Panbo

The Marine Electronics Hub

Yearly Archive: 2015

Garmin 2016: Quickdraw sonar charting, smaller Panoptix, Striker, and lots of CHIRP 9

Fishing & Sonar / Charts

Garmin 2016: Quickdraw sonar charting, smaller Panoptix, Striker, and lots of CHIRP

Garmin_Quickdraw_aPanbo.jpgGarmin put up a Marine 2016 site this morning and one thing many current Garmin owners will be excited about is the Quickdraw Contours sonar charting that will come to many current Garmin displays in January. Yup, you’re going to be able to easily collect soundings as you cruise, sail or fish and, if you want, you can watch the resulting high def sonar chart materialize in your wake, as suggested above. Quickdraw is no surprise given the tussle over Navionics SonarCharts for Garmin, but naturally Garmin added some special sauce…

TBF: FLIBS, dAISy, YDVR, G-Metrix OBD2, and DAME nominees 4

Wireless & Apps / Cabin & deck gear / AIS / Zany

TBF: FLIBS, dAISy, YDVR, G-Metrix OBD2, and DAME nominees

FLIBS_transit_map_n_app_aPanbo.jpgWith Panbo’s first TBF now a week old, how about some more acronym madness? This marine electronics TidBits Friday can’t include any of the tasty stuff being served at next week’s Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show (FLIBS), but there certainly will be some, and I’ve been studying the transportation options for making the most of my four days at this huge event. The MyBoatShow app has not achieved perfection, but it’s better and may help. Come if you can or come by here for some TBL, and in the meantime…

iKommunicate from Digital Yacht, Signal K gets kickstarted 53

Communications / The future / NMEA 2000, 0183 & Signal K

iKommunicate from Digital Yacht, Signal K gets kickstarted

iKommunicate Signal K proof of concept aPanbo.jpgSorry for the fuzzy photo, but it makes sense as the iKommunicate Signal K Gateway isn’t a real product yet, and the real product may look quite different from the “Proof of Concept” prototype above if it actually materializes early next year. Why so vague? What’s happening here is a techy chicken and egg thing. Digital Yacht was understandably hesitant about developing a gateway for Signal K apps and services that hardly exist yet, but the Signal K universal boat data concept — open source, entirely free, and created by unfunded volunteers — needs a commercial level NMEA gateway so that third party developers can easily show us what the potential apps and services can do. That’s my understanding of why DY launched the iKommunicate Kickstarter campaign and also why I’m hoping that fellow boat geeks and related companies will join me in backing the project and thus helping Signal K become real…

TBF: NV Cuba, YB3 free, Furuno GP1x70F steals, BT VHF, and Sailing A 5

Communications / Charts / Zany

TBF: NV Cuba, YB3 free, Furuno GP1x70F steals, BT VHF, and Sailing A

TBF_logo_Panbo.jpgApologies in advance to Panbo readers who’ve complained about too many acronyms, because I’m adding a new one. The idea of Tidbit Friday (TBF) is to create an entry type where I can share some of the juicy morsels I often come across as I indulge my endless appetite for marine electronics and the wider world of boating. You won’t see one every Friday, but when I started listing possible recent subjects, it sure got long in a hurry. There’s lots I can do with one image and a paragraph…

NMEA 2015: FLIR, Shakespeare, Humminbird, Lumishore, Intellian, Nobeltec & more 6

Communications / Safety & SAR / The Trade

NMEA 2015: FLIR, Shakespeare, Humminbird, Lumishore, Intellian, Nobeltec & more

NMEA_2015_Signal_K_cPanbo.jpgWhile the big manufacturers showed off some great stuff at the NMEA 2015 Conference, there was also a lot to get excited about in the seminars and expo hall. Discussion of the open source Signal K marine data protocol, for instance, was not just a NMEA first but drew a standing-room-only crowd, twice. Soon I hope to list some of the interesting small and medium-size developers who are adopting SK and also share some good news about how interested boaters can get involved in the first public gateway project. In the meantime, here are some of my Conference highlights…

