I’m a sucker for anything that connects to a PC. The new AutoAnchor Rodecounter for the PC is an interface box that provides anchoring information for PC based applications. It is designed primarily for large yachts, with glass screen PC displays, but is also generating interest for use on smaller vessels using laptops. It features accurate rope/chain or all-chain rode counting, with pre-set calibrations for specific windlasses, a docking alarm to warn the skipper the anchor is approaching the boat, and “plug and play’ software. The company also produces units with a display. — Jeff Hummel
Over the next few days I’ll be posting some guest blogs from Jeff Hummel, who writes, “Over the last 10 years I’ve been making an annual trek to the Marine Equipment Trade Show (METS) in Amsterdam, Holland. The show, now in its 18th year, is the premiere marine equipment show in the world.It only runs for three days and is primarily a business to business venue, and it’s enormous with over 1000 exhibitors spread over 4 halls. Walking non-stop it took me 2 hours to cover the show.”
Jeff, by the way, has worked in marine electronics for over 15 years. He started with Nobeltec in 1995 and was instrumental in developing the Insight Radar and Nobeltec’s Passport charts. He left in 2001 and wrote a 600 page book about using the software called Inside Visual Series. Now he’s the director of Sales and Marketing at Rose Point Navigation systems, which produces Coastal Explorer and Maptech’s Chart Navigator Professional. He also writes part time for PassageMaker magazine and owns an 80ft research trawler called Sea Blazer that he is currently setting up as an NMEA 2000 test vessel.
But don’t presume you need all those qualifications to write a guest blog on Panbo! If you’ve have an interesting bit of marine electronics, or a cool helm setup, or a lesson learned, please send us a note and we’ll discuss an entry.
A C-Map question this morning reminded me that I’d meant to comment on my experience with the company’s latest PC Planner product. I’ve always liked the concept: bring home your chart card, stick it in Planner’s reader and use it to do fast, detailed route making on a PC, then bring the routes back to your plotter on a user card. These days Planner is a pretty mature program and also nicely shows off the goodies in C-Map's newish Max chart cards. Check out the streets, detailed harbor info, multi-shaded contours (land too), and even a yellow real time current arrow in the screen shot above (bigger here). The program can also display Max’s perspective view, animated nav lights, and harbor photos. I may have razzed C-Map last spring for its Max marketing, but I like the charts and PC Planner.
And I’ve wondered why Navionics has not yet introduced a similar product. (I have been told it was “about to happen” several times, including quite recently.) Even Garmin users can’t plan on a preprogrammed data card, though they can get the same effect by buying BlueCharts on a CD and making their own card (note that the new G2 charts will not be available on CD, at least at introduction).
At any rate, the question asked this morning was the cost for Malaysian C-Map charts for use on a PC. One reason for the long introduction is that PC charting programs supporting C-Maps can generally read them either from the CD version or from a card via the reader (SOB has a good explanation of the hows and whys here). A "Wide" size CD unlock code for the Malaysian area, either Max or regular NT+, costs about $250 and includes maybe 100 charts (you can drill down to name, scale, etc. detail using C-Map’s online catalog). I’m still working on prices for the applicable cards, which come in two possible sizes for the area; they’re likely a little higher, but can also be used in a dedicated plotter. I was surprised that I couldn’t find these prices online; I think Bluewater usually has such info but their system is down. Any suggestions for other online sources of worldwide electronic charts?
Go to this page to see a series of screen grabs illustrating a scary close call between the 32’ ketch Valhalla and the 132 meter tanker Miri Cahaya. I’d almost guess that the tanker was trying to slow down and turn right to go astern of the ketch, but that’s easy to say sitting in the comfort of my office. Captain Sargent was looking at a whole lot of moving steel with a Closest Point of Approach at one point of 44 meters! He also had prior knowledge of some malicious mariners in these waters, which is probably why he was collecting a history of screen shots. At any rate, he made a possibly controversial last minute decision to turn hard left and cross the tanker’s bow, and it worked. You might also look here to see Valhalla’s AIS setup, which includes a NASA receiver and SOB software (note above how it gives time of last message; nice!). The page also has some screens showing how AIS busy the Malacca Straits are. I understand that the Singapore Vessel Traffic Information System is possibly the busiest in the world, and is using AIS messaging heavily to route ships.
