Following up on yesterday’s entry, here’s what the full EarthNC Plus looks like in my home harbor. Note the spot soundings and bathy lines. The 1:20,000 harbor chart has not become an ENC yet, but this represents all the essential data from the 1:40,000 coastal chart overlaid on what’s in many places (like Camden) the highest resolution photography available. But, of course, Google Earth’s photos live online, and as best I can tell, EarthNC Plus does not yet have a way to cache them to a laptop. Plus the suggested method of GPS navigation on these charts is Goops, which didn’t impress me.
EarthNC has come a long way since December. For one thing there is now an official Web site. And a few weeks ago the company introduced EarthNC Plus, a $50 CD package that can overlay all available ENCs on Google Earth. I’ve been testing it, and will write more about it soon. But today let’s look at EarthNC Online, the just introduced free viewer. You have to install a plug-in from GoogleEarthAirlines which lets you access G.E. from inside your browser. Sounds a little dicey, but it all worked fine for me (using Firefox 2.0).
I’ve already written a bit about listening to tunes while navigating the highways on the iWay; how about boat nav? First is the good news that Lowrance has fixed the problem with “obstructions which cover”; you may recall that the “really nasty rock” above, and many like it, were not shown on earlier NauticPath charts. (In fact, the first iWay I got didn’t have them either, but when I piped up, Lowrance said the wrong files were accidently loaded, and sent this one. If you have NauticPaths, you might want to check). Note that the yellow note window popped up when I touched the symbol, and I could get a whole page of info by next touching the “i” icon upper right (ditto with the tides, notes, marinas etc. in the lower image). Note too that tapping the “X” upper left would take me out of this pan and zoom mode and back to my vessel (or car), leaving only a map orientation button lower left. Tap that and you cycle through top down/north up (as shown), top town/course up, and 3D. This applies to any type of navigation; in fact, most everything does. Unlike some Garmins—which switch screen sets and units of measurement along with nav mode—when you go from turn-by-turn car nav to point-to-point marine nav, the only other thing that changes is your choice of cartography. Changing to knots/nautical miles isn’t even a choice elsewhere. In other words, as well as the nautical charts are displayed, boat navigation is secondary to auto nav on the iWay (for more check the manuals here). But let’s not forget the 25 gigs of goodies include nautical charts for the whole country, plus a lot of lakes, plus zillions of POIs, street maps, and photo maps. The latter cover many cities, like Boston’s North End below. (I guess I picked that spot remembering my time there a year ago, getting a little ‘treatment’. Glad that’s over.)
When Captn Jack’s lent me an i-Blue 757 GPS last month, they were clever enough to put it in “logging” mode before they sealed the box. Thus, once I sorted out the included software and downloaded the saved log points (30,591 of them!), I was able to see the box’s UPS trip from Massachusetts to my house overlaid on Google Earth. Now that’s a damn sensitive receiver that can hold onto GPS satellites inside a box inside a series of brown trucks! And obviously the i-Blue’s 1000mAh Lithium battery is pretty long lived even when it’s not being trickle charged by its 25mA solar panel. By the way, note the lat/longs shown in the i-Blue’s PC utility software below; in Google Earth I was able to drill down to a factory parking lot in northern Taiwan where the unit was probably tested for the first time. While I like logging for tasks like mapping island trails, and the i-Blue is certainly an easy way to bring home a visual cruising history, I found that it also serves quite well as a Bluetooth GPS sensor to Pocket PC and laptop charting programs. It even has a unique standby feature that worked fine, and is well explained in this thorough Pocket GPS World review. Note that you use a USB cable to charge the i-Blue and also to download logs and set GPS and logging parameters. I didn’t check if someone without Bluetooth could use the USB connection as a GPS feed, and the otherwise good manual doesn’t say, but I will get another chance as I liked this gizmo so much I’m buying one. I tried an EMTAC Trine Bluetooth GPS that Captn Jack also sells, and while I’d say it’s noticeably sturdier than the i-Blue, I’m going for the lower price and logging capability. I do like how Jack’s is selecting good, better, best products in several categories like this and WiFi, and recommend downloading the new catalog PDF, which seems to include some gear not yet on its Web site.
