While Simrad may be the last of the Big Four to introduce a high-performance, multi-touch, glass bridge system, it seems like they've added at least one significant twist to the concept. The new NSO evo2 black box contains two independent main processors, which can drive two independent displays. The brochure claims that this architecture gives you "the freedom to view and control your onboard systems more easily while making every dual station installation or larger networked system simple and much more cost effective." It's a claim that I tentatively buy...
I just spent five full days at IBEX 2013 -- as press guy, Innovation Awards judge, and NMEA seminar presenter -- and I'm heading home with LOTS to write about. I'll start with the deep integration Garmin and Volvo Penta put into the handsome Glass Cockpit system I was checking out above, and how smartly Raymarine has responded to this market-share threat. In my view it's a happy story about how competition and technology are making boating better...
A handsome addition to Camden Harbor recently has been the latest launch of the power catamaran design that was almost Gizmo, and darned if it doesn't have a certain gizmological flare. Check the high-low combination of solid state and magnetron radars, for instance. In fact, the gadget-loving owner, Brian Strong, is a regular Panbo reader and he wrote up an interesting explanation of his electronics choices...
After Raymarine and Furuno introduced multifunction displays with WiFi built-in and apps that could mirror and even control the MFD screen on an iPad or Android tablet -- a great idea that caught on quickly -- I was frankly a dite dubious when various Navico folks said that they had an even better idea. Eventually, though, we got to discuss the WiFi1, their MFD network hotspot, and then the whole multi-tier GoFree concept. It's a complicated concept largely because it's so ambitious -- for instance, supporting both Navico screen control apps and multiple third party apps like the ones seen above -- but it seems to me that GoFree is now doing even more than Navico promised, and there's virtually no limit to where it's headed...
Hat's off to Professor Todd Humphreys and his grad students for not only demonstrating that GPS spoofing is possible but for doing so in such a dramatic fashion that they got the whole media world chattering about it. For instance, Fox News led their story with "The world's GPS system is vulnerable to hackers or terrorists who could use it to hijack ships -- even commercial airliners, according to a frightening new study that exposes a huge potential hole in national security." While I think that's an overheated conclusion, I suspect that we may need an even greater scare to finally build out a secondary form of civilian electronic position fixing...
When I wrote about seeing the new Garmin 8000 Glass Helm series in Miami, several knowledgeable readers commented about how it (and the GMI 20 I'm testing) would be used as part of a complete Volvo Penta engine/helm package. They were right. Garmin announced the VP Glass Cockpit yesterday and it's already up in detail at Volvo Penta. The main features seem to be great nav screen integration with joystick, trim, and autopilot controls plus a single vendor for all, but is this also what we're going to see from all the glass bridge/helm/cockpit systems, and will it "trickle down"?
Yesterday I enjoyed a few hours on Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire, aboard a Boston Whaler 280 Outrage recently fitted out as a Raymarine demo boat. Much of what I first saw introduced in Miami last February is now shipping and working in impressive ways. Note, for instance, how the "low end" Dragonfly sonar/plotter is holding bottom in DownVision mode at more than 106 feet and 28 knots. And if it weren't for the camera-exaggerated glare you could also see how bright and sharp the "high end" gS165 Glass Bridge display was looking. I became particularly enamored of the new RMK-9 keypad that gave us hybrid-style control of not just the gS but also the two a6x MFDs...
Some of Garmin's many wireless strategies are coming together on Gizmo and there have been some nice surprises. Since there's now a GPSMap 741 with built-in WiFi mounted at the lower helm and networked via NMEA 2000 with the 7212 on the fly bridge, one of the first things I did when we began our cruise last week was to see what that meant in terms of route planning on an iPad running BlueChart Mobile (BCM). It was a minor thrill to realize that I could spec out the day's plan on the pad, send it to the 741, and have it pop right up on the 7212 as the active route my sweet mate was using to steer by...
There's been a small Raymarine a65 MFD installed at Gizmo's lower helm since early last fall (as seen here) and I've used it a lot. Frankly, I wasn't at all sure I'd like the all-touchscreen interface as much as I like the "hybrid" mix of touchscreen, buttons, knob, and cursor joystick I use on the nearby Ray e7 (tested here) or the similar Simrad NSS8 hybrid interface (compared here). Didn't Steve Jobs say that touch couldn't work on less than a 10-inch screen? Well, surprise, the a65's 5.7-inch touchscreen interface works quite well, even on a moving boat, and it's getting better as Raymarine rapidly introduces new versions of its Lighthouse MFD software (v5 discussed here, v7 just about to drop!). And today we learn that the all-touch "a" is not just an interesting oddity in Ray's now-huge a, c, e, and g display lineup...
One problem with cruising north early during a late spring was that Gizmo's open fly bridge was usually too cold to work with electronics like the Furuno TZT14 that I'd installed there just before finishing the trip south (as seen in this photo). I look forward to much more testing here in Maine but this I already know: For me, there is no other MFD or PC navigation program that does underway chart plotting so well. TimeZero software from MaxSea and Nobeltec are obviously excepted -- and note that TZ for iPad is on its way -- because Furuno essentially built the NavNet3D and TZT series as very specialized marine computers that run TZ with tight integration to their radars, sounders, etc. as well as to NMEA 2000, Ethernet and analog cameras, and more. Let's look at some screens that illustrate what TZT does so well...
While Simrad may be the last of the Big Four to introduce a high-performance, multi-touch, glass bridge system, it seems like they've added at least one significant twist to the concept. The new NSO evo2 black box contains two independent main processors, which can drive two independent displays. The brochure claims that this architecture gives you "the freedom to view and control your onboard systems more easily while making every dual station installation or larger networked system simple and much more cost effective." It's a claim that I tentatively buy...