This entry is also an example of how the Internet is changing cruising (and all communications). This incident happened on 11/17, was posted to Valhalla’ssite yesterday, and Panbo reader Steve Tripp emailed me about it today. And as I was writing the entry this morning, Captain Sargent—now located in Langkawi, Malaysia—updated this useful page of cruising info about Port Carmen, Philippines, including an antique chart scan improved with GPS annotations by Steve. Big planet, small world.
Offshore Systems 3271, the perfect fuel tank sensor?
Nov 25, 2005
This Offshore Systems fuel sender sounds perfect…stainless steel with no moving parts, measures fuel tank level to 1% accuracy, installs and delivers data all via a NMEA 2000 trunk line, and it can reportedly detect water in the fuel! However, it costs $295 with a 20” probe, more with longer (cutable) probes, and I’m just a tiny bit dubious about the water sensing capability. This sensor is “capacitive”, which I think means it uses the same technology as the “dielectric” bilge pump switches I discussed here once. If the Offshore sender detects water in your fuel it sends alternating “full” and “empty” signals. I wonder if a small amount of water might trigger this, and then you wouldn’t know how much fuel you had? Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but I’d like to hear about successful field trials. Note that Offshore has a new 3125 2000 Sender Adapter which will work with standard resistive senders, and thus with any fluid {corrected 11/28; it turns out that Maretron is not distributing Offshore's sensors (but is working on its own NMEA 2000 tank sender adapter)}.
Update 11/26: I got this note from Offshore Systems: “The water sensing feature really works. Whenever the bottom of the probe detects water the sender sends alternate tank full / tank empty messages at the default rate of 1 message every 2.5 seconds. This will make any display very noticeable to the user to indicate that this tank is contaminated and should not be used until it has been drained and cleaned.” Sounds good…like a little water floating on half a tank of diesel—where it won’t really cause problems—also won’t set off the alarm and stop tank level measuring.
At METS, the U.K. company TackTick—a prior DAME winner for its Micronet wireless instruments—introduced these remote displays. Like the Micronet fixed displays, they’re solar powered and, using a Universal Wireless Interface, can show most any NMEA 0183 data, besides, of course, what’s collected with Micronet sensors. I’m just now realizing how powerful this Interface could be—capable of, say, data networking GPS, PC, another manufacturer’s instruments/sensors, and Micronet. In fact, TackTick even supports proprietary data sentences created on the boat’s PC and then displayed as desired on the Micronet screens (pdf here). It sounds like a savvy sailor or developer could use this to create a very sophisticated instrument system.
Speaking of which, Sailing Anarchy put up a fascinating piece on the super high end sail racing instrumentation that B&G is capable of these days. Note that it is apparently written by a B&G employee, but nonetheless…wow.
Here’s wishing all the Yanks in Panbo world a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. It’s spitting snow here in Maine, perfect for holing up with friends, family, and a lots of good food. There’s much to give thanks for, but let’s include gizmos too. Needed they’re not, but aren’t they fun?
What really gets me is that when you click on a movie, it starts instantly where you want it to…no fooling with a disk, no previews, no FBI warning. That’s luxurious. Of course it’s cool as hell to have your entire DVD collection organized by cover art, actors, genre, etc. Pick one of those films above and all the other covers will dance around for a moment, then show you the movies most like your pick. The brawn behind all this is the Kaleidescape Entertainment Server with twelve 400 meg hard drives able to hold, and back up, 660 full res DVDs (or 6,000 CDs, and you can chain on more servers as needed). The brains is a reader that hooks via Internet to Kaleidescape’s master database of cover art, categories, and the bookmarks that start the movie just so. Ethernet sends the goods to as many as 25 players around the boat. These babies are becoming quite popular on megayachts. Perfect accessory: a huge Crestron touch screen remote. The whole deal, preferably enjoyed on a sky lounge off the Italian Riviera, almost makes a guy want to be filthy rich.