I hate to be a scold, but an otherwise fine new article about AIS in Cruising World contains this flawed paragraph:
Once an AIS signal is received by the antenna, it's sent to a black box that translates the data into NMEA streams that can be sent at 4,800 or 38,400 baud. The lower baud rate works with electronics suites still using the NMEA 0183 communication protocol; the higher baud rate works with proprietary networks, such as RayMarine's, and devices using the more capable NMEA 2000 communications protocol.
Every AIS transponder and receiver I know of outputs the same way—NMEA 0183 data messages at 38,400 baud. The 38.4k speed rate is called NMEA 0183–HS (high speed) and is included in the current standard. As far as I know there is no AIS using the NMEA 2000 standard or a proprietary communications protocol, though the new Furuno receiver does do Ethernet in addition to 0183–HS and the junky NASA unit apparently filters out some AIS messages before it sends them down the 0183 pike (though NASA claims it uses N2K, God knows why).
I’ve heard a very ugly rumor that the Class B delay at the FCC may be something serious and long term. Can anyone elaborate?
Geez, I’m so behind on testing (Cobra radios and Lowrance iWay are the ones half done, and there’s some I haven’t even started, sorry all!), I hesitate to get started on this Garmin 545s. On the other hand, the interest is great, myself included! Above is a backside shot showing the new two-way swivel bracket, and also the ports. Right is a BNC connector for an optional external antenna, middle is a connector for the still somewhat mysterious GXM 31 antenna, and left goes a cable that contains power leads, 2 sets of NMEA 0183 i/o leads, a set of CANet leads, and a power/data plug for the the dual frequency transducer. The unit is not quite as blue as the picture somehow came out, and the tooling is beautiful. The 545s manual is now online for more info, and I will try to show you what it can do as the week goes on (I’ve got a g2 Vision card too), though I probably won’t get it out on the water for a couple of weeks (and, by gorry, I’m going to finish those other units). Meanwhile I include the picture below as a reminder to everyone installing and reinstalling electronics this spring. Be very careful with your screens unless you’re positive that they’re not coated.
My May PMY column “Universal Aggravation” is now online, and I'm tickled with how Craig Wallace Dale realized our opening illustration idea. How’s that for action electronics photography! You may recall that testing the Harmony 890 won me over to Logitech’s online programming system, but there may be even better solutions out there. I’d heard that Atlantic Marine Electronics programmed a Harmony for every Viking Yacht launched (an impressive move on Viking’s part), but when I called them it turned that they are now using the NevoSL, which is partially touch screen and according to AME “more intuitive.” I also learned from my friend Kim Kavin’s excellent megayacht site, CharterWave, that at the very high end Crestron has a remote that can summon 24 hour cabin service, an idea Kim is not so sure about.
Who isn’t fascinated by the Maltese Falcon, the 289’, $100,000,000 yacht that sails under a very unusual DynaRig, actually three rotating carbon fiber masts carrying fifteen automated square sails on carbon yards? I did get to see a phenomenal 18” model of the Falcon (built by Rob Eddy, another local gem), but I would so like to get a sail aboard this vessel, or least a glimpse at what the electronics its very techy owner Tom Perkins chose for her. I do know that Tacktick is quite proud that its Micronet wireless wind sensors were used to help test the rig during construction in Turkey. And today, which happens to be the Queen’s birthday, the company won the Queen’s Award in the Innovation category. A tip of the crown, then, to Tacktick. I’m pleased to report that I’m going to test a Micronet wind, depth, and speed system on my Rhodes 18 this summer, and that today is finally warm enough to think about boating.
PS: Speaking of Queens, check out this time-lapse video of the Queen Mary II visiting San Francisco. This site, BoatingSF, also has an interesting newsletter on AIS.