Veethree Engine Gateway/Monitor is powerful, coming EGM 800 is wow 4

Electrical & Engines / NMEA 2000, 0183 & Signal K

Veethree Engine Gateway/Monitor is powerful, coming EGM 800 is wow

VeeThree_EGM_kit_cPanbo.jpgVeethree is a serious instrumentation company with significant engineering and manufacturing facilities in Florida and India (impressive corporate video here). The vast majority of their business is OEM, so while the ruggedly-built Engine Gateway Monitor (EGM) above is packaged as a retail product, you’re not apt to see one at a marine store and it’s even hard to find at Veethree (go to the bottom of this marine page). But my testing suggests that it could be useful on many boats, especially with a few of the firmware features coming to its big brother, the 800 EGM…

NMEA Conference 2015, back-to-back good times with the Big Four 15

The future / The Trade

NMEA Conference 2015, back-to-back good times with the Big Four

NMEA Conference Schedule 9-27-15 cPanbo.jpgThose early morning Google Calender notifications above indicate my awesome Wednesday schedule during last week’s 2015 NMEA Conference. It’s tempting to presume that the back-to-back demo trips around Baltimore Harbor with the Big Four manufacturers mark peak intensity for my career as a marine electronics pundit, but actually the whole industry seems to be in good shape with the pace of innovation quickening…

Raymarine LightHouse 14 sailing features, as good as they look? 16

Sailing & Racing / NMEA 2000, 0183 & Signal K

Raymarine LightHouse 14 sailing features, as good as they look?

Raymarine_LH14_sailing_features_cPanbo_.jpgWhen pretending to sail, I go for high performance. That’s why the screen above seems to show Gizmo exceeding true wind speed while extremely close hauled. But pretending is also why I can’t truly review the new sailing features that came to all current Raymarine multifunction displays last May, thanks to a free LightHouse 14 operating system update. Additionally, most of the features described in the press release are about racing, which I did little of even when I was sailing a lot. But let’s walk through the new Raymarine MFD capabilities anyway, and hopefully we’ll hear from sailors who’ve actually used these tools or the similar ones offered by B&G and Garmin…

MFD engine alarming improves, but still needs more Maretron-ization 11

Electrical & Engines / NMEA 2000, 0183 & Signal K

MFD engine alarming improves, but still needs more Maretron-ization

Garmin_741_engine_alarm.jpgOn Oct. 4th I’ll present a seminar titled “Electronic Engine Monitoring Comes of Age” at TrawlerFest Bay Bridge in Stevensville, Maryland. This Garmin 741 photo will be useful as it shows three new and different ways Gizmo’s old diesel engine can now indicate a low oil pressure problem. Thanks to the Actisense EMU-1 I installed in 2013, the simple low pressure alarm switch on the Volvo Penta can trigger an informative pop-up (and audio alarm) on all the networked Garmin screens regardless of what function(s) they’re showing. And if the engine gauge page is up, the familiar low oil pressure icon lights up and, better yet, the customizable digital psi dial can go red based not on the alarm switch, but rather on a minimum pressure I’ve set. That’s all good, but modern marine electronics can do even better…

One LED flare replaces U.S. required pyros, Sirius Signal but not Ocean Signal 76

Cabin & deck gear / Safety & SAR

One LED flare replaces U.S. required pyros, Sirius Signal but not Ocean Signal

Sirius Signal LED flare aPanbo.jpg

The pitch is compelling. The $100 Sirius Signal SOS C-1001 LED “flare” isn’t just a floating SOS flasher visible at night “up to 10+ nautical miles…for at least 6 hours.” It is also the only such device that meets the U.S. Coast Guard requirements for an electric distress light and can thus permanently replace the three pyrotechnic flares otherwise required on all U.S. recreational vessels over 16 feet operating in coastal waters, the Great Lakes, and many major rivers (and on even smaller boats at night). Given that the cheapest flare set costs about $33 and expires 42 months after manufacturing (and you might not want the cheapest because pyros are inherently dangerous to you and the environment), the Sirius substitute may be a “no brainer”…