C-Map owns this ‘historic’ machine, which is supposedly the first chart plotter (bigger here) ever sold in the U.S. That was around 1985, when Navionics founders Giuseppe Carnevali and Fosco Bianchetti developed the first crude vector charts and this Datamarine-labeled plotter to show them. (Bianchetti soon went off to found C-Map). Wasn’t it about 5 years later that the first PC charting program came out? At any rate, we’ve come a hell of long ways in 20 years, and Carnevali and Bianchetti—who still run their companies—deserve some of the credit.
Now, would anyone care to predict what marine electronics will look like in another 20 years? 10? 5? With that, I wish you all a wonderful new year.
Let me say right off that I’m a big fan of the U.S. Coast Guard. But they do screw up sometimes. The latest was doozy. A couple of weeks ago the brand new cutter Mackinaw, soon to be the Guard’s largest Great Lakes vessel, was making a grand entrance into Grand Haven, Michigan, when all of a sudden it did a 90 and rammed the sea wall. Only the sea wall and bow were injured, but the poor vessel earned a nickname that may be hard to live down. There’s even a video, and, no surprise, the skipper got “temporarily demoted”. The cause of the accident was inexperience with the controls. As you can see above, the Smackinaw has new fangled azimuth drives instead of rudders. It also has what sounds like a super high tech command and control system, judging from the verbiage on her Web site:
“Ship control is provided at 5 conning stations; Master Ship Control Console (MSCC), port & starboard consoles in the Pilothouse, the Engineering Control Center (ECC) and Aft Conning station. The Main Ship Control Console includes the Integrated Ship’s Control System (ISCS) provided by Kongsberg. The ISCS includes; Electronic Chart Display Information System (ECDIS), DGPS, Loran-C, Automatic Radar Plotting Aids (ARPA), ATON Information System (ATONIS)/Automated ATON Positioning System (AAPS), a dynamic positioning system, autopilot, a doppler speed log, deep and shallow depth sounders, forward scanning sonar, extensive meteorological sensors, VHF, ADF, IFF, and a voyage data recorder. All conning stations will have the same intuitive user interface, the same panel layout, and menu system. Route plans, mariner’s notes, charts, radar video and vector presentation are shared between the systems.”
So this is one of those stories that electronics skeptics can chuckle over. And I’ll bet there’s more than chuckling happening on the original Mackinaw, which has been in service since 1944 and is nicknamed Mighty Mac.
Here’s the nav station on Wild Oats, a brand new 30 meter maxi that just set a record for the Sydney-Hobart race. It’s obviously a carbon fiber construction, like most everything else on the boat. It’s interesting that as new and highly designed as this vessel is, the electronics are still a hodge podge of different brands with different looks. I spot B&G displays on the overhead (probably hooked into the new Wave Technology Processor), what’s probably a Raymarine E120 (radar and chart plotting?), and what look like Icom VHF and SSB radios. I’m not sure what the lower right display is (an MX Marine AIS?), and of course that’s a big PC monitor on center (Deckman and weather programs?). Operating that keyboard in the well must be awkward, but maybe it comes out? PS: There are more of these Andrea Francolini interior photos worth checking out at Scuttlebutt.
The chart game just gets more complicated, and interesting. There’s nothing on the Web yet, but last week C-Map announced the Pro version of its Max chart format. A couple of weeks ago I got a peek at it running on Northstar’s amazing new 8000i system, about which I will soon tell you a lot. One claim of C-Map is that Pro “delivers the most ‘paper chart like’ display ever seen from a vector chart.” I’m not sure how they’re doing it—new fonts, colors, object arrangement, maybe all of the above—but the charts looked really good. I didn’t get to see the photo map blending and 3D views seen above and below (in company screen shots), but look forward to at the Miami Boat Show where Pro will officially debut. Other features include “one button” chart updating and a weather overlay data system. Of course, all the regular goodies in Max are also included. Pro will be a premium product costing about $390 for 'MegaWide' areas, and so far only the 8000i supports it.
I get some wonderfully strange Holiday cards. Not every marine electronics company tries to make their’s thematic, or even sends one, but still I get excited every time I open an envelope. So far this year’s stand out is Airmar, which has Santa checking gauges on the PC version of Weather Station.
So here’s a geekish Happy Holidays to all of you. I’m off to New York City for a few days (how convenient that the buses and subways went on strike at 3am this morning!), back next week.