It’s amusing how my little neighborhood on the back side of Camden—once the home of those who manned mills powered by the Megunticook River, and hence called Millville—is now home to some weirdly modern worker bees. While I’m plugging away at Panbo World Headquarters, a good neighbor, Peter Lindquist, is around the corner scanning and cataloging an enormous collection of marine photographs taken by a character named Red Boutilier back in the 60’s and 70’s (when the mills were winding down). The collection belongs to the Penobscot Marine Museum, where it will be part of this summer’s feature exhibit: “Through the Photographer's Lens: Penobscot Bay and Beyond.” This particular shot shows a man aboard the sardine carrier Delca making a call on what I think is an early VHF (?). A typed note in the negative box states that the 78’ Delca was built in 1936 as a minesweeper, then rigged over when the Port Clyde Packing Company bought her after WWII. Then she “worked steady until she sunk on Sept. 7, 1989, 1 mile northeast of Old Cilley Ledge Bell. She was loaded with 1,418 bushels of herring when she went down {due to losing a plank}. Capt. Peter Grew {perhaps above} and mate Dennis Tupper were rescued by the crew of the F/V Diane and James.”
I’ve been using this iWay 600c for a couple of weeks now and there’s a lot to like about it. The turn-by-turn car navigation is first class, and so is the MP3 player. I can’t remember which software I used to rip that Rodney Crowell album, but I just dragged the folder onto the iWay’s hard drive and it took care of the rest, displaying the album cover and track names while sending the sound to my truck’s radio via its FM transmitter. This is not ideal in terms of audio quality, but it’s wirelessly simple and it helps a lot that you can easily adjust the frequency used (those big touch screen arrows at the bottom above) as you drive through sometimes competing broadcast stations. And if you’ve programmed in a destination, or a series of destinations—all pretty easy with excellent Navteq street maps, millions of POI’s on the hard drive, a decent screen keyboard, etc.—the iWay smoothly mutes the music before it delivers voice directions. The navigation/music player combo is pretty slick, and I can easily imagine using it on a boat, at least as a backup plotter. More on that soon.
I may abstain from off-the-cuff product comparisons for a while! But whereas I’m already in trouble today, I will express my very mixed feelings about the ColorMax 15, which I actually tested. On the one hand, it’s a notable value—a big bright marine multifunction display with a fast processor and a lot of connectivity going for a street price of about $2,100. This unit may not have a standard Ethernet port, but it does have five NMEA 0183 I/O ports, some of which can be set up (see above) to interface with optional sonar and radar sensors (which may in fact talk Ethernet). It also has two USB ports, seen below, though no stated use for them at this time. That photo is also meant to show that the ColorMax may not dim down far enough for night use in some wheelhouses (without a funky fix I’ll cover one day). But what the unit really lacks is a user interface that takes good advantage of the generous screen space and I/O possibilities. For instance, as noted already in PMY, the only way you can get that four way split shown in the promo photo is to have both radar and sonar attached; you can’t even have two chart windows, let alone the sort of page, window, data box, etc. flexibility seen on most multifunction displays these days. Which brings me to this possibly naive idea: if Si-Tex were to open source a stripped down version of this machine’s code, maybe some amateur developers, and/or small resellers, would make it sing?
It seems a bit unusual that the folks at Raymarine just announced a new A60 plotter/fishfinder that they didn’t mention at the Miami Boat Show, but I imagine they’re hustling to meet the Garmin juggernaut. After checking out the A60’s specs, and manuals (where I snipped the diagram below), I’d say it’s a worthy competitor to, say, the Garmin 545s. You get a slightly bigger display, 5.7” over 5”, a killer digital fishfinder, and Ray’s C/E-series soft key interface made even simpler as it’s stripped of radar, AIS, wind, and other elements the hardware doesn’t support. The A60 comes with a Navionics Silver card covering all U.S. waters in almost complete detail, plus you can use Gold or HotMaps fresh water cards. The Garmin, of course, has BlueCharts built in, plus you can get g2 Vision cards with hi res photos and 3D, even add XM weather, but is a 5” screen big enough for that sort of use? (Though note that the 545 sports high pixel density, 480 x 640 versus the A60’s 320 x 240.) At any rate, there’s already a discussion going at The Hull Truth comparing the Garmin with Raymarine’s A65, the similar 6.5” model that preceded this new one (at a significantly higher price). But, watch out, I think FlipFlop425’s post is wrong about the 545s having a digital fishfinder. (And, by the way, are any of the new Garmins shipping yet?)
