MIBS #1, all about me
I’m a little hazy about my Miami International Boat Show history — twelve in a row, I think — but I’m pretty sure this has been the best yet. One highlight was planing a...
Category: The Trade
The Geonav writers event, part 1
I’ve been waiting on some screen shots before writing about the “Geonav writers event” I attended in early December but, frankly, the gear demonstration was rather preliminary anyway, as the two most technically advanced products — the GIS multifunction and MIS instrument displays highlighted here in September — were not shown. While I’ll soon have more about what I did see in action, I’ve realized that what I did learn a lot about in Florida was the family of companies Geonav has joined. While it was clear that the brand would undergo serious changes when it was bought by Johnson Outdoors in late 2007, I didn’t really understand what that Johnson name meant until I received the presentation from which I clipped the slide above…
Warranties, Raymarine (FLIR) goes to three years
Nice! As of New Year’s Day all new Raymarine products are eligible for a free extra year of warranty as long as the owner registers them online (always a good idea anyway). And that’s not all: Raymarine has also instituted “Rapid Care” which means that if your product (excepting radar and sat TV antennas) is in its first year of warranty and needs repair, Ray will ship you a “like-new remanufactured” unit within two business days of receiving the broken one. This strikes me as a smart way for FLIR — which might be called Raymarine’s thermally-obsessed sugar daddy) — to express its longterm commitment to the company and its customers, but does it also mean that Raymarine now has the best warranty program in the business?…
Geek Squad, the biggest marine electronics installer?
While the currently advertised marine services sound modest, the Geek Squad has major ambitions regarding the marine electronics installation business. To be more specific, they hope to eventually have installers based at some 450-500...
METS 2010 roundup, thanks to Kees
Once again — and a nice contrast to my various METS ramblings — the good Kees Verrujit kindly wrote up his impressions of the huge Amsterdam marine equipment trade show:
Today I visited METS for the fourth year in a row. This year the show was even bigger than last year, by about 20%. Anyone who still claims they can do all halls and booths on one day is a close relation of Baron Münchhausen. I visited some booths as a NMEA 2000 enthusiast, some in my role of technologist for a yard, but most in my role as a delegated Panbo blogger. This year that was a lot easier than last, as more and more people seem to read Panbo or at least know Ben’s name — most vividly portrayed by a huge quote sign in the Fusion Marine Audio booth {like this one, only bigger!}. The major themes I noticed were: Pads (and iOS apps) were everywhere; AIS is taking off in a major way; Chinese electronics are coming; and
NMEA 2000 is here to stay…
DAME Awards 2010, part 2
DAME Awards will be chosen at METS this coming week for multiple categories, but there are electronical things well beyond the main marine electronics category discussed on Thursday. Consider, for instance, how the ODEO Flare seen above attempts to replace pyrotechnics with four lasers and a revolving prism. It does cost almost 100 pounds, but purportedly stays lit for 10 hours on 2 AA batteries, and it won’t burn you. Also in the Lifesaving and Safety Equipment category are SeeTrac’s Jet-trak high-end PWC tracking system, McMurdo’s SmartFind S5 AIS SART, and Weatherdock’s easyRescue, which seems to be a personal-size AIS SART. And of course there’s the Marine Related Software category…
DAME Awards 2010, part 1
EchoPilot’s 3D forward looking sonar, mentioned here last year when Kees covered METS, purportedly just started shipping, and the screen shots posted at the company site are even more compelling. That spire imaged above, for instance, represents a navigation buoy with a triple mooring system. But might this product be causing the judges of this year’s DAME (Design at METS) Award some anguish? They did choose it as one of the six finalists in the Marine Electronics category, but it’s got to be difficult to judge such a unique technology on the basis of screen shots, especially when they can get more hand’s with some of the other other nominees…
iThing boating, Rose Point’s in, Maretron too
I’ve been using an iPad for a week now and — sorry, Steve — I’m not yet feeling “the magic”. But just the fact that I can envision so many improvements to something already so cool speaks to how amazingly fast this wireless, touch screen, app device phenomenon is moving. My iPhone and iPod Touch have been almost magically transformed by iOS 4 (coming soon to the pad) and my Android phone is such a hotbed of fertile app chaos that it sometimes gets hot quite literally. And almost everything that’s useful and fun about these devices is doubly so on my boat, with loads of room to grow…
NMEA Technology Award, yike!
I don’t recall why I had my hand up like that, but do remember the scene — Furuno showing off NavNet on some sort of military grade head’s up display, I think — as one of many geek moments I’ve enjoyed at NMEA conferences. In my experience, there’s no concentration of marine electronics expertise and enthusiasm anywhere that compares to the Conference’s trade-only exhibition hall. But the affair became a dite more stressful for me last year when I got involved in the NMEA Technology Award, which went to Navico’s Broadband Radar with honorable mentions to Maretron’s N2KBuilder and Navionics’ Mobile (PDF here). This year may be even harder…
Chuck Husick, a fond farewell
I like this picture of Chuck — found on his personal web site, along some truly touching memorial material — because whenever I saw him at boat shows he was almost invariably decked out in a blue blazer and tie. Now Mr. Charles Husick certainly had the gravitas to support a bit of formality; he was an accomplished electrical engineer who had also managed serious companies, written hundreds of magazine articles, and been a important advocate for sensible marine technologies…and he knew more about many subjects than many of us know about one. But he was also a real boating enthusiast, and in this picture I can sense that large, curious intellect that must have had so much fun geeking out on his ketch Bonne Étoile…