Honestly, I’m a little surprised that NOAA got its RNC ChartServer up and fully populated so soon. (And thanks to GPSNavX for the head’s up). I tried it yesterday, and here’s what I noticed:
* According to the official verbiage, NOAA RNCs (™ yet!) are considered “official” but redistributed copies are not (yet). “At a future date, NOAA intends to establish a program under which distributors may be certified to redistribute NOAA RNCs™ such that they will retain their official status and meet chart carriage regulations.”
* While the underlying charts seem to be the same, and fabulously current (updates applied through 2 weeks ago in many cases), NOAA is using different server software than Maptech’s freeboatingcharts.com. Since each site has unique ways to search for charts, there are now lots of ways to find them. NOAA zips them up for immediate downloading; freeboatingcharts sends you an email when the self-executing zip file is ready.
* Most interesting, I think, is that NOAA is also offering small update files that I presume will make the latest edition of a chart current. This will be great for keeping a portfolio updated, especially for those with narrow-band connections, like on a boat. But I think that the .ptc update file format only works in older Maptech software so far (not, for instance, CNP/CE, yet). Can anyone illuminate me?
The wise judges of the DAME Design Awards have spoken, and the winner of the marine electronics category is Navman’s G-Pilot 3380. “This is an extremely cohesive product, with an attractive case design, intuitive controls and clear graphic displays on a 3.8in LCD colour screen that include animations, help prompts and a user-friendly compass page.” I’ve raved about this interface before and am pleased to note that it is now also available on the new Northstar 3300 autopilot, with a casing “system matched” to Northstar’s 6000i displays. The two sister companies are a little shy about this duplication, because otherwise their products are quite distinct, but, heck, why not? (Note that I have not tryed the Navman/Northstar pilot on the water, and doubt the judges did either. And even if we had, pilots can perform fine on one boat but not another. All of which is why it’s so hard to introduce a new autopilot.)
The winner of the Marine related software category is Navionics Platinum, which makes sense to me, and relevant Special Mentions include Airmar’s WeatherStation, Simrad’s SART, and something called Octoplex from Moritz Aerospace. I haven’t mentioned the latter yet, but got a good introduction at Lauderdale and agree with the Dame guys about its specialness. More to come.
My question, having seen the vast communications closet, was, “Is there a system for least cost routing the yacht’s phone calls?” And the answer was that you just go left to right on the line buttons shown above—shore lines 1 & 2, GSM cellular, Fleet 33, Fleet 77 low and high speed. The first one with a dial tone is the cheapest way to make a call. It’s striking that on these megayachts full of screens and other extravagances, some of the most important install techniques are simple ideas like this, plus excellent labeling.
Also on the “keep it simple (sort of)” theme: this Panasonic Super Hybrid System has apparently become more or less standard on megas, making it easier for installers and crews moving from one boat to another. But the installer did have to take a week-long training in how to set it up (it will even print out bills for charter guests). Note that the cell line is an Ericsson fixed unit, further amplified by a wireless Digital amplifier that also helps out other cells being used near the bridge.
The Garmin media team was busy last night, distributing a stack of complicated press releases and a pile o’ product shots, all to describe some 20 new units that were introduced at METS today (and will go on sale next March). Here are the bullet points I’ve gathered so far:
* New BlueChart G2 (next generation) charts feature 3D perspective, tides and currents overlay, and other enhancements, and a slew of new plotters, plotter/fishfinders, and network multifunction displays (like the 3206 above, bigger here) come preloaded with all U.S. coastal G2’s. (NOAA’s freebie policy strikes again!)
