In our Panbo discussion about how to tune up your electronics and general navigation gear for the coming season, one recurring suggestion was to update your charts and reference publications. Another, less obvious, idea was to get all your manuals in PDF form, which many find easier to search, not to mention stow. Well, check out Managing the Waterway’s 2008 chart and pub DVD set, a phenomenal collection of both NOAA (and Corp of Engineers) charts—every single one available, raster and vector—and the nautical publications made available by various government and state agencies as PDF’s.
Lusting after what looks like a breakthrough cell phone, Internet tablet, video/still camera, and PND (personal navigation device) is way more fun than fretting over FCC frustrations. Garmin surprised a lot of us when it introduced the Nuvifone in NYC this evening. Sure, it looks like an iPhone but the early info suggests that it has even more going for it, especially the GPS/navigation part, but also a tight Google relationship and fast 3.5G GSM cell data.
Arghhhhhh! The FCC’s final approval of the Class B AIS ruling, already troubled, just got a lot more complicated. In the last few days a lawyer for MariTEL, Inc. has spoken directly to the legal aides for three of the five FCC Commissioners, trying to make the case that the Ruling is unfair to MariTEL. You can read the details in his “Notice of Ex Parte Communications” by going to this search form and pasting 04–344 into the top field (Proceeding). This issue goes back years, and was well explained by Fred Pot in Nov., 2003. Panbo commenter “norse” added more valuable background in that last “troubled” Class B entry. But I’m not the only one who thought the MariTEL problem was solved a while back. In fact, a MariTEL executive confirmed that to me a year or so ago.
Chris Witzgall from Apex, NC, recently wrote {slightly edited}:
Your site has been invaluable as I get back into boating after a long hiatus, and work out the electronics for our new-to-us Westerly Fulmar sailboat. I have settled on NMEA 2000. Our needs are relatively simple; here is what I have**, or will have*.
Friday’s entry may not have been clear; I only meant to snipe at the New York Times (lightly), and not at Spot. In fact, Spot was one of my four picks for the electronics section of Sail’s annual Freeman K. Pittman Innovation Awards, mentioned earlier with other M.E. awards and now out in the February issue (though sadly not on line). While it is certainly not a PLB, I think Spot could be pretty useful on a boat, or ashore. But understanding well how it compares to PLBs is critical, and hence why I’m sniping at confused coverage.
Alas, my fantasy life is not Clark Beek exhilarating. In fact you might deem it rather pathetic, like yesterday’s imaginary turn at the New York Times copy desk red-lining the bejezum out of a blurb about SPOT. The NYT’s Circuits section is usually sharp on gadgets I already know something about, but this particular piece is loaded with mistakes and misunderstandings (bigger edit image here). Ditto the commenters section on a recent Endgadget SPOT entry (which I tried to correct). And this PLB rescue story apparently confused that technology with Spot’s before it was corrected. In fact, SPOT is racking up some rescues (see Anchorage article), and there is good dope about it on the Web (like on Panbo, I think).
Damn the Doane! Due to Charlie, my head’s stuck in maybe the funniest, and best written, cruising blog I’ve ever fallen into. That would be Clark Beek’s Adventures of the Vessel Condesa, and the post that got Charlie’s particular attention is Beek’s latest…a tale of failed charting computers, a quartet of “Bond girls”, and a hostage situation on Columbia’s remote Pacific coast. Make yourself a little reading time before you click here.
Sure, I’m a dite (or tad, dab, etc.) biased toward companies from Maine. I’d be excited about ActiveCaptain no matter where it was, but knowing that it’s home-based right across the Bay likely juices my enthusiasm a few percentile (and maybe the reverse bias is why my Navagear buds seem so oddly tepid on AC?). At any rate, it’s with some sadness that I’m about to skewer DeLorme, even though it’s not only very Maine but also built the world’s largest globe here. How cool is that? So I was pretty intrigued when I realized that the company’s first handheld, the Earthmate PN-20, was also the first ever (I’m pretty sure) to show NOAA raster charts. It’s also one of the first to show multiple cartography types and to let you purchase just what you need, when you need, on the Web. We’re going to see a lot of that model, and I think it has potential merits.
