I keep hearing good things about EmpireBus NXT, the second generation distributed power and control system developed by the Swedish firm Trigentic AB, and I’m beginning to understand why. It must have been a hard decision to completely redesign the original CLC system for such a tentative, low-volume niche market, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who appreciates the change from proprietary CANbus to NMEA 2000 for primary data communications. And, holy cow, look at all the other I/O they added. Aside from switches on the N2K bus, that 16-channel DC Module can be controlled with a 2-way wireless fob, or via Ethernet/Internet, or via a GSM cellular phone…even via an iPhone app purportedly…
Nigel Calder and I talked non-stop for about six hours on Friday (and probably could have kept going if we were younger men). He visited because he’s working on a new edition of How to Read a Nautical Chart and wanted to check out the latest in electronic charts, particularly the mobile apps. I was happy to help with that, and I also got to ask some questions about Gizmo’s systems and find out what’s up with his marine hybrid project. I’ve always liked Nigel’s chart book; while it’s largely a nice reprint of NOAA’s Chart 1 guide to symbology — no longer published by NOAA, though available for download — it also includes some terrific history of cartography along with analysis of where it’s going electronically. I’ll be particularly interested to see what he discovers when visiting the Chart of the Future project at UNH, which is apparently related to a new vector chart standard (interesting S100 PDF here). I was also pleased to learn that Nigel shares my enthusiasm for improving charts with crowd sourcing and even for 3D charting, and he’s not a guy who’s easily impressed with the latest thing…
I was glad to see the Solar Stik back at the Miami Show. I’d been impressed with the engineering — especially that sweet taper — when it was first introduced years ago, and it was nice to learn how many markets the company has found since. I also got a demo (that’s why the photo shows one of the two panels is completely removed, which took seconds), and thus I’m pretty sure that it would be easy to do the turning and tilting required to get the maximum power out the normal panel pair. I may romanticize the notion of putting one’s rum swizzel down every few hours to tune the solar array while laying in some tropical anchorage, but I don’t think there’s any denying that solar amps are directly related to angle of sunlight (15 degrees in any direction is the key fall-off point, according to the Stik guy). But would a power tower like this make sense on an amp-thirsty cruiser like Gizmo?
Chetco Digital Instruments has been quietly developing software and hardware to digitize and display analog engine info for some time, and with some success I hear. But as of yesterday’s big press release, Chetco has jumped big time into marine data networking, particularly the hot, if confusing, area of putting NMEA 2000 messages into an Ethernet format and serving them to whatever wired and wireless devices can use them. So that little $579 SeaSmart device above contains an N2K-to-Ethernet gateway (by Actisense, I think), a WiFi transciever, and a “CGI/AJAX web server” that puts out an “open sourced HTML protocol” that will purportedly support “any application from weather station, dual engines, battery banks, fluid tanks and more.” Excited yet?…
Camden Harbor is pretty quiet these days, but on Monday afternoon — while I was stripping off electronics prior to Gizmo’s inevitable haulout — Cangarda, the only existing U.S.-built steam yacht, suddenly slipped around the corner and silently maneuvered onto the Wayfarer dock just ahead of me. Yesterday I was further thrilled when Capt. Steve Cobb himself showed me around, paying special attention to his beloved engine room, where he’d fired up the boiler in order to check that the “water chemistry” was proper for lay up. You see, I already knew a fair bit about Cangarda, though I’d never seen the 126 foot vessel in all her awesome flesh before…
I wrote about BEP’s CZone distributed power last April, but didn’t get to see it live until I got a ride aboard Simrad’s demo boat during the Fort Lauderdale show. Isn’t it neat that the control screen can show you the amperage flowing through a specific circuit (and apparently detect a fault)? And if it’s on an MFD, couldn’t valuable details like that also be on iPad or apps phone like I recently saw live with Maretron’s N2KView? In April I also wrote about what a difficult niche distributed power is, but I still think the magic of digital switching is one of the most interesting frontiers in marine electronics. And that we’re going to hear a lot more about it in 2011. BEP, for instance, made a series of announcements during METS…
Wasn’t it telling that three DAME awards went to iPad apps yesterday (even though only two were entered)? I can’t find the full award text online yet, but the judges explained their Marine Related...
How about three cheers for Vincent Argiro, and guys like him willing to enthusiastically test the bleeding edge of marine technology. That’s his first boat above, an Alerion Express 33, which is also the...
We’ve had a run of interesting new products this week, but this may be the topper. That cast-aluminum “wheel” — wrapped with I’m not sure what and threaded for a stainless steel masthead mount that’s grounded to a Dynaplate — is a new lightning protection technology called a Streamer Inhibitor from a new company called Lightning Electrotechnologies. I’ve posed it with the Lightning Master Static Dissipater which generated a fair bit of skeptical commentary when I took it off Gizmo’s masthead last summer. The Inhibitor seems to be related to the Dissipater, but different. Understanding lightning and how you might avoid it is very challenging, and I have yet to form strong opinions one way or another…
That’s a pair of Genasun LFP Lithium batteries that weigh a small fraction of what similar sized regular marine batteries would and offer a lot more usable power than even their 760 amp hour rating would indicate, because they can endure truly deep discharges and accept massive recharges. Combine these with no less than four Victron MultiPlus inverter/chargers, which can automatically kick in extra AC when shore power or the generator can’t carry the load, and you’ve got power to spare. Yes, this is a high end project, but note the gray diagonal planking seen behind the lithium batteries…
and wanted to check out the latest in electronic charts, particularly the mobile apps. I was happy to help with that, and I also got to ask some questions about Gizmo’s systems and find out what’s up with his marine hybrid project. I’ve always liked Nigel’s chart book; while it’s largely a nice reprint of NOAA’s Chart 1 guide to symbology — no longer published by NOAA, though 
