

The Marine Electronics Hub

Yearly Archive: 2010

Garmin Homeport, excellent but revealing 11

Navigation / PC & peripheral

Garmin Homeport, excellent but revealing

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I can’t imagine why anyone with a Garmin plotter, a Windows PC, and a bit of ability to use both wouldn’t find Garmin Homeport more than worth the $30 charge.  I was able to easily copy the 5212’s embedded charts — plus the mess of tracks, routes, and waypoints I put on it last season — and then review/manage all on my home computer.  In fact, I stowed away some memorable tracks, quickly cleaned up some extraneous waypoints (careful with that track-to-route feature), improved some routes, and then overwrote the user data on the 5212 with a much more useful set.  But today’s look at some deeper Homeport features gets the benefit of a friend’s embarrassing navigation error.  Click to enlarge the screen above and I’ll explain after the break…

ARGUS, harvesting depth data the ambitious way! 21

Fishing & Sonar / The future

ARGUS, harvesting depth data the ambitious way!

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The concept is pretty sensational:  The ARGUS (Autonomous Remote Global Underwater Surveillance) system would equip volunteer vessels with a custom WiFi transceiver that are connected to the nav system for GPS and depth, and that can automatically upload (when possible) the resulting data files to a shore server where it’s collated and quality controlled before being turned over to NOAA so it can better manage its dredging and charting responsibilities.  If it all works out as hoped, the volunteers might even get the equipment for free and be able to use the WiFi connects for their own Internet needs…

Digital Yacht aQua PC, show deals! 25

PC & peripheral

Digital Yacht aQua PC, show deals!

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If I was walking the London Boat Show this week, I’d sure visit Digital Yacht, which seems to be on a new product streak.  Besides the tiny, self contained ANT200 AIS receiver I mentioned here, they have a new line of 5-inch C-Map plotters — one with an AIS receiver built in (which I’ll cover soon) — and an interesting new series of marine PC systems called “aQua”.  The boat show deal, which will purportedly be duplicated at the Miami Show, just might get your attention…

Gloria A Dios, & to ACR, SARSAT, USCG, USN, etc. 15

Safety & SAR

Gloria A Dios, & to ACR, SARSAT, USCG, USN, etc.

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One of the great technological and human triumphs of our time has to be the offshore rescue system.  Some details remain unclear — like what sort of sailboat Gloria A Dios was, and what route owner/operator Dennis Clements attempted to single hand from Virginia to the Virgin Islands — but we do know this:  90 minutes after the USCG got the distress signal from his ACR Satellite 2 EPIRB at 5 pm last Saturday night, a C-130 was standing by over the boat 250 miles off Cape Hatteras in nasty full gale conditions.  It was that crew who thermal imaged Glory To God (a sobbering film you can find at the bottom of this USCG page), and who dropped two life rafts when an extra big wave dismasted and then holed her…

New Garmin GPSMap 700 series, sweet spot! 25

Navigation

New Garmin GPSMap 700 series, sweet spot!

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Let’s see…a 7-inch, bright, WVGA resolution touchscreen with built-in GPS and support for Garmin Ethernet radars and NMEA 2000…all at a base price of $1,400?  Man, that sounds like a sweet spot to me.  I can think of many boaters who will be interested, and few, if any, comparable choices…

DeLorme & Spot, who knew? 14

Handheld / Communications

DeLorme & Spot, who knew?

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The gadget and GPS blogs are all over this combination of DeLorme handheld GPS and Spot messenger, which will apparently get official when the CES opens tomorrow.  With good reason, too, because a user will be able to key a free-form text message into that new PN-60w and get it delivered from a lot of places where cell phones are useless.  I didn’t think a Spot could handle custom messages from the point of origin, and it sure makes me wonder what we don’t know yet about the fixed marine model…

Anchor alarms, apps style 25

Navigation

Anchor alarms, apps style

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I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a sophisticated anchor alarm, and it’s an app called My Anchor Watch running on a Blackberry!  (Thanks to Panbo reader Per for the head’s up.)  The developer’s site explains the software well, but the features that really stand out for me is that “angle of exclusion” shown above and the SMS alarm capability…

Panbo numbers, & top 10 entries 6

Panbo & misc.

Panbo numbers, & top 10 entries

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Navagear had a good idea…use Google Analytics to create a year-end post of reader stats and most-read entries.  Actually Panbo has used Stat Counter since before I came aboard almost five years ago, and the graph I like to ponder is above (it clicks bigger, per usual).  If Panbo had a board room, or a staff, we could all sit around smoking large cigars…business is good, with SC reporting almost 852,000 unique visitors last year, averaging nearly 71,000 per month.  But I’ve also had Google Analytics at least partially installed on the site for the last year, and some of its deeper analysis is sort of mind blowing…

Happy New Year, rolling in St. Bart’s 13

AIS / Zany

Happy New Year, rolling in St. Bart’s

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Why were nearly 100 mega yachts anchored off St. Bart’s last night, instead of cuddling up in lovely Gustavia for the New Year’s Eve party?  Well, apparently it was quite rough down there, and even the vessels that had already made it into the inner harbor were asked to leave because of the swell.  Which must have been hellacious…