Panbo

The Marine Electronics Hub

Category: Navigation

Furuno MaxSea PC Radar, only in Europe? 35

Navigation / PC & peripheral / The Trade

Furuno MaxSea PC Radar, only in Europe?

furuno_maxsea_pc_radar_german.jpg

What is it with radar on a PC screen that seems so enticing to yachties? Is it the fact that you don’t need a MFD? Or do we want the ability to use the digital charts of our choice with the radar of our choice? Last week I wrote about how OpenCPN now supports Garmin and Simrad radar, or at least partially, and it was in that entry’s comments where we learned about the existence of Furuno MaxSea PC Radar. Yes it is possible to use Furuno’s excellent radar with the excellent charting program MaxSea Time Zero without purchasing a NavNet 3D or TZ Touch MFD!  But right now it may only be possible in France or Germany…

Aboard Tranquilidad, more adventures with N2K (& Raymarine) 37

Navigation / What's on board... / NMEA 2000, 0183 & Signal K

Aboard Tranquilidad, more adventures with N2K (& Raymarine)

Tranquilidad_helm_2013 courtesy J Anwyl.jpg

Regular Panbo readers may recall that Jeremy Anwyl wrote a 2011 guest entry about his efforts to bring some stability to his admittedly complex NMEA 2000 network. Back then he was focused on the backbone, minimizing voltage drops, managing reflections and so forth. Anwyl continues to enjoy using his lovely Beneteau 57 Tranquilidad as an electronics lab, but he’s also finding bugs in new places…

SailTimer; the app, the GPS, & the Wind Vane 60

Wireless & Apps / Navigation

SailTimer; the app, the GPS, & the Wind Vane

SailTimer_app_TTD_example_cPanbo.JPG

It’s time to catch up on Dr. Craig Summers and his passion for Tacking Time to Destination (TTD). The basic idea is to calculate in advance how long it will take to tack (or jibe) a sailboat to point B in particular wind conditions, but there’s a lot to it. Like how does the software program or dedicated device know exactly what your particular boat can do those conditions — a set of performance values known as polars — as well as what the boat and wind are doing in real time so it can perfect its predictions? And what about currents? When we last discussed SailTimer in 2009, Summers had introduced a rudimentary iPhone app and was working on something called The Sailing GPS. The latter is real now, the app is several generations advanced, and that’s not all!

Goodbye dGPS? Hello Virtual AtoNs? 36

Navigation / Safety & SAR

Goodbye dGPS? Hello Virtual AtoNs?

US_National_DGPS_map.jpg

No one should get overly upset quite yet, but it does seem that the U.S. Coast Guard is thinking about reducing the differential GPS (DGPS) correction stations it manages, and is also wondering if all the aids to navigation (AtoNs) it maintains are truly necessary these days. My friend Dean Travis Clark recently joined the Navigation Safety Advisory Council (NAVSAC) and he just sent around two of its working group resolutions for comments. I know he’d like to hear the opinions of Panbo readers too, and that these resolutions have not yet been finalized or presented to the USCG…

METS 2012 show report part 1: MFDs and navigation displays 14

Navigation / The Trade

METS 2012 show report part 1: MFDs and navigation displays

mets2012_airmar_dst900.jpg

As my first, and hopefully not last, series of entries under my own name I’d like to report on my visit to the METS 2012 trade show. If I had to call an overall theme then it would be touch screen chartplotters and the increase in companies working on Lithium batteries. I counted 5 companies offering these, and I probably missed a few. Last year there were few touch chartplotters and this year the Big Four all had lots of them, and there was a little surprise as well with a new range by a company I’d never heard of, Lorenz of Italy. Let me start of with some good Airmar news, the first highlight of the show for me…

New Garmin GPSMap 741sx, 741, etc.; signs of what’s to come? 56

Navigation

New Garmin GPSMap 741sx, 741, etc.; signs of what’s to come?

