Avia Design, a new N2K player
... written for Panbo by Ben Ellison and posted on Jan 19, 2010
I've recently been beta testing a suite of software products from a marine electronics newcomer called Avia Design, and I'm tentatively enthusiastic. They are the first products I know of that are fully leveraged off the NMEA 2000 Third Party Gateway (TPG) discussed yesterday, and therefore a sign of many things to come (I think). And they're cool, or at least should be when finished. Check out that real time polar diagram for performance sailors above -- I'm not sure there's ever been one before -- and there's plenty of power boaters too...
This whole Avia setup is, in fact, quite a lot like Maretron's N2KServer and N2KView products, but not exactly. The Server, for instance, can also accept NMEA 0183 inputs, as seen in its setup dialog box below. Then again, Avia doesn't offer much screen customization, nor a whole family of hardware products that work with its instruments. But it also seems aimed at somewhat smaller boats than N2KView is, and may be more aggressive about partnering with other developers because it's quite a small operation.
Which is not to say that Avia isn't ambitious or able. Principal Grahame Shannon is a deeply experienced software developer, yacht designer, and boater as you can see a bit from his Blue Book of Boats listing and/or hear about in this Furled Sails podcast (a good resource, by the way). He may be as old as I am (a pity), but he's been coding at all hours recently, sometimes in response to my beta reports. And he could use a few more testers who have access to N2K networks and a willingness to purchase an NGT-1. But I don't think that's an unsafe investment, even if you don't like the finished Avia programs and prices (still undetermined), as more TPG apps will likely come down the pike by and by. At any rate, check out Avia Designs and eventually I'll report on what the finished products can do.
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I think UDP is the way to go if one wants to distribute N2K data over an Ethernet network. Using a PC as a server, as Avia has, is interesting but I still think there is plenty of scope for direct N2K to Ethernet devices. I imagine that both Maretron and Actisense are working on such devices. However development is still hampered by the lack of a NMEA standard for N2K over UDP. Avia have obviously created their own propriety standard.
Thinking of standards do the existing Maretron N2Kserver and Actisense NGT-1 send out the same serial packets to the PC, or are they proprietary?
Tedgo