It’s great that Terry Sargent has joined our discussion about the AIS-documented near miss he had in the Malacca Straits. I really admire his desire to thoroughly debrief his experience, and his willingness to share it with the rest of us. Terry has also expanded his web page about the AIS hardware and software he’s using. Above is a clip from a screen shot he took while transiting the Singapore Straits, with the red circle added to highlight Valhalla and the nearby passenger ship Megastar. He notes that his SOB freeware is calling the collision potential “VERY HIGH” even though he and the ship are almost beam-to-beam during a standard port-to-port pass. That just means that the logic behind SOB’s warning is imperfect. Note also that SOB’s AIS data window is unusual in that it lists CPA as a position with a separate DCPA to give the distance between vessels during the CPA and also DTG for the distance to go (until you arrive at the CPA). Calculating just CPA (as distance) and TCPA is the norm. SOB is trying to give as much information as possible, which is admirable, and I’m sure a user would get used to its style. By the way, here are some more AIS screenshots—this time using Nobeltec on the North Sea—posted by a Kees Verruijt on his Scanner 391 site.
How about these idiot lights? Actually this is called a “mimic” panel, and it looks darn useful to me (bigger here). This particular one is from Mochi Craft in Italy, and is especially dense with information and controls. I do wonder if there are current sensors wired into those nav light indicators, so that they blink if a bulb fails (easy enough to do). And, yes, I think that is real leather (it sure felt like butter), as you can see more of below, and bigger here, along with a good looking Man engine display and an ever so retro cigarette lighter.
PS. No Panbo tomorrow as I’m off to visit Northstar, but I think I will be returning with an interesting report.
I recently took some screen shots of DAME award winner Navionics Platinum, which is surprisingly simple to do on the Raymarine E series. You just hold down the ‘data’ button until you hear a beep, and a full resolution (800x600 pixels, in the E120’s case) .bmp file will be saved to the CF card. At any rate, the full res version of the image above is here. That blue line on the left side marks the angle of view that I’ve set in the 3D image to the right. You can rotate and move around in that 3D view all you want, plus change its zoom and pitch, or you can simply synch it to the chart view.
Note too how the area around the channel is much more detailed than the chart soundings; it looks like you can even see the bite marks of the dredge. Navionics, like everyone else, is pretty tight about where it sources data, but I know that the Corp of Engineers does extremely high resolution surveys during dredging projects, and I think that’s what we’re looking at. {Wrong, it turns out; after speaking with someone at Navionics I think that it’s more likely that this is just an ‘effect’ that Platinum applies to any dredged channel.} The left window, by the way, is a blend of photo map and chart, as I discussed earlier. I’ve notice unfortunately that all the photo maps north of New York State are black and white, exactly like Maptech’s, which are based on USGS files (which probably explains that source). Below (and bigger here) is an illustration I made trying to show how the variable blending works. On the right side you can see how nice the color maps can be.
Whereas so many of you are interested in AIS, and so many news bits keep coming in, I’m starting a “this and that” series…
* Nobeltec has put up the best looking AIS 100 manual to date. Above is a wiring illustration, including how to pass GPS data through the AIS 100, though Nobeltec does not recommend doing so. (For them it’s largely an issue of technical support, but I also understand that the AIS 100 only passes through the GPRMC data string, which may mean that you won’t be able to see, say, how many satellites a GPS is receiving. Anyone know for sure? {The answer is yes, confirmed by GPSNavX in comments})
* Meanwhile, NASA has apparently changed the firmware in the AIS 100 so that it now automatically switches channels every 36 seconds, which seems like a good idea. Supposedly it is possible to update older units, but I don’t know how, or where you can get the update (yet).
* Navicon, a Danish company doing a lot of AIS software development, has introduced a Java-based charting program called AIS Navigator.
* True Heading, a Swedish AIS company, has developed a splitter for sharing a single antenna with an AIS receiver and a regular VHF radio. Look in Products/Accessories. They also have a new product called Blue-Pilot which uses Bluetooth to make a Class A transponder’s “pilot port” wireless. Better yet, it is supposedly able to find and correct problems in the plug installation (which are said to be common). Look in Products/AIS, where you’ll also see the Smart Radio 161 single channel receiver recommended for shore use only.
The full name is Marine Technologies and they’re coming to market with a large portfolio of marine cellular gear. At the top of the line (nearly $1,000) are wireless amps like the above, which claim to provide a carrier-friendly gain ranging from “-40 to +20 dB, 70 dB maximum”. That’s a lot. Marine Technologies is a spin off from a big Florida marine electronics installer, and the folks involved say that their technology blows everything else (i.e. Digital Antenna and Shakespeare Marine) away. One drawback to the high performance, however, is that you have to choose your amp for either 800 MHz (Alltel, ATT, Cingular, etc.) or 1900 MHz (Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, etc.).
