Panbo

The Marine Electronics Hub

Category: Network & control

Dr. Yung’s NMEA 2000 lab, Ship Convergence Center too! 19

Network & control / The Trade / NMEA 2000, 0183 & Signal K

Dr. Yung’s NMEA 2000 lab, Ship Convergence Center too!

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I so appreciated getting to know Dr. Yung Ho Yu — known around the world simply as Dr. Yung — at the Korea Maritime University in Busan, and I think you will too once you realize how much he and his programs are doing to advance marine electronics and improve the standards that make them inter-operable. For starters, take a close look at the NMEA 2000 teaching lab surrounding the good Doctor. The twenty work stations are all gatewayed to an extensive N2K sensor network so that students can experience and even interact with the protocol right down to the bit level as the instructor demonstrates from his work station. I’d like to be wrong, but I doubt that there’s a similarly powerful teaching and research tool anywhere else on the planet…

Furuno at MIBS 2013; CHIRP, FCV587/627, and NavPilot FPS8 11

Fishing & Sonar / Network & control

Furuno at MIBS 2013; CHIRP, FCV587/627, and NavPilot FPS8

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When I was at the in-water powerboat portion of the Miami show before it opened one morning, I discovered Furuno marketing manager Jeff Kauzlaric and product manager Eric Kunz making video. Of course I interrupted them for a photo but I was also hoping to see their long-rumored CHIRP fishfinder in action. But while it turned out that the big sonar screen behind Eric was not showing CHIRP, Furuno did announce the new DFF1-UHD during the show and Eric showed me the nifty NavPilot Safe Helm and Power Assist modes just about ready for release…

T-SAT & SiMON Gold, mega-style multi-touch 6

Wireless & Apps / Network & control

T-SAT & SiMON Gold, mega-style multi-touch

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A Panbo search on Palladium Technologies will show you some very jazzy big yacht technology, much of it with a distinctly Apple style, like the SiMON2 iPad-based system installed on a futuristic Cheoy Lee Alpha 76 at the Fort Lauderdale show in 2011. This year, Palladium’s Lauderdale introduction was much more a prototype but it was also quite sensational. The idea behind SiMON Gold is to evolve ‘traditional’ SiMON monitoring and control along with video feeds, switching, and much else into a finger-gesture-managed megayacht multiple multi-touch monitor helm extravaganza. That’s Palladium founder Mike Blake pulling a data source off Gold’s sliding menu bar, which he could then drag and size easily to further build a particular monitoring screen, but actually that’s the most obvious feature…

Chetco SeaSmart.Net modules, wide open N2K-to-Ethernet? 74

Network & control / Electrical & Engines / NMEA 2000, 0183 & Signal K

Chetco SeaSmart.Net modules, wide open N2K-to-Ethernet?

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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?…

Distributed Power over N2K, and goodbye E-Plex? 14

Network & control

Distributed Power over N2K, and goodbye E-Plex?

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This HDS-10 is showing off Lowrance’s new relationship with Digital Switching System’s distributed power system.  While the interface is NMEA 2000, I think DSS uses its PowerGate 2000 gateway for this purpose, instead of using N2K for its internal network.  But that may not matter, as I understand that DSS uses standard N2K PGNs whenever possible.  In fact, I’ve seen Krill Systems software working with its gateway and switches just fine.  But that was just a demo, and I suspect that it will be a long time before we see easy, full-featured integration between DP and other boat systems, except by partnership or design… 

DY NMEA 0183 to USB, looks handy 16

Network & control

DY NMEA 0183 to USB, looks handy

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That’s Digital Yacht’s just announced NMEA 0183 to USB adapter, all of it, and it’s just $49.  Wire it to a multiplexer, AIS, or some other 0183 RX/TX port and any 0183 message will purportedly be seen by software running on the attached computer.  The adapter has LEDs that flicker for transmitted and received data, and it can be set to either 4,800 or 38,400 baud. The included software is said to work with PCs, Macs, and even Linux-based systems, and there’s a bonus…

NMEA 0183 over Ethernet, on Mar Azul 25

Network & control / What's on board...

NMEA 0183 over Ethernet, on Mar Azul

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Bob Ebaugh got some GX2100 installation help over on the forum, and that gave me a chance to bug him for some more information on the interesting system he’s put together. Check it out above: two laptops connected wirelessly and simultaneously to MFD, AP, VHF/rxAIS, and Internet. Bob’s a pilot and ex-networking engineer who didn’t think he could write up the project well, but I think he did just fine…

HYMAR, can Nigel find the electric drive grail? 17

Network & control

HYMAR, can Nigel find the electric drive grail?

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I remember getting excited about Solomon Systems’ regenerating electric sail boat motors at the 2004 Annapolis show, but I never hear about the technology today.  Then in late 2006 I got stoked about the Ossa Powerlite diesel electric system, and even dreamed of having one in a Maine Cat P45 (which went on to become the great P47).  But Maine Cat dropped the idea after testing it on the prototype, and the Ossa web site today shows about the same few customers it showed back then.  Designing a truly practical electric drive system for cruising-size boats, great as it sounds, is clearly not easy.  However, Nigel Calder did his homework on these systems all along — and often was properly skeptical when others, like me, were infatuated — and now he’s put together an A list of companies and earned a $3,000,000 EU grant to develop hybrid marine propulsion. How cool is that?