Furuno NavNet MaxSea, a big deal
The June issue of PMY includes my take on the Furuno/MaxSea alliance. I titled it “Keys to the Kingdom” because it’s truly a big deal for Furuno to give PC software access to its whole NavNet system. It really shows what Ethernet can do, besides string multifunction displays together, and I’m guessing it will “encourage” Garmin, Northstar, and Raymarine to develop or find PC programs to run with their Ethernet systems. Dedicated electronics and PC-based systems used to be parallel universes (with a few significant exceptions); now they’re coming together. Good!
Man,
I am looking forward to the “2000-to-Ethernet gateway box” then we’ll be talking.
Andrew Smith
EXACTLY! There are lots of ways to skin these cats, but I’m pretty sure many boats will end up with a combination of NMEA 2000 & Ethernet.
Someone is going to snap up RosePoint and integrate Coastal Explorer with nav hardware. That will be a hot ticket. Too bad none of the companies are forward looking enough to open their platform and specs a la the open source model. Probably too risky given the lawsuit madness. All this integration just locks you forever into one company.
Dave
Sign my up for the Beta programe!
I’ve been hunting high and low for any of these keys to the kingdom. Does anyone know if any manufacturers have some digital radar output with a published protocol?
I would love to get radar data directly into the PC software without going through these messy PCI cards or interface servers, what a pain…
Well, I have to say that when I wrote that PMY article seven years ago I missed a lot about what was going to happen. RayTech never did come back, and neither Simrad nor Garmin ever went for a PC software relationship like what Furuno and MaxSea have been working on. In fact, PC navigation has been on the decline as MFDs became more powerful.
I continue to believe that an Ethernet radar that could interface easily to multiple charting programs would be a good seller, but I doubt we’re going to see one with compelling performance and a system-like price anytime soon. More likely but still nonexistent is a good radar that can run directly to a PC but only if a same brand MFD is on board. See Navico GoFree announcement for some hope of that: http://goo.gl/ad2rf
Unfortunately, ‘PC navigation’ is not top of the to-do list at Maxsea.
Until they sort out the errors in tidal navigation calculations it remains a pretty chart and instrument viewer. Still not fixed in the recent 1.9.7 update…
I believe that my Maxsea can display radar information from my Furuno radar, with the MFD on the network.
If you have the Explorer edition, it certainly can: http://goo.gl/LW8E5
And with each update of MSTZ Explorer the radar control gets more and more complete: http://goo.gl/vyDBr