M-Tec also sells these amps in a neat package with the new and very wireless Motorola SD4500 cordless phone system. If you use a compatible Moto cell, you could step aboard your yacht and drop it into a Cell Dock where it would be charged and amplified. Your base station (above) can wirelessly connect to 3 of these docks, even pass address books, plus you can have up to 7 wireless handsets (left) around the boat using the cell lines and a regular phone line (land or satellite). I’ve written about the advantages of a “wireless wireless” boat cell system; this is wireless x 4, all from one marine source, and it looks like it will make some yachtsmen very happy. More on the M-Tec line soon.
PS 12/14: CNET just put up a pretty thorough review of the SD4500 system, as well as RCA’s Cell Docking System, which is less sophisticated but works with many more cell phone models.
NOAA’s free chart policy strikes again! Maptech will no longer sell Outdoor Navigator, the nifty PDA (both PocketPC and Palm) and Smartphone charting program sort of shown above. The developer, Jeffrey Siegel, has decided to go independent, largely because he can now freely access U.S. raster charts and topo maps. Moreover, the program, to be called activemap, will also be free. I don’t quite understand the business plan, if there is one, but am quite sure that Jeff and his team are up to something interesting. More as available.
I’m curious; how big is the worldwide recreational marine electronics market? As best I can tell no trade organization is trying to keep track. In the U.S., NMMA publishes interesting statistics, but doesn’t break out electronics. Some manufacturers are public companies and hence provide clues. For instance, Raymarine’s financials show 135 million in annual worldwide sales. Lowrance posts 146 million in sales, but some of that comes from automobile and terrestrial handheld products. Similarly, Garmin doesn’t distinguish marine from other recreational sales (and some of the products areindistinguishable).
At any rate, a certain smart marketing fellow told me that his best guess for the whole enchilada is 1.2 billion dollars. Several other other people in the business agree, plus or minus 20%. That’s not very big. Heck, my local health care operation—hospital, old age facility, etc serving maybe 50,000 people—is over 100 million in revenue. I read that electronic gifts in the U.S. this year will top 17 billion dollars!
No wonder than that I once heard a ranking marine electronics executive call it a “cottage industry”. The intriguing thing, I guess, is that no one company dominates. Plus, while boat ownership is not growing very fast, sales of “aftermarket accessories” increased 14% in the U.S. last year (from NMMA’s free 2004 Recreational Boating Statistical Abstract). And humans in general are crazy about electronics (see 17 billion figure).
Uniden announced the ES VHF series over a year ago, but the UM525 and UM625c above (bigger here) didn’t materialize until fairly recently, and the UM825 is still missing. It bothers me to have written about gear that wasn’t really available, but, wow, it’s hard not to like these radios. The color model is particularly noteworthy. Like the Navman/Northstar pilot, color seemed to really stimulate interface design creativity. The 625c does all sorts of things you’ve never seen in a VHF, but yet is very easy to use. It also sounds good. So do the accessory WHAM 4X wireless mics, which so far have met my expectations. You can wander hundreds of yards from the base while still controlling it, (as long as there’s not a serious 2.4 GHZ blocking wall in the way). You can also intercom to all or individual stations, as shown on the screen. I’ve got further plans for these and some other test radios—more DSC calling, GPS hook ups, setting up the two bases as a network, etc.—which I’ll report eventually. In the meantime Chuck Husick has published his own findings on the 525 and Whams in Yachting, but note that he got confused about the mics (these radios can support 4 Wham4X mics, not 2).
Well, I could not help but notice that everybody seems to have a secret desire to produce LED lighting products. There must have been at least a dozen or more companies with LED products. I think these products are great and are certainly the future of marine lighting (and perhaps someday your home as well). Look for a lot of new products this boat show season. Noteworthy units were displayed by Hella Marine and LopoLight, which has navigation lights for vessels as large as 50 Meters. — Jeff Hummel
It’s noteworthy that LopoLight’s latest use carbon fibre to further reduce weight, and have also somehow reduced power consumption. But the company still hasn’t fixed its web site so that it works properly in Firefox, as noted here last June.
