Category: Network & control

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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…

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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…

Raymarine MFD apps three ways: from drone control to sat comms to video streaming 14

Raymarine MFD apps three ways: from drone control to sat comms to video streaming

Raymarine_Axiom_drone_demo_Miami_aPanbo.jpg

MIBS 2018 saw the manufacturers putting the multi in MFD, with Garmin and Raymarine each introducing multiple new multifunction app and app-like display integrations interfacing to all sorts of third party boat systems, plus consumer electronics gadgets and online services — actually every single brand seen below, with lots more likely coming. The results are exciting, but what the heck are MFD apps? Fortunately, Raymarine is illustrating all three ways they can be created and why it’s useful to know how it’s done…

IBEX Winners: Lumitec PLI and Power-Pole Vision 3

IBEX Winners: Lumitec PLI and Power-Pole Vision

IBEX_winner_Lumitec_Power_Line_Instructions_cPanbo.jpgWhat’s amazing and IBEX award worthy about the Lumitec demo board above is that while all those light fixtures are only connected to the same simple two-wire 12v power circuit, each can be switched, dimmed, strobed, color-changed and more, individually or as virtual groups. Lumitec calls the protocol Power Line Instructions (PLI), and, as innovative as it is, it had to share top honors in the electronics category with another new-protocol-based product, and we judges wished we could give out more awards. The boats of the future may be emerging from the fog…

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Smörgåsboat: The tasty testing buffet installed on Gizmo for 2017

While I do think that Gizmo offers a bountiful spread of delicious marine electronics these days, a more serious title for this entry might read: “Guilt: All the darn gear I’ve borrowed but haven’t...

Sabre 66: excellence in digital switching and control 22

Sabre 66: excellence in digital switching and control

Sabre_Dirigo_66_hull_1_courtesy_Sabre_Billy_Black.jpg

Frankly, there’s no plan behind the Panbo trend of more detailed entries posted less often, but sometimes it does seem like a feature rather than a bug. For instance, Sabre gave me a long and impressive systems tour of their first Dirigo 66 while she beautifully occupied this slip at Yachts Miami Beach 2016, and while I didn’t intend to delay the write-up this long, last week I got aboard just-launched hull #3 the day before heading from Maine to Florida at about 25 knots. So I have additional detail on how well the original system design has worked out – also impressive…

MV Dirona: deep cruising, deeply shared 5

MV Dirona: deep cruising, deeply shared

MV_Dirona_with_Jen_and_James_cPanbo.jpgIf there were a lifetime award for cruising excellence, I think that Jennifer and James Hamilton would deserve at least a nomination. I mean excellence at the core practical cruising skills — seamanship and boat care — plus inspirational levels of curiosity about the vast world cruising makes accessible, and perhaps at the top of my imagined award criteria: distinction at sharing all of the above with the rest of us. Visiting M/V Dirona in Belfast, Maine, last October was a treat, but you too can ride along as this Nordhavn heads to Ireland and beyond…

Navico Hawks 2017: “Full boat integration into one display cluster” 21

Navico Hawks 2017: “Full boat integration into one display cluster”

Navico_integration_update_2017_Leif_Ottosson.jpg

The Miami Boat Show was loaded with marine electronics news, but first let’s visit the Navico writers event held at Hawks Cay, Florida, earlier this month. Deeper still – Mercury engine integration, B&G Zeus PredictWind weather routing, the Halo radar VelocityTrack Doppler upgrade, Navionics SonarChart Live everywhere, Simrad’s new 3kW 3-channel S5100 super sonar, and Lowrance Carbon (Gen3) MFDs are some of the goodies that were demonstrated and/or discussed. But I was especially taken with CEO Leif Ottosson’s opening “big picture” presentation and think it’s valuable to anyone interested in the future of boating…

Remote Boat Monitoring: here comes Navico GoFree Vessel/Track and Siren Marine MTC 10

Remote Boat Monitoring: here comes Navico GoFree Vessel/Track and Siren Marine MTC

Navico_GoFree_Vessel_apps_for_GoFree_Track_cPanbo.jpg

While off-boat monitoring was already getting better and more competitive, finally one of the big four marine electronics brands is about to join the fray. Navico’s GoFree Connected Vessel concept is not just important because it will be marketed and serviced worldwide, but also because the development team took the time to think out a truly comprehensive system that can potentially serve a wide variety of boaters in multiple ways. Meanwhile team Siren Marine has been building on their years of remote monitoring, tracking and control experience and will soon announce a series of second-generation MTC products that sound exciting. This entry will take a preliminary look at both these systems and I’ll soon share testing results on two more…