PS 4/18: Yipe, I made mistakes above! It turns out that the internal fishfinder in the Garmin 545s does use digital signal processing, plus you can use its CANet port to connect to an up-to-2kW GSD 22 module. Also, it and the other smaller new Garmins are now shipping (with the 4000 and 5000 series soon to follow). Apologies to FlipFlop425 and also to Garmin’s media guy (whose Blackberry jukeboxed when it started working again early this morning!).
A big thanks to Shine Micro for providing some useful detail about how the FCC is handling Class B AIS. First of all, the MMSI’s will be just like those used in DSC VHF’s (in fact, should be the same one already programmed into your boat’s radio). So, if your vessel requires an FCC station license, then you use the included MMSI. Otherwise you can use a free MMSI for a Class B transponder. And programming the MMSI is going to be left up to the manufacturer, who can do it themselves or pass it on to the dealer or user. However, the FCC is mandating that manufacturers preprogram all Class B devices with a unique unit identifier in the Vendor ID field of Static Data Message 24, and that field must be verified when the MMSI number is programmed during unit activation. Now, I don’t quite understand how that last part will work in practice but the concept of every transponder having, besides an MMSI, a second fixed unique user ID that also identifies the manufacturer sounds to me like smart security, and a useful trouble shooting tool, without undue burden on anyone.
PS: If your company wants to get into the Class B transponder business, Taiwan manufacturer Alltek Marine has units purportedly ready to hit the approval circuit. They come either with or without a display, the former (below) expected to retail for about $1,000.
Whereas many of us are hunkering down for a monster low that’s bulling its way up the East Coast (gusts to 70 knots predicted here tomorrow!), another PMY navigation/photo contest may be in order. Above is the Raymarine E screen that’s printed on the inside back page of the March issue, and below is the boat’s waypoint, as shown in a photo from Marinas.com. Where is the lighthouse? And, for extra points, what is the boat’s present location. As before, please submit answers by email, not comments. By the way, I think this one is much harder for Google jockies to figure out, but nonetheless the real contest (with real prizes, but now closed) had quite a few correct answers. How’d they do it?
I’m pleased to hear that ActiveCaptain, the “Point of Interest bomb!”, is active indeed. Yesterday developers Karen and Jeffrey Siegel announced that the free site now has over 9,000 marinas and almost 1,000 anchorages, with 35,000 updates and 1,000 reviews from some 2,000 registered users. (And, by the way, hats off to our own frequent commenter “b393capt”, who is the second most prolific “Active Captain”). You can see the informative results of all this activity if you register and scan the U.S. coastline, and pretty soon the Siegels are going to add a “Local Knowledge” marker meant for favorite restaurants, hikes, uncharted shoals, etc. Plus ActiveCaptain is going international. Already, for instance, there’s seed information for 500 marinas in the U.K.—as in Falmouth, Cornwall, above—ready for you Brit Panbo readers to elaborate on. Please do!
This sailor wouldn’t want to heel too far, or that monster mobile might slide and break his foot! I found this shot at Ericsson’s press site, where the box is identified as an MTD mobile phone from Svenska Radioaktiebolaget (or SRA, an Ericsson subsidiary), circa 1980. The technology has, um, evolved. What I was actually looking for was the new, and amazingly full-featured, Ericsson W25 fixed cellular. It can use either tri-band CDMA or quad-band GSM, including three fast data protocols, to connect most anywhere on earth to using whatever you can attach via two phone jacks, four Ethernet ports, and WiFi. It also features fax support, ac/dc flexibility, twin USB ports for “print server and/or mass storage”, and an external antenna option. I don’t know what it costs, and—according to Alan Spicer, where I found out about it—you can’t quite get one yet, but it certainly appears to fit into the supercellularistic heart-of-a-boat-network category.