* But G2 is a two tier product, sort of like what Navionics is up to, and G2 chart cards add more data like detailed coastal roads, more POIs, and color aerial photos of critical areas. Garmin says that U.S. cards will start at $199, “far less than competitors”. (But I don’t know what that means exactly). G2, by the way, is not compatible with older plotters, except the 3000 series, but older BlueCharts will work in new plotters.
* Garmin has a new network called CANet, which can connect the smaller 292, 392, and 492 plotters with two new black box fishfinders or the new 398 full fishfinder. It sounds like a CANbus variant but is 1 megabit (?). The GSD-22 bb is Garmin’s “first digital sonar, allowing for more precise target separation and depth performance” and also supports Garmin’s MarineNet (Ethernet).
It’s going to be interesting to see how all these products stack up. I’m wondering, for instance, what Garmin’s version of 3D perspective looks like, and whether G2 will also come on CD. And, of course, pesky observers like Panbo reader R.O. are asking “what about NMEA 2000”. More to come, to be sure.
PS It will also be interesting to see who picked up DAME awards at METS today; this is one of the better innovation competitions out there, I think. And, by the way, Jeff Hummel is at METS and says he’ll write a Panbo guest blog on his findings.
Maretron ultrasonic wind sensor, the plot thickens
Nov 14, 2005
At the NMEA show, Maretron showed off a prototype of this ultrasonic wind sensor that also measures air temp, barometric pressure, and relative humidity. In other words, the WSO100 Weather Station Outdoor is quite like Airmar’s WeatherStation. Neither, in fact, is actually a shipping product yet, even though Airmar’s was introduced at the 2004 NMEA show (the power boat model is supposedly very close, and is now detailed in a .pdf at Airmar’s Web site). Airmar’s first unit, for about $1,000, will talk in NMEA 0183 and will include an electronic compass and GPS so it can calculate true wind speed and direction. Maretron’s will cost around $600 and will need heading and SOG info from the NMEA 2000 network to do the True calculations. Airmar plans to eventually introduce a 2000 WeatherStation and Maretron may very well do an 0183 version of its sensor, which, by the way, it engineered from scratch. I hope to try both when possible, and figure that having two ultrasonic wind sensors on the market (beside the French original) will be good for consumer awareness (and a healthy competition).
The good folks who make GPSNavX and MacENC just announced a $40 (plus $5 s/h) DVD containing all NOAA U.S. coastal charts, including Alaska, Hawaii, and the Great Lakes. They’re in BSB 3 file format and should work fine with any Mac or PC charting program that reads BSBs—which is just about all of them. Note that the BSB 3 format is not encrypted. Note too that these are the same charts available for free download at freeboatingcharts.com (but what a hassel it would be to order, download, and unzip all of them).
Yup, it’s funny to imagine paying $3,500 to wear this gizmo around your megayacht, but if it works as advertised I’ll bet there’s a small market for it. The idea of ReVA—Remote Video Assistance from/to Anywhere—is to troubleshoot a problem by voice and video with an expert ashore. That’s a tiny color monitor near my right eye so I can aim the camera that’s at my left temple. Clipped to my waist is a little WiFi video/audio server and loaded into the yacht’s computer is “tunneling” software designed to get the 30 frames per second .mpg stream smoothly ashore via the vessel’s Internet connection. ReVA handles the shore end, either routing the problem to its partner Nauti-Tech or sending it on to 3rd parties. ReVA may seem a bit far fetched but many megayachts already have fast, always-on Internet connections these days, and you can imagine that they may also have problems keeping all their megacomplex systems working (wait till you hear about the entertainment rigs I saw!).
