Another sign that 2008 is the year of NMEA 2000? Airmar tells me that orders for its various N2K Smart Sensors—depth/speed/temp info online now, high performance PB200 Weather Station plus GPS/compass and plain compass coming “soon”—are way ahead of projections. Plus the company is now offering “a full-line of affordable, NMEA 2000 certified cables and accessories.” I’ve got some samples in the lab, bigger picture here, and the cable is a wee bit thinner than the gray Micro size I’m familiar with—a little less individual wire insulation, I think—but otherwise seems very similar. The cabling source is LTW, and Airmar says it’s “been rigorously tested to comply with the NMEA 2000 standard.”
So today I got a 512 Meg SD card and thus can now take screenshots on the Northstar M121. One I wanted to show you is this nifty “About” screen which includes the color coding for most of the unit’s possible input/output wiring, and which turned out to be particularly timely because C-Map just initiated a recall for certain Max chart cards if used with certain plotter software. If and when you go the C-Map Recall page, what you’ll need to know is the “cartridge code” shown in “Slot 2” above and the plotter’s software version, shown upper left. In fact, the recall only involves Max cards dated prior to October, 2006, and only certain plotters, mostly early versions of Si-Tex, Interphase, Standard Horizon, Cobra, Furuno, and European machines (that all run Max cartography).
Almost every time I walked by Furuno’s demo area just outside the MIBS madness Electronics Room, it looked like the scene above, i.e. full of folks intently learning about NavNet 3D. But while last Fall’s NN3D buzz continued, the negative word around MIBS was that Furuno didn’t yet have a shipping date, and wasn’t even taking orders. “Nice system,” competitors said, “but you can’t get it!”