Last night, I had an enlightening email exchange with Aaron Lynch as he tested his new WiFi setup from a slip at Marina Del Rey:
I spent a buttload of money trying to buy high power cards and then pigtails and antennas on the cheap. $20 or $30 here or there, but it just never quite worked. I was going to get the WaveRV USB, but they never responded to me, and their drivers only supported 10.3, not the current Mac OS 10.4. Finally I got so fed up I bought an Engenius 3220 EXT {$170 on eBay, and elsewhere}. I can’t say enough about it! The most important features for me are the 400mw transmit power and an external antenna connector so I can add a yagi or something like that if I need it {it came with the 5dBi rubber stubby shown}. Currently it’s on the stern rail and I’m surfing at 1.7 megabits/sec where before I would surf intermittently, and very, very slowly. Unlike previous Engenius products this one has a web interface that works with Firefox on a Mac. It has a site-survey feature that makes it really easy to see and connect.
Now Aaron can see 20-30 networks and was able to get online with an open hotel conference room system at about 1,800 feet (illustrated in GE below) and a boatyard that “blew my mind, it’s 1900’ and diagonally through a 60's era concrete hotel building.” The 3220 is a Power over Ethernet (POE) device, like the Port Networks I tried, so you’ll need 110 ac or an inverter. By the way, Aaron has his connected to an Apple Airport Express “which gives me full WiFi signal within the boat, and I can stream music to the stereo too,” but the set up “got awfully complicated” requiring a “weird double-NAT thing.” Thanks, Aaron! (Coincidentally, David Pogue has piece on the travails of WiFi routers in the Times today. Don’t miss the video, especially you Mac fans.)
That’s a Shakespeare CruiseNet Cellular Router set up at the Miami Boat Show, where it was cruising the Internet at a zingy 3Mb, and serving it up via the WiFi router at left, which is plugged into one of its four Ethernet ports. When installed on a boat those dual stubbies would be replaced by a pair of marine cell antennas, because CruiseNet’s high performance design incorporates antenna diversity technology. Another reason for its somewhat jaw dropping cost—models start around $1,600, street, without the antennas!—is the industrial-strength, full-power cell transceiver built into the box. Most of the other cellular routers that boaters are fooling with—like the Junxion Box or the Kyocera KR1, or even KVH’s TracNet 100–use a wimpier PC-card-style consumer-grade radio that you supply. CruiseNet also includes a one year subscription to the “Full-Throttle” proxy server compression service Shakespeare has set up (renewable at $50/year), and it somehow establishes a static IP address, which apparently is not easy on a cell network. The IP address means that CruiseNet and everything attached to it can be queried from other computers, which leads to all sorts of possibilities, as was illustrated by the control and monitoring test board Shakespeare had set up in its booth. This product could the heart of a very connected boat, at least until you get 20–50 miles off the U.S. coast, where Sprint and Verizon broadband always-on data service ends. I’m working on an article about connected cruising, and would love to hear how people are using WiFi, cell, sats, SSB, and/or pigeons to stay in touch, or whatever.
I’m still hoping someone will tell us more about the FCC and Class B AIS, but in the meantime Dan sent a great link to The Nautical Institute’s AIS Forum. It’s not a forum in the usual sense but rather a collection of Reported Problems and Technical Feedback papers. An interesting piece in the latter section is a PDF called Automatic Identification System (AIS): A Human Factors Approach, which strongly confirmed my notion that lots of user entered data is bogus. For instance, of nearly 31,000 AIS transmissions examined in one study 49% “showed obvious errors in the fields of destination and ETA.” Which reminded me of the screen shot Russ sent a while back, showing BoatingSF’s neat AIS tracker on Feb. 8, more than a month after the Pilot Vessel Golden Gate’s ETA! The boat, a violet target headed SW toward its namesake bridge, is also going 22 knots even though its Navigation Status is “moored”. The good news is that user entered data isn’t very important (unless maybe you’re filtering targets based on their nav status), but the paper also confirms a rumor I’d heard that certain Class A transponders can broadcast a default MMSI in certain circumstances, leading to possible duplicates that really mess up the System. Well, it’s true, the MMSI is 1193046, and there’s a link to details about the units, causes, and remedies. We need to remember that AIS is a relatively young technology (and Class B is an infant).