Wasn’t I just noodling about celestial mechanics? Well it turns out that for the first time since 1998, the time authorities need to insert a second into the world clock “to make up for the slowing down of the Earth’s rotation”. They’re going to do it at midnight GMT, December 31, and it’s going to affect AIS transponders because atomic time from the GPS system is critical to the signal sharing protocol. ACR warns that all transponders need to be re-synchronized on Jan. 1 or "the GPS signal received by the transponder could fail to identify targets on the AIS display.”
PS There’s more on leap seconds here, including my new favorite obscure department name: The Sub-bureau for Rapid Service and Predictions of Earth Orientation Parameters of the International Earth Rotation Service, located at the U.S. Naval Observatory.
The 2006 CES (consumer electronics) Innovations Honorees are up, and among them is this darned interesting “personal planetarium”. Apparently you can point the SkyScout at any of 6,000 celestial objects, press a button and it will deliver audio “commentary on the object and its history”. Or it can locate heavenly bodies using illuminated arrows in the viewfinder. How? “SkyScout utilizes patented technology that combines data from sensors measuring both the magnetic and gravitational fields of the Earth, along with internal GPS and a substantial celestial database.” There’s more info at Celestron, but no pricing so far.
Now, maybe a celestial navigator could use this gizmo to help with the tricky job of identifying stars at twilight, but there aren’t many active celestial navigators left and they tend to frown on gadgets. Which is all too bad. I think that one of the fabulous side benefits of being at sea or in a remote anchorage at night is an uncluttered view of the heavens. And a fabulous side benefit of learning to use a sextant is an understanding of celestial mechanics. It makes you feel very small…in a good way.
I really am intending to do some research on universal remotes, the bane of many a yacht (and home). But meanwhile some handy fellow dreamed up this model. I wonder how many other guys got it e-mailed to them today? And how many put it on their Christmas list?
So goes the headline in the Nov. issue of Digital Ship (click on link in “Navigation” section, and thanks, Raye), but there’s something odd about this otherwise very intriguing proposition. For one thing, SRT’s business development manager doesn’t seem to think that Class B transponders will make boating safer:
“Using Class B as an anti-collision device does not make a large amount of sense, he points out - ship owners can see if they are about to hit something much easier by using their eyes than by trying to make sense of a screen with 1,000 vessels on it. ‘The vessels will look like snow on the screen,’ he says. ‘Its not going to have any practical use.’”
Perhaps I’m just in a skeptical mood, but I wasn’t surprised to learn at SRT’s site that’s it’s just become a publicly traded company.
CruzPro, the big little company you never heard of
Dec 1, 2005
You have seen their technology embedded in other guys’ products for years. This New Zealand company produces a wide range of sensors and instruments for your boat. They make great aftermarket installations for boats that were not originally equipped with the sensor you want. Their products range from tank levels, RPM, pressure, etc. The thing that caught my eye was how many devices they offer, all packaged in nice, common format displays. Check them out at www.cruzpro.com. — Jeff Hummel
, the Engineering Control Center (ECC) and Aft Conning station. The Main Ship Control Console includes the Integrated Ship’s Control System (ISCS) provided by Kongsberg. The ISCS includes; Electronic Chart Display Information System (ECDIS), DGPS, Loran-C, Automatic Radar Plotting Aids (ARPA), ATON Information System (ATONIS)/Automated ATON Positioning System (AAPS), a dynamic positioning system, autopilot, a doppler speed log, deep and shallow depth sounders, forward scanning sonar, extensive meteorological sensors, VHF, ADF, IFF, and a voyage data recorder. All conning stations will have the same intuitive user interface, the same panel layout, and menu system. Route plans, mariner’s notes, charts, radar video and vector presentation are shared between the systems.”
that their technology blows everything else (i.e. 
If you use a compatible Moto cell, you could step aboard your yacht and drop it into a Cell Dock where it would be charged and amplified. Your base station (above) can wirelessly connect to 3 of these docks, even pass address books, plus you can have up to 7 wireless handsets (left) around the boat using the cell lines and a regular phone line (land or satellite). I’ve written about the advantages of a “
The 625c does all sorts of things you’ve never seen in a VHF, but yet is very easy to use. It also sounds good. So do the accessory WHAM 4X wireless mics, which so far have met my 
Well, I could not help but notice that everybody seems to have a secret desire to produce LED lighting products. There must have been at least a dozen or more companies with LED products. I think these products are great and are certainly the future of marine lighting (and perhaps someday your home as well). Look for a lot of new products this boat show season. Noteworthy units were displayed by 