Garmin_GPSmap_741xs_chart_chirp_screen.jpg

I believe that Garmin has had a tremendous run with the GPSMap 700 Series introduced in January, 2010, but consider all that’s different in the new premier models announced this morning (along with new 500 Series models too). That 7-inch WVGA screen is multi-touch, that sleeker casing can be flat as well as flush mounted, and the processor inside is purportedly 60% faster. Yes, it includes WiFi for easy integration with BlueChart Mobile and apps to come. And there’s more…

FLIBS 2012 redo 2; Garmin, Navico, Furuno, Standard Horizon, Lumishore, ACR, Yacht Phone, & Si-Tex/Sailor 21

Wireless & Apps / Navigation

FLIBS 2012 redo 2; Garmin, Navico, Furuno, Standard Horizon, Lumishore, ACR, Yacht Phone, & Si-Tex/Sailor

FLIBS2012_Garmin_BlueChart_Mobile_beta_cPanbo.jpg

I didn’t really need an app to know that Sandy was causing trouble on the opening day of the Lauderdale Show, but I was tickled that Garmin loaned me an iPad3 so I could try BlueChart Mobile (which apparently can’t run on my iPad1). It’s beta software — as is the WiFi appliance that let’s you share tracks, routes, waypoints, and GPS with Garmin networked MFDs — and so they’d rather I didn’t write much about it quite yet. But here’s a recent and informative BlueChart Mobile YouTube video that goes with my first impression that it’s a rich and well-crafted planning app that will be popular even with folks who don’t own Garmin gear. Meanwhile, rumors that Garmin will have major product introductions at both METS and MIBS continue to gain steam…

FLIBS 2012 redo #1, Raymarine Lighthouse v5 15

Navigation / Safety & SAR / The Trade

FLIBS 2012 redo #1, Raymarine Lighthouse v5

Raymarine_Lighthouse_5__Fuel_Manager_on_A65.jpg

It’s telling of the Great Convergence when the biggest electronics news of a boat show is arguably a software upgrade. I don’t mean that innovation in marine electronics has slowed down, not at all. But whereas the Big Four have now all rationalized and modernized their product lines — though in some cases it took painful operating system rebuilds — big features can often be realized just by unleashing capabilities already build into MFDs or available from sensors that can already be interfaced. We just saw two neat new Fusion 700 audio interface update, but now consider all the features crammed into Raymarine’s Lighthouse v5 update, which was just announced the first day of FLIBS and — holy cow — is already available for all a-, c-, and e-Series MFDs…

Furuno NavNet TZTouch, best use of MFD WiFi yet? 12

Wireless & Apps / Navigation / Weather

Furuno NavNet TZTouch, best use of MFD WiFi yet?

Furuno_TZT_GRIB_via_cell_hotspot_cPanbo.jpg

I first learned about Hurricane Sandy in an interesting way. While enjoying sunset in the Calabash River anchorage a week ago today, I was also fooling with various WiFi features built into a just-installed Furuno NavNet TZT14. Actually I was trouble shooting the seemingly flaky WiFi connection when I discovered that the TZT could connect to my Android phone’s WiFi hotspot and even use that connection to quickly download a GRIB weather file. I’ve never seen an MFD do that before! Then I was admiring the TZT’s neat controls for viewing the GRIB predictions — like the intuitive way you can slide your finger along the forecast time bar seen at the screen’s bottom — when I noticed the tropical cyclone headed my way!  But I lucked out; Sandy just slapped the Fort Lauderdale boat show around a bit, and now I’m aboard Gizmo is in a hurricane hole that’s below the immense storm anyway. Today I’ll be thinking particularly about other cruisers who didn’t get this far south already, but I do have time to describe how Furuno is trying to do MFD WiFi different…

Navico GoFree, WiFi1 & the 0183 Link 56

Wireless & Apps / Navigation

Navico GoFree, WiFi1 & the 0183 Link

Navico_GoFree_IBEX_demo.jpg

I now know a lot more about the Navico GoFree WiFi strategy that we first discussed last January, and it all sounds darn good, but most everyone interested will have to exercise a little more patience. While the iOS version of the GoFree Control and Viewer app is already available on iTunes (with an Android version scheduled for Q1 2013) and the WiFi1 marine wireless hardware is slated to go on sale for $199 in November, the Simrad NSS software that will make them work together smoothly won’t be out until late November, followed by the just-announced Lowrance HDS Touch in Q2 2013. And yes the rumor is true that the GoFree Control app will not be supported for non-touch MFDs like the NSE or regular HDS. But there’s so much else to GoFree that every Navico system owner will likely be pleased eventually…