Yesterday another reader emailed, “What's new is the fishing electronics world? It is Spring time, and we just had the salmon opener here in San Francisco!” Well, how about a C-Map MAX Coastside Fishing Club chart card full of hi res bathymetry and other goodies useful for fishing from Pt. Conception, California, to Coos Bay, Oregon? Actually I’m a little confused by the press release’s mention of “exclusive Member’s Only fishing data like IGFA and state record information, local fishing regulations and favorite fishing spots of club members.” C-Map’s catalog seems to indicate that the card is available to anyone, the Coastside Fishing Club makes no mention of it, and, besides, it seems pretty similar to C-Map’s other Max Fish Bathy cards (see 2/06 press release). Maybe someone can straighten this out? And, if you go way off San Francisco, keep an eye out for the unusual radar semi-submersible SBX-1, spotted with an AIS receiver setup that’s purportedly seen targets 1000 miles away.
PS 4/12: It turns out that this card is available to the public, but what most distinguishes it from the Max Fish card covering the same area is the inclusion of hot spots provided by the Club. Thank you Coastside!
A reader (thanks, Dan!) tipped me to this FCC approval issued last Thursday for Software Radio Technology’s Class B AIS transponder. Does that mean units using SRT’s circuit board can now be sold here, or do they need additional approval for their particular configurations? Will units from ACR, Shine Micro, Furuno, and Simrad be close behind (I don’t see applications in the FCC database, but I may not be looking in the right place). And what did the FCC decide about the MMSI numbers needed to activate a transponder; can boats in U.S. waters use the free ones easy to get—or already gotten for DSC radios—from BoatUS, SeaTow, and others, or will a user need to get an FCC license? Will a user be able to program a transponder with his MMSI number, or must a “qualified technician” do it? Inquiring minds want to know!
PS 4/12: So why does the “FCC approval” link now yield: “This application currently is not in final status”? Apparently the Government temporarily pulled SRT’s approval! My source says that this unusual move is only because the FCC accidently issued the certificate before publishing its own rules about Class B. Both rules and approval(s) should be out in a few weeks…for real.
This weekend a Panbo reader emailed me thusly: “How about an in-depth look at the electronics and friggin' AIS on that cruise ship that grounded then sank???” Well, I wish I could find the details of what electronic aids were available on that now sunken bridge, but I have little doubt about the accident’s cause. Incompetence trumps electronics every time! While I generally sympathize with a skipper who screws up—one result of my own numerous navigation errors—there are indications that this was an accident about to happen. One is that the Captain blamed strong currents for the grounding. As if set and drift shouldn’t have been toward the very top of his worry list, a critical factor to be on aware of, using electronics or older means. Then read down the same article to see how Sea Diamond’s operating company already had two serious accidents in the last year. Incompetence often flows from the top. At any rate, the news reports about this tragic sinking will surely get more detailed. For instance, I can’t yet find a map of just where it happened, so I looked up Santorini, Greece, in Google Earth. While there are numerous interesting POI entries about the island, no user has yet geo-located the wreck. But I wouldn’t be surprised to see that soon, GE being the global community map it’s become (more on that later).
My April PMY column about Charles Industries, and isolation transformers specifically, is now online. Also up are some new product write-ups meant, in part, to illustrate how companies that traditionally supplied engine and boat manufacturers are now making plays for helm space and consumer attention. One is instrument maker F.W. Murphy, whose HelmView is seen above as part of Volvo Penta’s EVC system but is also capable of chart plotting using its SD slot for Navionics cards (below). This puppy can handled three simultaneous CANbus connections, including NMEA 2000, as explained here, and at the Murphy site (and also as used aboard a Cruisers Yachts 447). HelmView’s retail price is not trivial, but it might make a super geek gauge. I also covered Charles’ new IMcharger series, which has optional helm display and/or N2K output, electronically controlled fuel tank selectors from Parker Fluid Control, and a nifty BilgeWatch8 monitoring system that I still have in the test lab, and will expand on here one day.