I only mentioned testing this Standard Horizon CPV550 back in Nov., and that was about a fogging problem that I’m told can be readily fixed with dessicant bags. Now my short review is out in the Feb. PMY, and I’ll add a bit more detail. Neither of these photos really does the screen justice, but above, and bigger here , is the nicely iconic main menu, which also gives some sense of all the tasks this machine can address.
I’m truly excited about the imminent release of ActiveCaptain Mobile, the long awaited heir to the Outdoor Navigator (ON) PDA & smart phone charting program that went dormant two years ago. Of course we got some big hints when developers Jeff and Karen Siegel introduced the ActiveCaptain (AC) web site about a year ago. Now 5,000 boaters are registered there, and together they’ve made some 150,000 updates to its visual database of marina, anchorage, etc. cruising info. So the idea of ActiveCaptain Mobile (ACM) is to be not only an ON-style mini-plotter but also a live-anywhere connection with the AC database.
When I wrote about last year’s most innovative marine electronics a while back, I said I’d deal with the NMEA Awards separately. Well, here goes. But do understand that these awards are determined by mail-in votes from NMEA dealer and trade members and, while I don’t know for sure what the criteria are, I’d say that they’re more about performance and reliability than innovation. I’d guess there’s also a natural bias toward the sort of bigger gear that dealer/installers tend to work with, and probably also toward the brands that have particularly well developed dealer networks. “Best of Show” is a little different, however, as it’s voted on by everyone who attends the NMEA conference (mutts like me excepted).
All the well-informed feedback I’m getting to my marine electronics maintenance query reminded that a fellow named Joseph Howard wrote last week about the NMEA 2000 hobby project he’s pursuing, and also documenting over the MarinetteBoat forums. “It will be a ARM7 based fuel gauge reading PGN 127505 using Luminary Micro's LM3S8962 evaluation board, 89 bucks from Digi-Key. I am hand coding the stack extensions for address claims. (Wish I'd used a PIC 18 CanBus as they have a free J1939 stack). Quite a bit of C coding.”
So I’ve begun work on a magazine piece about how to include electronics in your Spring maintenance and commissioning routine. The following are some topics I’ve come up so far. I’d really appreciate your professional or do-it-yourself comments on these or any topics I missed:
Those of you not in the marine electronics trade—or the motley press corp that covers it—please avert your eyes. Seeing as the idea worked out pretty well for the Fort Lauderdale Show, I’ve put together a tentative schedule of Miami Boat Show press events. As before, I’m willing to add appropriate events—or modify existing ones—right up until the big show begins. And, whoa, it’s going to be a busy week for me. Besides the normal electronics mania, this year I’ll be one of the judges for NMMA’s Innovation Awards, and am also going to join a panel on new media at the Boating Writers International breakfast. See you there?
Lowrance Broadband Sonar, a "disruptive technology"?
Jan 15, 2008
Lowrance’s Broadband Sonar was announced back in July, but—judging from the chatter on forums like BassBoat Central, BassPro Shops, and the Hull Truth—it’s just now getting to market. So there aren’t yet many consumer reports about its performance yet, but, man-o-man, the folks at Lowrance and mother company Navico are some excited about it. At METS CEO Jens-Thomas Pietralla called it “a fine piece of disruptive technology,” by which I think he meant that it has the combined performance and value to upset the whole world of fishfinding. His claim echoed (so to speak) an excited Lowrance rep I spoken with at the Fort Lauderdale Show.
Last week we saw how a GPS misused could cause a fiery frig up, but can giant fiery explosions on the Sun frig up the whole GPS system? I first heard about this thanks to a small article in the February issue of Soundings. It’s not online, but the research and incidents it discusses are. The phenomenon of flare-induced radio wave bursts interfering with relatively weak GPS signals was perhaps first observed in Sept. 2005, as reported by two Cornell U. researchers a year later. Shortly thereafter—on Dec. 5, 2006–the huge flare seen above caused a burst powerful enough to “swamp GPS receivers over the entire sunlit side of Earth” the next day, according to a scientist quoted by NOAA magazine. Now, it’s not clear to me how many civilians suffered noticeable GPS glitches on that day, or for how long, but I can tell that I first had my ear bent about the need for a secondary electronic positioning system back 2001, which led to this PMY column. The obvious choice seems to be Loran, but apparently our government is still thinking about it. (Let’s hope Class B AIS approval doesn’t take so long!) At any rate, when headed out to sea you might want to check space weather as well as the ocean variety, and of course don’t rely on any one stream of nav data.
