Furuno NavNet MaxSea, a big deal

... written for Panbo by Ben Ellison and posted on May 24, 2005

NavNet MaxSea network

The June issue of PMY includes my take on the Furuno/MaxSea alliance. I titled it “Keys to the Kingdom” because it’s truly a big deal for Furuno to give PC software access to its whole NavNet system. It really shows what Ethernet can do, besides string multifunction displays together, and I’m guessing it will “encourage” Garmin, Northstar, and Raymarine to develop or find PC programs to run with their Ethernet systems. Dedicated electronics and PC-based systems used to be parallel universes (with a few significant exceptions); now they’re coming together. Good!

Posted by Ben E on May 24, 2005 3:38 AM

Comments

Man,
I am looking forward to the "2000-to-Ethernet gateway box" then we'll be talking.

Andrew Smith

Posted by: Andrew at May 24, 2005 3:18 PM | Reply

EXACTLY! There are lots of ways to skin these cats, but I'm pretty sure many boats will end up with a combination of NMEA 2000 & Ethernet.

Posted by: Ben at May 24, 2005 3:37 PM | Reply

Someone is going to snap up RosePoint and integrate Coastal Explorer with nav hardware. That will be a hot ticket. Too bad none of the companies are forward looking enough to open their platform and specs a la the open source model. Probably too risky given the lawsuit madness. All this integration just locks you forever into one company.

Dave

Posted by: Dave at May 26, 2005 3:26 PM | Reply

Sign my up for the Beta programe!

Posted by: Andrew Smith at May 31, 2005 7:03 PM | Reply

I've been hunting high and low for any of these keys to the kingdom. Does anyone know if any manufacturers have some digital radar output with a published protocol?

I would love to get radar data directly into the PC software without going through these messy PCI cards or interface servers, what a pain...

Posted by: Noland at April 11, 2012 9:15 PM | Reply

Well, I have to say that when I wrote that PMY article seven years ago I missed a lot about what was going to happen. RayTech never did come back, and neither Simrad nor Garmin ever went for a PC software relationship like what Furuno and MaxSea have been working on. In fact, PC navigation has been on the decline as MFDs became more powerful.

I continue to believe that an Ethernet radar that could interface easily to multiple charting programs would be a good seller, but I doubt we're going to see one with compelling performance and a system-like price anytime soon. More likely but still nonexistent is a good radar that can run directly to a PC but only if a same brand MFD is on board. See Navico GoFree announcement for some hope of that: http://goo.gl/ad2rf

Posted by: Ben E in reply to Noland at April 11, 2012 9:59 PM | Reply

Unfortunately, 'PC navigation' is not top of the to-do list at Maxsea.
Until they sort out the errors in tidal navigation calculations it remains a pretty chart and instrument viewer. Still not fixed in the recent 1.9.7 update...

Posted by: Robert at April 12, 2012 3:06 AM | Reply

I believe that my Maxsea can display radar information from my Furuno radar, with the MFD on the network.

Posted by: Cameron at April 12, 2012 9:26 AM | Reply

If you have the Explorer edition, it certainly can: http://goo.gl/LW8E5

And with each update of MSTZ Explorer the radar control gets more and more complete: http://goo.gl/vyDBr

Posted by: Ben E in reply to Cameron at April 12, 2012 9:45 AM | Reply

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