Monthly Archive: April 2018

23

Marina WiFi can be weird, report from New Bern

Holy cow!  I’ve never seen WiFi download speeds over 100 Mbps on land, let alone in a marina, and nevermind a dreaded marina well populated with liveaboards and northbound snowbirds. I measured the internet connectivity above while logged into New Bern Grand Marina’s WiFi and… The amazing results were consistent… but there is much more to the story…

0

Buzz Wireless Launches Global 4G Solution

In a perfect world all countries would deploy a global standard protocol for cellular data, but in reality many have their own allocated frequency bands and system variants, nowhere is this more evident than the US and Canada, where systems are often incompatible with European and Asian counterparts. This has meant that for the shipping industry it has hitherto been difficult to come up with a global solution in one box.

45

Marine internet, a connected year on the water

My family and I just spent a year on the water.  When we left, some members of our crew were hesitant about the whole idea, so I knew we needed many comforts of home, like an always-on (almost), always-available (almost) internet connection.  This isn’t a simple or one-size-fits-all issue, and what follows is a primer on marine internet and the start of an article series…

10

CZone Signal Interface module long test, replacement impressive

In early 2013, installing a CZone Signal Interface to put Gizmo’s tank levels on my NMEA 2000 network was a very pleasing experience. In fact, I’ve kept it installed for long testing and have become quite dependent on its reliable performance. So it was bad news when I somehow… But, dang, replacing the SI also turned out to be pleasing…

4

Garmin OneHelm (HTML5) #1: Lumishore, Seakeeper, and Shadow-Caster

Though multifunction displays have been steadily gaining new functions, the Seakeeper and Lumishore buttons above represent a new era. Garmin calls it OneHelm, but the underlying HTML5 app technology is an important innovation that all the major MFD manufacturers are embracing. It significantly simplifies the process of creating MFD control…