I guess we can thank poor Bo Bai for reminding us to never, ever bury our heads completely into navigational gadgetry. Bai was headed to the Saw Mill River Parkway in Bedford Hills, NY, but according to a railroad spokesman, “As the car is driving over the tracks, the GPS system tells him to turn right, and he turns right onto the railroad tracks,” adding “he tried to stop the train by waving his arms, which apparently was not totally effective.”
Above is the odd little Smart Radio SR261 “AIS Modem”, which claims “most of the functions of a class A ais transponder with a fraction of costs.” Let me say right up front that I absolutely do not recommend using this device, and think it may even endanger the AI system. Let me also note that the Chinese manufacturer, Smart Radio (SR), has nothing to do with similar-sounding Software Radio Technology (SRT), the British firm that builds all the circuit boards in the legitimate Class B transponders currently waiting an FCC waiver (take action!). And while Smart Radio is the manufacturer of the SR161 and 162 AIS receivers, I have heard nothing but praise for those units and particularly for the main U.S. distributor Milltech Marine.
I’m sorry to report that the state of FCC approval for Class B AIS may be even worse than reported last month. Today an industry source told me that even though all the Commissioners have been briefed on the Amendment and none expressed reservations, or even asked questions, it has somehow gone onto what’s known internally as the “wait and see list.” Apparently the only force that might move it along is encouragement from concerned citizens like us. So here’s my draft email to the Commissioners:
I’ve been looking forward to the two VHF/GPS/DSC handhelds I heard about last Fall, but was a bit surprised to find this Standard Horizon HX850S in a magazine and also available for preorders at Landfall (Standard is great at making radios, but press releases …not so much). The 850S looks very capable if maybe a bit clunky. The built-in 12 channel GPS is not only used for a full set of DSC functions but is also output, along with DSC messages, via a NMEA 0183 cable from the radio’s cradle.
General tech innovation awards are interesting, but what about our little world? In fact, I was quite slack about reporting the various boating innovation awards all last year, and so I’ve compiled a list of all the electronics-related awards in the four competitions I know of:
Last night Garmin announced a slew of new mobile products, and I must say: WOW! Check out the Colorado, a high-end handheld designed for driving, hiking, boating, and…um…multimedia, location-aware, gaming/educational experiences! The interface is neither old Garmin handheld nor new Garmin marine, instead featuring that big 'Rock 'N' Roller' thumb wheel/cursor thingy, and two soft keys. The wheel brings up a spinning menu system (seen right) that’s a bit like Furuno’s RotoKey.
At this point in the year I like to cruise around the various “Best of” tech lists, mostly for geeky fun, but also looking for innovations that may eventually trickle down to the boating world. Like Popsci.com’s Innovation of the year, which is this flexible, light, and supposedly inexpensive Powersheet solar panel at right. Nanosolar started producing panels just before Christmas, and I’m wondering if they would hold up on Big Gizmo’s big cabin top? Popular Science has more of interest, including sun block that’s built into hand and face soap. Then there’s PC World’s 25 Most Innovative Products of 2007, where you’ll see a few products already Panboed, like the XO learning laptop, the Amazon Kindle, and the HP TouchSmart IQ770. And Cnet’s Best & Worse tech of 2007, where the “Best smartphone” is the very same AT&T Tilt I saw boat cell guru Jeff Siegel fondling recently (more on the nifty software he showed me coming soon). Plus who wouldn’t want to check out SciFi.com’s top 10 gadgets for the filthy rich, along with its many other lists, including “101…strangest…gadget gift guides”. So what lists did I miss, or, more to the point, what new general technologies are going to make boating life easier and more fun? (But please save your “most innovative new marine electronics” choices for a discussion to come.)
It’s good to hear that Aeolian shook the snow off her decks and made it to Bermuda. John Gass emailed that the skipper is “very pleased” with his new NavNet vx2 system, but the electronics in this included nav station shot (bigger here) look like they were installed when the boat was built by Holland Jachtbouw in 1998. It’s not 1985 vintage, but you don’t see some of these devices every day.
At this point in the year I like to cruise around the various “Best of” tech lists, mostly for geeky fun, but also looking for innovations that may eventually trickle down to the boating world. Like Popsci.com’s 