My obsession with NMEA 2000 instruments continues. To better test and photograph them in real light conditions, I installed the array in a single, more serious panel. The weapon of choice was that 3 5/8" hole saw above, which is a little bigger than needed but gave me wiggle room for final alignment. It would have worked for surface mounting the Maretron DSM 250 too, but I decided to flush mount it so it didn’t overwhelm the others. The ST70 can also be flush mounted, while the others are all surface only (correction: Furuno will offer a flush mount kit). Note that I did the layout on a template (which, in my case, also became a backing piece), which I then used to make neater and surer cutouts in the white finish panel. A good idea if you are actually cutting holes in your helm or cockpit!
Chris Witzgall from Apex, NC, recently wrote {slightly edited}:
Your site has been invaluable as I get back into boating after a long hiatus, and work out the electronics for our new-to-us Westerly Fulmar sailboat. I have settled on NMEA 2000. Our needs are relatively simple; here is what I have**, or will have*.
All the well-informed feedback I’m getting to my marine electronics maintenance query reminded that a fellow named Joseph Howard wrote last week about the NMEA 2000 hobby project he’s pursuing, and also documenting over the MarinetteBoat forums. “It will be a ARM7 based fuel gauge reading PGN 127505 using Luminary Micro's LM3S8962 evaluation board, 89 bucks from Digi-Key. I am hand coding the stack extensions for address claims. (Wish I'd used a PIC 18 CanBus as they have a free J1939 stack). Quite a bit of C coding.”
So I’ve begun work on a magazine piece about how to include electronics in your Spring maintenance and commissioning routine. The following are some topics I’ve come up so far. I’d really appreciate your professional or do-it-yourself comments on these or any topics I missed:
Sort of like repairing or upgrading old instruments, you could also spend some winter off water time getting your waypoints and routes in order. C-Map has put together a nice tip sheet on how you might do that using their chart cards along with the nifty PC Planner product that lets you bring home plotter data and work with it and your C-Map charts on your computer. (To get the PDF, click on the orange card reader here.) You may not be up for making “chart art”, like above, but doesn’t it make sense to sort through the waypoints, tracks, and routes you accumulated last season?
Geez, I’m so behind on testing (Cobra radios and Lowrance iWay are the ones half done, and there’s some I haven’t even started, sorry all!), I hesitate to get started on this Garmin 545s. On the other hand, the interest is great, myself included! Above is a backside shot showing the new two-way swivel bracket, and also the ports. Right is a BNC connector for an optional external antenna, middle is a connector for the still somewhat mysterious GXM 31 antenna, and left goes a cable that contains power leads, 2 sets of NMEA 0183 i/o leads, a set of CANet leads, and a power/data plug for the the dual frequency transducer. The unit is not quite as blue as the picture somehow came out, and the tooling is beautiful. The 545s manual is now online for more info, and I will try to show you what it can do as the week goes on (I’ve got a g2 Vision card too), though I probably won’t get it out on the water for a couple of weeks (and, by gorry, I’m going to finish those other units). Meanwhile I include the picture below as a reminder to everyone installing and reinstalling electronics this spring. Be very careful with your screens unless you’re positive that they’re not coated.
This beauty of a system diagram, bigger here, came in from Al Corkins, aka BoatGuy (his email and Web site handle). The color coding indicates what exists on his boat (green), what’s in a closet ready for install (blue), and what he’s planning after that (pink). I asked Al where he got all those cool drawings of his components, and it turns out that he creates them in Microsoft Paint! He also has a wonderful Web site documenting his boats, and particularly his boat projects, which he does well (check out this C-80 install, for instance). I’ve only skipped around, but the factual content looks excellent and included is an appropriate sense of humor, even a boat project philosophy.
The successful boat project is truly an art form…The three primary tools you need for ensuring the project is done correctly is research, research, and research.
By the way I submitted a collage of this and other Panbo reader diagrams to go with my articles about picking systems. And I’m hoping that by the time they come out in print, I’ll be able to pretty up the reader system pages. More submissions are welcome, a new Panbo look is in the works, I swear.
I think of this painting—one of an ancient series hanging in the Venice, Italy, Maritime Museum (and bigger here)—as a how-to for sailors caught out in a storm: Put out all your anchors, jettison heavy objects (like cannons), pray to your personal savior, and hope for the best! Here in Maine we’re trying not to get upset about the freakish fact that the ground hasn’t frozen yet (and I’m thankful that we live some 180’ above sea level). But I trust that whatever happens is all in God’s plan, and I wish you all a very fine Christmas, or Chrismakka as we call it in our home, or however you honor this grand turning of the seasons.
Marine connection? Hey, this two seater, at under 400 pounds, could fit on the boat deck of a trawler, or even the hybrid power catamaran (though perhaps at the sacrifice of some solar panels). Besides the inventor is my friend and neighbor Jory Squibb, who’s probably delivered more boats than anyone I know. Plus he gave me a ride in Moonbeam…which was exciting, especially at 80 MPG around town! Here’s where Jory explains how you can build one yourself.
How about that! The Memory Map Nexrad function for Smart Phones that I tried and raved about now does animation, at right, plus it’s been debundled from the charting software. $10 and it’s yours, no subscription needed, and data use is efficient and user managable. (By the way, developer Richard Stephens may be seriously field testing this product over the weekend, as he again sails the Mackinac aboard Flight Simulator. He says the course is a thunderstorm alley. Good luck, Richard!)
Meanwhile, Panbo reader Bob Mueller wrote in to say that he’s figured out how to get simple Nexrad images onto his not-so-Smart Motorola v710: I host my own website on the residential DSL line in my home, and I created a page with a custom PHP script that I wrote. The PHP script goes to the ADDS (Aviation Digital Data Service) website, pulls a NEXRAD radar image for the area where I boat. The image displays a very large area, that would not be easy to interpret on my cell phone screen. My script then crops the image to the exact resolution of the phone screen. The script saves this cropped image to the hard drive on the web server for display on my cell phone's screen via the phone's web browser. (I would be more than happy to share the code, it is only a few lines!) {Send me a note if you want that code — Ben}.
PS Thanks to Gizmodo for picking up on my Sirius & XM weather testing (even if they somewhat misinterpreted my ramblings); we’re getting major hits, which I find very auspicious as today I officially became sole proprieter of www.Panbo.com. Wishing all a great weekend.
a page with a custom PHP script that I wrote. The PHP script goes to the ADDS (Aviation Digital Data Service) website, pulls a NEXRAD radar image for the area where I boat. The image displays a very large area, that would not be easy to interpret on my cell phone screen. My script then crops the image to the exact resolution of the phone screen. The script saves this cropped image to the hard drive on the web server for display on my cell phone's screen via the phone's web browser. (I would be more than happy to share the code, it is only a few lines!) {Send me a note if you want that code — Ben}.