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.
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 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 
