Chetco Digital Instruments has been quietly developing software and hardware to digitize and display analog engine info for some time, and with some success I hear. But as of yesterday's big press release, Chetco has jumped big time into marine data networking, particularly the hot, if confusing, area of putting NMEA 2000 messages into an Ethernet format and serving them to whatever wired and wireless devices can use them. So that little $579 SeaSmart device above contains an N2K-to-Ethernet gateway (by Actisense, I think), a WiFi transciever, and a "CGI/AJAX web server" that puts out an "open sourced HTML protocol" that will purportedly support "any application from weather station, dual engines, battery banks, fluid tanks and more." Excited yet?...
This HDS-10 is showing off Lowrance's new relationship with Digital Switching System's distributed power system. While the interface is NMEA 2000, I think DSS uses its PowerGate 2000 gateway for this purpose, instead of using N2K for its internal network. But that may not matter, as I understand that DSS uses standard N2K PGNs whenever possible. In fact, I've seen Krill Systems software working with its gateway and switches just fine. But that was just a demo, and I suspect that it will be a long time before we see easy, full-featured integration between DP and other boat systems, except by partnership or design...
That's Digital Yacht's just announced NMEA 0183 to USB adapter, all of it, and it's just $49. Wire it to a multiplexer, AIS, or some other 0183 RX/TX port and any 0183 message will purportedly be seen by software running on the attached computer. The adapter has LEDs that flicker for transmitted and received data, and it can be set to either 4,800 or 38,400 baud. The included software is said to work with PCs, Macs, and even Linux-based systems, and there's a bonus...
Bob Ebaugh got some GX2100 installation help over on the Panbo forum, and that gave me a chance to bug him for some more information on the interesting system he's put together. Check it out above: two laptops connected wirelessly and simultaneously to MFD, AP, VHF/rxAIS, and Internet. Bob's a pilot and ex-networking engineer who didn't think he could write up the project well, but I think he did just fine...
I remember getting excited about Solomon Systems' regenerating electric sail boat motors at the 2004 Annapolis show, but I never hear about the technology today. Then in late 2006 I got stoked about the Ossa Powerlite diesel electric system, and even dreamed of having one in a Maine Cat P45 (which went on to become the great P47). But Maine Cat dropped the idea after testing it on the prototype, and the Ossa web site today shows about the same few customers it showed back then. Designing a truly practical electric drive system for cruising-size boats, great as it sounds, is clearly not easy. However, Nigel Calder did his homework on these systems all along -- and often was properly skeptical when others, like me, were infatuated -- and now he's put together an A list of companies and earned a $3,000,000 EU grant to develop hybrid marine propulsion. How cool is that?
Patrick Walters had two good ideas. First, he used Maretron's N2KBuilder to prototype a network for his Pearson 424 ketch Deep Playa (which he blogs about here). Then he sent the .n2b file (downloadable here) with the thought that he and other Panbo readers might benefit from our comments on it. I have a few...
NMEA 2000 has been working well on Gizmo this summer, making it easy to get heading, wind, depth, GPS, and more to all the MFD systems I've been testing. AIS over N2K has some issues, but then again the Garmin VHF 200 is good evidence of what's possible. However, I've just begun to explore how NMEA 2000 can integrate Gizmo's engine, tanks, batteries, and other non-navigational systems. A few weeks ago, for instance, I plugged an Albatross demo case into the boat's backbone to see how data from those three Analog Adaptors above would display...
Actually I like to slice bread myself these days, but, man-o-man, Maretron's latest gift to the world of NMEA 2000 is one brilliant invention. N2KBuilder -- which is free, and downloadable right now -- would be handy if it just let you easily mock up a proposed network. But it does much, much more than that. As you drag and drop cables, connectors, and devices, the software keeps an eye on total cable lengths, amperage loads, and the resulting voltage drops, and alarms you if you're over the limits. It also keeps track of backbone integrity and plug genders, and all the while builds a system database from which it can produce various valuable reports, and even a bill of materials (BOM)...
Breeze Pleeze has received nearly half of her new NMEA 2000 backbone, actually two of them, and I thought I would describe the thinking behind my network design.
