The Marine Electronics Hub
I wasn’t kidding in my Vanemar writeup when I mentioned boat monitoring products’ strong showing at the NMEA’s 2025 conference. Continuing with that theme, let’s take a look at Sensar Marine’s Expansion Hub. The Expansion Hub pairs to their existing monitor to bring more capabilities to the original monitor without sacrificing the monitors’ core strengths.
Boat monitoring isn’t a new category, but looking around the exhibition hall at the 2025 National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA) conference, you might think differently. The hall featured at least eight companies exhibiting boat monitoring products and nearly half the entrants in the Best New Product awards were boat monitors. So, why so much activity in boat monitoring? Frankly, I’m not entirely sure. However, there is a noticeable improvement in the quality of all the monitors I saw. I am excited by the refinement and advances in the products on display. Speaking of refinement, Turkey based Vanemar was there displaying their system with wireless sensors, NMEA 2000 integration, video capabilities and a slick app.
Last week, the National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA) held their annual conference in West Palm Beach. This year’s conference featured quite a few interesting product introductions. I had the opportunity to see most of them while helping judge the NMEA’s Best New Product and NMEA Technology Awards. I plan several articles covering the various product introductions, though I’ll have to be quick about it as IBEX begins next week. Digital Yacht’s Bilge IQ is a NMEA 2000 and WiFi connected bilge pump control and monitoring system. The clever system monitors bilge pump activations, runtime, and current draw. My fellow judges and I thought enough of it to give it the Best New Product award. What did we see that intrigued us enough to award it? Let’s take a look.
In recent years LiFePO4 (LFP) batteries in boats have morphed from a slightly mysterious luxury to commonplace. The perception has gone from an expensive and risky modification to a widely accepted, game-changing, and comfort enhancing upgrade. As such there is great excitement when it’s “your turn” to upgrade your boat. Marinas and boating forums are full of stories from the recently converted about their newly installed LFP system and the resulting improved and simplified boating. Those still using legacy lead for house power may be feeling left behind. At the same time the prices of converting to LFP have dropped significantly.
Tablet navigation has come an extremely long way in the decade and a half since Ben Ellison started covering it. However, for as far as the apps have come, integrations between navigation apps and chart plotters remain remarkably frustrating. Some in brand solutions, like Active Captain with Garmin equipment and TZ iBoat with Furuno plotters, work quite well. However, cross platform options typically involve clunky, multi-step export and import routines. Often, these routines require ejecting and inserting physical memory cards, a task made more complex as memory card slots move to the back of slick, all glass chart plotters. Raymarine and Orca have broken with recent trends and offer a wireless integration that allows for remarkably simple sharing of routes between a tablet running Orca and a Raymarine Axiom chartplotter.
There are numerous systems that control a boats pitch and roll. These systems use a variety of in water devices to control the flow of water and alter how a boat runs through the water. In recent years quite a few systems have been introduced and updated including Lenco Pro Control, Seakeeper Ride, and ZipWake. With numerous options and different technologies, how do you decide which system is right for your boat? I put together a fleet of test boats to try and answer these questions and compare the systems performance. Read on to see the results and determine the best fit for your boat.
ABYC published updates to their E-11 and E-13 standards. E-11 covers the basic requirements for AC and DC systems on a boat. E-11 is a mature standard and the revisions reflect that maturity. This is the first revision of ABYC’s E-13 lithium ion battery standards. The first publication of E-13 incorporated most of ABYC’s technical note TE-13 that previously provided recommendations for the installation of lithium batteries on a boat. Hence, the updates to E-13 are more extensive.
If you made a list of all the features you require and prefer in your boat’s batteries, I would bet that Victron’s NG Smart batteries would check just about every item on your list. In a field where it sometimes feels like we are all field testing products, Victron’s batteries, BMSes, and software evidence maturity and integration most other manufacturers can only dream of achieving. About the harshest thing I can say about Smart NG batteries is that they’re more expensive than some of the other batteries out there. But, stick with me and we’ll take a careful look at what you get for that extra expense.
The past several years at IBEX, Metstrade and other trade shows, we’ve seen the introduction of electric devices — grills, bow thrusters, trolling motors, air conditioners and such — powered at 48 volts DC. In 2018, Integrel Solutions won a DAME Design Award for its 48-volt alternator. In 2022, Mercury Marine won a Consumer Electronics Show innovation award for its Verado V-12 outboards incorporating a 48-volt alternator. At the 2024 Annapolis Sailboat Show, six of the 16 new boats entered in Cruising World’s Boat of the Year contest had 48-volt house systems.
Panbo covers a lot of high technology, complex products. Often that coverage runs thousands of words to explain the technology. Attwood’s Powerbase isn’t that kind of product. Put simply, this is an electrically actuated antenna mount that raises and lowers your antenna or running light at the touch of a button. It does one thing and it does it well.