We interrupt the normal new electronics programming for a brief rant. I just read this in the November issue of Boat.U.S., reportedly the largest circulation boating magazine on the planet (and generally quite good):
“But before you have visions of hitting ‘print’ on your computer and getting a high resolution quality chart, boaters need to understand the terms ‘raster’ and ‘vector’ charts. A raster chart is essentially a snapshot of a paper chart, composed of a bunch of dots, like a newspaper photo. While the resolution is not good enough for printing, it’s fine for a computer program and screen display.”
Say what!?! Everything printed is a bunch of dots, and the native resolution of most raster charts is 254 dots per inch, very darn close to the 300 dpi standard for quality glossy magazine images. Just about any decent charting program can print rasters very nicely at full scale (the only real trick is printing from the file, not the screen image).
The BoatU.S. article, titled “Charts Go PC”, starts with a decent explanation of NOAA’s new free RNC (and ENC) download policy. But then it veers into shaky territory like the above and various other misunderstandings about vector/plotter charts. It’s a shame because boaters are confused enough about marine electronics, software, digital charts, etc. that the “expert” magazines should be going out of their way to provide accurate information.
I wouldn’t rant on this subject—and risk sounding like an arrogant ass—except that I regularly come across electronics errors in the boating press. Lord knows, for instance, how many times I’ve seen Ethernet and NMEA 2000 treated as though they were essentially the same (not!). At any rate, take care to treat printed words with appropriate caution (and if you’re an editor please consider having technical articles from uncertain sources double checked by an expert or two).
I would have posted earlier today, except that fooling with this Garmin 376C vividly reminded me (above, and bigger here) that the spell of dry, sunny weather was about to end. So I spent some hours winterizing the fleet, all the while watching the clouds thicken up from below and above. I could also see an animation of all that rain moving across New York state, plus the lightning strikes, the frontal lines, pressure gradients, wind predictions, buoy reports, etc. etc. It is phenomenal how well you can see all this info on the 376’s little screen. The display itself is exceptionally bright and detailed, and Garmin has also done a good job at letting you view the weather data mixed together or one element at a time. And, get this, I was also listening to XM radio (below). I’ve been trying the 376C intermittently over the last month or so, and am very, very impressed. It really makes sense in terms of carrying your XM weather and audio subscriptions with you on land or sea. The only con I can think of is that BlueCharts have gotten pretty expensive relative to the competition, but maybe that will change.
The Garmin 276C was one of my 5 Sail magazine “editor’s picks” for innovative, important marine electronics introduced last year. I’m working on my 2005 picks right now, and the 376C is definitely a contender. If you have suggestions for other hardware or software that should be on the list, please let me know.
The deer hunters now stalking the woods where I live rate a trophy kill by the “points” in its antler “rack”. I’m guessing that the owner of Janie was thinking along the same lines when he ordered up the nine (9!) screen glass bridge partly shown above (all VEI 20” inset displays with a touch screen master control such that any input can go to any screen). The charter brochure even rather oddly includes a version of this same photo, except with TV sports scenes photoshopped onto every screen (as if the yacht’s 61” and 50” plasma screens weren’t enough). Apparently the owner is quite the sports fan.
Me, I was more interested in all the other gear and software that Janie’s captain could display, like: two Furuno black box radars, both Nobeltec and Transas charting sytems, a brace of EMI monitoring screens, plus feeds from umpteen onboard cameras and a NVTi long-range night vision system (that’s apparently had leaking problems during Janie’s multiple Atlantic crossings). It was real kick to get a tour of this helm with the yacht’s able skipper plus the gentleman from Yachtronics you oversaw the install. My huge frustration was that my Canon Digital Rebel chose this moment to half break. I could take pictures but couldn’t change lens, and therefore couldn’t use the amazing 14mm aspherical lens I’d dragged along, quite capable of showing you all 9 of those screens at once. Damn! Maybe I should have bought a higher quality camera in the first place, or had an extra body along. It was a reminder of how the guys in charge of massively complicated electronics like Janie’s must learn to think. Which is probably why I saw the same brands over and over again on the several megas I toured. I’ll detail more of what I saw soon.
