OK, admittedly I’m in a foul too-much-work mood, and maybe that’s why I find NASA’s new AIS Engine 2 so totally exasperating. Sure, they added “Power” and “Data” LED status lights, a big improvement over the original, but that’s just catching up with the Smart Radio SR161 that has deservedly stolen much of NASA’s business at the low end of AIS receivers. And note how Milltech carefully explains that the SR161 only receives one of the two AIS channels at a time, scanning back and forth, while the NASA specs are, um, less clear about that limitation.
Last Wednesday night, the 97' clam dredge Captain Joe sank suddenly 30 miles off Point Pleasant, New Jersey in 10' seas. Air and sea temperatures were in the low 40’s and the wind NW near 30 knots (according to a nearby C-Man buoy). You can hear some, maybe all, of the bone-chilling May Day call here. It’s unclear whether the crew gave any position info before jumping into their liferaft, yet within hours rescue swimmers helped all four into the baskets of two USCG helicopters.
Here’s a reversal: I tested this Matys OnBoard Iridium/GSM distress/SMS/voice/email communicator months ago, and my PMY write-up is already online. There you can see the reassuring way the unit lets you know that an alarm message has been received, quickly too, as well as the system’s substantial cost. And the Matys site is good for the seemingly endless—tracking, weather, concierge, medical, etc.—services available.
Well, hot damn! How about a full featured PC planning product that includes maps for 10,000 U.S. lakes, all on a $20 DVD? I just heard about it this morning, but my first impression of Navionics HotMaps Explorer is “who wouldn’t?” Well, I suppose if you never, ever go out on lakes, but I do and was pleased to see that the coverage list includes a lot of Maine lakes. Now my favorite, Lake Megunticook, is not covered by any digital map maker, I don’t think, though I keep hoping that Navionics will do one of its high definition surveys there and let me see at least some of their techniques. By the way, the download of one HD lake map is included in HotMaps Explorer.
So I hope yesterday’s goofy contest made a point about Raymarine’s STng cabling system. I do think the design has merit, particularly for production boat building, and there’s more of interest, like heavier gauge power wires, that I’ll get into eventually. But today I’m going back to the larger point that NMEA 2000 cabling is not that big a deal. As noted earlier in these ST70/STng experiments, the data flows easier than one might think given the different connectors and network names. What really counts is that the desired data is sent and received. I learned that vividly when the first Garmins could hardly understand any N2K PGNs (messages), despite having a standard NMEA 2000 connector, and now I’ve stumbled on an ironic reminder.
I’m on deadline today, and may find no more time for posting, but here’s a puzzle to ponder. Those two male female connectors above are unique to Raymarine’s SeaTalkNG (or STng) version of NMEA 2000 cabling. The white version is on both ends of every “spur” cable that’s used to connect devices to the backbone—or to daisy chain one device to another—and the blue version is on both ends of every backbone segment. So why in tarnation does one have six pins and the other five?
If you own a Raymarine E-Series MFD, you are about to get a lot of free new features—and some new accessory shopping possibilities!—thanks to a V4 software update coming this month or next. The screen above shows the new “steering bar” as well as support for Navionics Platinum+ chart cards and—bigger here—their much improved photo and 3D resolution, even if the docks are on the Cape while the banks are in the Bahamas (for more on Platinum+ check out this video).
My PMY March column about SPOT is now online, and you’ll see that I gave the company guff for what I thought was “hyped-up fear marketing.” But in fact they’ve toned that down quite a bit recently. The “Live to tell about it” tag line is still around, but the home page closeup of the toothy, drooling bear and the lame homilies—like the one about coming home in coach instead of in cargo—have vanished. I’d like to think I had something to do with it, but more likely is the marketing realization that Spot’s real draw is its ability to do tracking and non-distress messaging.
Who’s going to argue with that admonition? I first noted MariTech's use of the female form to sell its Virtual Lifeline wireless engine shut-off back in ‘05. While they may have switched body parts, these days the system itself seems pretty similar, a good sign of effectiveness really. But it looks like they’ve got a serious new competitor in Autotether, which at least seems to offer more features for less cost.
A month or so ago reader Derek Love (thanks!) wrote in about an interesting combination VHF transceiver and AIS receiver previewed by Icom UK at the London Boat Show. It got a little coverage plus there’s an Icom UK web page about it, though that page seems oddly inaccessible from the main site. I’ve tried to find out more and what I hear is that the prototype is a small board that can be added to Icom M505 and M603 radios, but preferably during manufacturing, not as after-market mod, because of the waterproofing.