In Maine speak, that low pressure system which blasted through here last night was a “corker”, leaving at least 10” of snow which has a gluey consistency unfriendly to snow blowers and plows. Panbo world headquarters is still digging out! Now, of possibly greater interest, that screen above is from a new and quite nicely done weather program called UGRIB. It lets you download and display forecasts for any section of earth as generated by NOAA’s “global numerical weather prediction model.” And it’s all for free, thanks to the folks at GRIB.US. You only get wind, pressure, and precipitation—and, of course, you can find far richer weather data on the Web—but one beauty of GRIB files is their compactness if your data pipe is limited…like, say, a sat phone out in the ocean. GRIB numerical data can also be animated, as UGRIB does, and used by routing programs. Meanwhile, back here in Maine, a 40’ scallop boat sank Tuesday night as it tried to return home ahead of this storm. The crew is fine, apparently because they were well equipped with EPIRBs, survival suits, etc. The Luke & Jodi even had some sort of transponder such that the owner could track it from home, though that let to some confusion. At any rate, the crew did everything right according to the Coast Guard, except perhaps deciding to supply the liferaft with a case of beer and bottle of vodka “to keep them occupied while they waited to be rescued.” That led to problems (and more detail here).
Panbo friend John C. came back from more sailing aboard Solent Blue to discover that his overview photo of English Channel AIS traffic had stirred up quite a conversation. So he adds this:
The original photo was intended to show the number of AIS targets received from a 22 metre aerial whilst sailing across some busy shipping lanes. I don't routinely operate the equipment on 48 mile range other than to get a quick view of what is coming my way. Actually I do have some other photos taken in the same few minutes which depict a more normal operating practice at least for me.
Though CruzPro deserves more attention than it gets, as Panbo has noted before, I managed to let this neat new MaxVu110 multifunction display slip ever since METS. Too many electronics subjects, too little time! The Max110 is a monster, able to display up to five pages of data (from 16 stored configurations) in the three numeric fields and two bar graphs seen above. It has numerous possible inputs, knows just about every NMEA 0183 sentence written, and “contains built-in calibration curves for all popular engine temperature, oil pressure, fuel and tank level senders manufactured by VDO, Teleflex, Faria and Stuart-Warner”, including both American and European resistance ranges. And any field can be high/low alarmed. Finally, it comes with a Windows program that seems to make setting up all this instrumentation power easy. I can’t find the Max110 on CruzPro’s Web site, but it’s well presented in the online PDF catalog. I’ve got to think that this display could be useful to a geekish boater or imaginative installer, and hope we’ll get some reports about how it’s used.
This beauty of a system diagram, bigger here, came in from Al Corkins, aka BoatGuy (his email and Web site handle). The color coding indicates what exists on his boat (green), what’s in a closet ready for install (blue), and what he’s planning after that (pink). I asked Al where he got all those cool drawings of his components, and it turns out that he creates them in Microsoft Paint! He also has a wonderful Web site documenting his boats, and particularly his boat projects, which he does well (check out this C-80 install, for instance). I’ve only skipped around, but the factual content looks excellent and included is an appropriate sense of humor, even a boat project philosophy.
The successful boat project is truly an art form…The three primary tools you need for ensuring the project is done correctly is research, research, and research.
By the way I submitted a collage of this and other Panbo reader diagrams to go with my articles about picking systems. And I’m hoping that by the time they come out in print, I’ll be able to pretty up the reader system pages. More submissions are welcome, a new Panbo look is in the works, I swear.
Now that’s a damn sensitive receiver that can hold onto GPS satellites inside a box inside a series of brown trucks! And obviously the i-Blue’s 1000mAh Lithium battery is pretty long lived even when it’s not being trickle charged by its 25mA solar panel. By the way, note the lat/longs shown in the i-Blue’s PC utility software below; in Google Earth I was able to drill down to a factory parking lot in northern Taiwan where the unit was probably tested for the first time.
how 
It also has two USB ports, seen below, though no stated use for them at this time. That photo is also meant to show that the ColorMax may not dim down far enough for night use in some wheelhouses (without a funky fix I’ll cover one day). But what the unit really lacks is a user interface that takes good advantage of the generous screen space and I/O possibilities. For instance, as 