The above snip from a Nobeltec VNS screen (full size here) shows how some of the megayachts tied stern-to at the Ft. Lauderdale show looked AIS-wise. There are obviously a few errors either in the vessel dimensions or GPS locations (the red “X”s) or the underlying chart, but mind you this is a very zoomed-in view. I saw lots of boaters looking at screens like this and realizing what AIS can do for them. I also got to go aboard several of the megayachts and can tell you that the crews on those boats are also impressed with the technology. The Nobeltec exhibitors were using the Nasa/Si-Tex receiver with a regular VHF antenna tied to the top of their booth inside a giant steel framed tent, and were still getting some 30–40 targets within about a ten mile radius. The Si-Tex ColorMax plotter shown below was similarly set up and getting lots of targets.
The show, by the way, was better attended by exhibitors and customers than I had guessed, and I’m glad I went. More to come.
Whoa, things are happening even faster than enthusiastic yours truly thought possible. For $500, Maptech’s new Chart Navigator Pro (CNP) give’s you 13 (13!) DVDs containing NOAA’s entire portfolio of U.S. RNCs and ENCs, plus all of Maptech’s accessory cartography—photo maps, harbor panoramas, topos, bathy maps, pilot books, and information databases. But the real surprise inside is that Maptech ditched its aging, non-quilting, non-vector charting software in favor of Coastal Explorer. The name has changed, but CNP is CE 1.1 with nothing taken out and Maptech’s decent 3D contour engine added. CNP gets introduced today at the Fort Lauderdal Boat Show and will supposedly be in stores next month.
PS, 11/7: Thanks to Greg’s comment for a head’s up that Maptech has launched a new site, freeboatingcharts.com, where you can download all the U.S. RNCs you want. I don’t quite understand why Maptech is doing this before NOAA has a system in place, but it works fine. First you select the charts you want, then the site packages them up in a self executing zip file and notifies you when it’s ready for download. It only took maybe a half hour for me to receive the 15 charts that cover my area in all scales.
I got a peek at this display during NMEA , and I’m looking forward to going deeper in Lauderdale. What’s the docking display? How much control does the user get over engine alarms? Are detailed diagnostics also available? This Northstar 6000i is (theoretically) connected via a gateway to a Mercury inboard or outboard engine equipped with SmartCraft, a CANbus data networking and control system with many similarities to NMEA 2000. The big difference really is that SmartCraft was developed by Brunswick and is being used by its New Technologies group (MotoTron, Northstar, Navman, et al) mostly in boats build by Brunswick. Other companies like Airmar, Onan, Dometic, Xantrex, and DNA Group have gotten involved, but SmartCraft is essentially driven in a top-down, business-like way. By contrast, NMEA 2000 sometimes seems like chaos. Maybe that’s why there are currently lots more SmartCraft boats out there than NMEA 2000 ones. It may be a parallel universe, but if it works well for you…well, cool. Then again I’ve heard that there are some downsides to SmartCraft worth discussing one day.
Note that the 6000i above is a new 12” model, meaning that you can now get these networked multifunction displays in a phenomenal five sizes—15”, 12”, 10.4”, 8.4” and 6.4”—which is great for folks designing a multi display helm like this (put together, unfortunately I think, before the 12 or 15 inch models materialized).
At METS, the U.K. company TackTick—a prior 
The brawn behind all this is the 
called CANet, which can connect the smaller 292, 392, and 492 plotters with two new black box fishfinders or the new 398 full fishfinder. It sounds like a CANbus variant but is 1 megabit (?). The GSD-22 bb is Garmin’s “first digital sonar, allowing for more precise target separation and depth performance” and also supports Garmin’s MarineNet (Ethernet).
At the NMEA show, Maretron showed off a prototype of this ultrasonic wind sensor that also measures air temp, barometric pressure, and relative humidity. In other words, the 
Whoa, things are happening even faster than enthusiastic yours truly 