Semi live blogging the Miami shows, backwards

... written for Panbo by Ben Ellison and posted on Feb 13, 2014

Garmin integrates with Mastervolt CZone digital power

Garmin CZone on Scout boat cPanbo.JPGI think they overhyped the innovation but this is great news for distributed power and digital switching in general, and the Garmin 8000 series in particular. It's also a huge win for Mastervolt CZone.

Northstar modular thin plate 8D battery

Northstar modular 8D battery cPanbo.jpg

West Marine picked this modular Northstar thin plate 8D battery as one of its products-of-the-year.

Panbo Wins Again

The iPad blogging has some problems but I'm a happy guy. Boating Writers International just awarded Panbo #1 in Online Excellence -- third time in four years! -- and also gave me #1 in Electronics for the article "True Test" published in PMY.

Simrad announces ForwardScan

Simrad ForwardScan will image a 10 degree slice from directly below your boat up almost to the water surface ahead, it won't be very expensive, and of course it will integrate with NSS and NSO evo2 (at least). Let the wider sonar wars begin!

FLIR Partner's Cruise -- all in

It was seriously weathery in south Florida last night but the First FLIR Partner's Cruise was nonetheless an important moment in marine electronics. With the addition of Garmin -- comment link to press release appreciated -- Flir cameras are now supported by the entire Big Four plus the likes of Nobeltec and GOST.

Let the Shows begin!

Live blogging experiment

Time for an experiment! At some boat shows I've tried using Twitter and even Instagram to post short reports and photos of electronics news because writing full blog entries just doesn't fit with the pace. But there were serious drawbacks, mainly that I couldn't cap them off at the end of the show. So if you looked a few months later, you'd see my irrelevant current Tweets along with your comments about show news.

But now I have a neat Canon S120 camera with built-in WiFi and a powerful iPad blogging app called Blogsy. I think I will be able to update this entry fairly easily. And I plan to do it backwards, adding new stuff to the top. The only drawback I can think of is that the feeds going to PMY, SailFeed, and PassageMaker will probably not update until I have time to do it manually. So if you're reading there, come on over to Panbo.

Posted by Ben E on February 13, 2014 9:45 AM

Comments

I'm thinking this is the press release you were looking for?
http://bit.ly/1bub8yb

Yoiks, that's a huge URL..

[Edit: I've taken the liberty to shorten your URL, it was so long it ruined the blog layout! -- Kees]

Posted by: Hartley at February 13, 2014 2:38 PM | Reply

Very much looking forward to forward scan sonar.

Posted by: xavier Itzmann at February 13, 2014 8:58 PM | Reply

Hi Hartley, I edited your comment to use a URL shortening service. I thought that the length of the URL was what is messing up the column layout of Panbo, but it must be something else. Hope you don't mind the intrusion on your comment!

Posted by: Kees at February 14, 2014 2:12 AM | Reply

Lucky you Ben, while all of us up North wish we had forward looking sonar to see through the snow we just got.

Posted by: Allan Seymour at February 14, 2014 9:13 AM | Reply

Congratulations Ben, well deserved!

Posted by: Kees at February 14, 2014 9:49 AM | Reply

Oh, and the layout is OK again -- maybe it was Blogsy that was doing this?

Posted by: Kees at February 14, 2014 9:50 AM | Reply

Congratulations Ben! You deserve the accolades. However I am also a winner by benefiting from your reporting and evaluations.

Patrick Harman

Posted by: Patrick Harman at February 14, 2014 10:58 AM | Reply

Congratulations on the wins Ben. Reading your 2013 survey it's obvious your followers think you are #1 too.

Posted by: Bo Collier at February 15, 2014 7:55 AM | Reply

Thanks, Kees! I knew I should have done that, but I was afraid I'd screw it up..:-)

Posted by: Hartley in reply to Kees at February 16, 2014 1:24 PM | Reply

Congratulations, Ben! No mystery why - great information, and the proprietor is clearly enjoying himself!

Posted by: Hartley at February 16, 2014 7:05 PM | Reply

Thanks all, and sorry I haven't yet shared much of the Miami news. There's a lot!

I'm still in Miami and yesterday got to go boating with Giuseppe Carnevali, founder of Navionics. So I got an deep look at great new things the Navionics Mobile app is going to do, especially with Raymarine MFDs.

http://www.navionics.com/en/news/archive

Posted by: Ben E at February 17, 2014 9:22 AM | Reply

Did BEP sell Czone to Mastervolt???

Posted by: Chris Witzgall at February 17, 2014 7:25 PM | Reply

Hi Chris,

BEP and Mastervolt are both owned by Actuant. I guess they are starting to rebrand a bit.

Posted by: Kees in reply to Chris Witzgall at February 18, 2014 5:27 AM | Reply

Hi Chris,

BEP, Master volt, Marinco and Anchor have been under one ownership for a couple of years.

Posted by: Ben E at February 18, 2014 5:31 AM | Reply

Izzat "Anchor" or "Ancor"? :-) (gotta love spellcheck)

Posted by: Hartley in reply to Ben E at February 18, 2014 10:07 AM | Reply

Right on Ancor; it was early and I was typing on my phone in an airport. (Only to get stuck in Newark all day ;-(

Actually Actuant recently sold its electrical division to Sentinel Capital Partners --
http://goo.gl/zf3r1s -- but I don't think that makes much difference to the work Mastervolt, BEP, etc. are doing to rationalize their product lines. My understanding is that Mastervolt will slowly become the brand name for all devices with networking and Marinco the rest. But BEP will remain a sub brand name until its fans are used to the change. The CZone system remains CZone.

Posted by: Ben E in reply to Hartley at February 18, 2014 12:54 PM | Reply

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