Panbo

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Monthly Archive: October 2011

NMEA 2011 Expo, neat new stuff #1 5

Wireless & Apps / Navigation

NMEA 2011 Expo, neat new stuff #1

NMEA2011_Green_Marine_STAR.jpg

I spent a fair amount of NMEA Conference & Expo time reviewing products that are already shipping — more on that Technology Award tomorrow — but I still got a fair chance to see the new, new stuff (like the Fusion Marine Stereo wow). Check out that Green Marine Bridge Command Display System demo above, for instance, and don’t miss the video. I don’t think there’s ever been a monitor like that STAR at upper right, and I wondered how an owner or installer would set up the unusual STretched Aspect Ratio on the PC driving it. No problem: The monitor itself splits off the top third of a standard screen resolution, so that Maretron N2KView gauge display was simply set up on a regular monitor with that in mind. Slick. And of course there was much more…

Fusion Marine Stereo 700 series, holy mackerel! 88

Wireless & Apps / Entertainment / NMEA 2000, 0183 & Signal K

Fusion Marine Stereo 700 series, holy mackerel!

Fusion_Marine_Stereo_700_series.jpg

Pardon the lousy show booth photography, but you’ve got to see what Fusion Audio debuted at NMEA, and it’s not fully online yet. The new MS-IP700 at upper right obviously has a color screen, but it also has both NMEA 2000 and Ethernet ports on its backside. Which means that it will be easy to install that new MS-NRX200 wired remote and it will even be able to display instrument info on its 2.7-inch monochrome screen (which is the same size as the 700 screen, because the collaged images are not to scale). And, yes, the Ethernet port is connected to a WiFi router which is being used by a Fusion app on that iPad at left to choose tunes, adjust volume levels on four possible zones, etc. But that is not all!…

The LightSquared vs GPS problem, what now? 89

Navigation

The LightSquared vs GPS problem, what now?

LightSquared_Geoff_Stearn_at_NMEA_2011_cPanbo.jpg

I learned a lot at the 2011 NMEA Conference & Expo, and got a first peek at some wonderful new marine electronics, but I’ll start my coverage with the scene above. Here on Panbo we started discussing GPS interference caused by LightSquared’s proposed new U.S. broadband cellular network back in March, and the entry now has 111 comments, many vigorously opposed to the LS plan.  Plus the Coalition to Save Our GPS has become a powerfully united and outspoken voice, and the whole darn mess has recently become a political football.  So it seemed fairly brave of Geoffrey Stearn — who is LS’s VP of Spectrum Development — to step into a room full of marine safety authorities (U.S. GMDSS Task Force) and NMEA members all of whose work depends on reliable GPS positioning…