Who knows why I had my hand up like that, but I do vaguely remember the scene -- Furuno showing off NavNet on some sort of military grade head's up display, I think -- as one of many geek moments I've enjoyed at NMEA conferences. In my experience, there's no concentration of marine electronics expertise and enthusiasm anywhere that compares to the Conference's trade-only exhibition hall, and many of the seminars are great too. But the affair became a dite more stressful for me last year when I got involved in the NMEA Technology Award, which went to Navico's Broadband Radar with honorable mentions to Maretron's N2KBuilder and Navionics' Mobile (PDF here). This year may be even harder...
I like this picture of Chuck -- found on his family web site, along some truly touching memorial material -- because whenever I saw him at boat shows he was almost invariably decked out in a blue blazer and tie. Now Mr. Charles Husick certainly had the gravitas to support a bit of formality; he was an accomplished electrical engineer who had also managed serious companies, written hundreds of magazine articles, and been a important advocate for sensible marine technologies...and he knew more about many subjects than many of us know about one. But he was also a real boating enthusiast, and in this picture I can sense that large, curious intellect that must have had so much fun geeking out on his ketch Bonne Étoile...
While Panbo's logo is still a work in progress, check out the sharp name plate Gizmo is sporting, thanks to Garmin's industrial design department. Gander too at how much electronic goodness I managed to squeeze onto the boat's latest flying bridge dash, and note that a wider view would also show a Furuno MFD12 and a Raymarine E140 Wide with room for more! It's quite the testing platform and you'll be seeing lots of pictures and screen shots taken here, but today let's tour that cool design shop in Kansas...
I don't like what some Japanese companies, supported by their government, are doing to whales, but I'm smart enough to know that a reasonable alternative to Sea Shepherd's nasty headline above might be: "Furuno won't give (or sell) Sea Shepherd a new radar because its government asked it not to." Or: "Furuno won't support protesters who ram Japanese ships." Or maybe: "Furuno wants nothing to do with an arrogant jerk like Captain Paul Watson!"...
"We are all very happy here," reads the email I just got from a contact at Raymarine, and that sure makes sense. The agonizing process of getting sold is over, and in the end they were bought (full announcement above here) by a strong company which is not a direct competitor but is "very serious about commercial and recreational marine." That phrase, already demonstrably true, comes fresh from Lou Rota, FLIR's VP for Maritime Business Development. Rota also told me that there are no plans to move or substantially change Raymarine operations, and that FLIR is very hopeful that it can continue to work closely with manufacturers like Furuno, Simrad, and Garmin in terms of integrating its thermal cameras into their navigation electronics. I suppose that Garmin, which recently made a very public bid for Ray, may be unhappy about this turn of events, but...
Competitive heat is really building in the portable global sat phone/messenger sector, and once it gets sorted, it's got to be good news for those of us who venture beyond cellular networks. Last week Iridium announced that its smaller, cheaper 9602 SBD modem is ready ahead of schedule for some 90 "integration partners," and a few weeks before that Inmarsat detailed its IsatPhone Pro (due in June), including its game changing pricing. And while I discussed both of these developments here in January, it's Globalstar that may be the long term dark horse in this race...
The Miami demo of Minn Kota's new i-Pilot technology got somewhat humorous. After some time with that trolling motor head turning this way and that as it automatically retraced a GPS track or pulled us along to a waypoint -- where it could even maintain station -- I started thinking of it as a faithful, friendly robot. If I owned one, I might paint eyes and a smile on it to heighten the sensation. And in retrospect it might have been whispering, "Hey, bub, I represent Johnson Outdoors technology prowess; wait until you see Geonav!"
Amazing! Garmin just announced a very public and serious offer for Raymarine. The Wall Street Journal has the 30 page (!) announcement here, but this London Stock Exchange link is easier to read. Garmin is offering 15 pence per share, which is way up from what we've heard recently (see comments here), and it's waived any further due diligence. There are only two factors that could stop this deal from happening, I think: The displeasure of either Raymarine's board or the U.K. anti-trust regulators. And by being so public with the offer, Garmin is expressing a lot of confidence that both those parties will find the offer acceptable. Maybe it's time to think about a marine electronics world where two of the biggest brands are one...
I've been looking through a lot of material on BEP's new CZone system, and finding it impressive. But its descriptive subtitle -- "Networked Control and Monitoring System" -- seems a tad vague to me. In fact, Simrad changed that to "digital switching" when they showed off their nifty CZone integration with the NSE series (covered briefly in a Miami Show entry). It does seem like the handful of manufacturers who dare to compete in this complex, and potentially hairy, niche can't agree about what to call it, but I like "distributed power". You can see why in the simplified CZone sample diagram above; like the competition, those OI modules efficiently distribute an electrical system's core power feed and circuit protection functions to where they're needed, while networking the switching and much more. There is no central breaker panel on this boat, and a lot less wire. The following diagrams tell more about the concept...
Today Garmin introduced the GPSMap 78 series, an apparently major refresh of the 76 series long popular with boaters. While I only got to fiddle with a pre-production unit for a moment, I did learn a lot about the industrial design process behind it. The ID department in Olathe -- aka "The Skunk Works" or "Area 51" -- has a tool collection that would make all sorts of craftsmen and artists drool, but I'll save that story for another day. What's particularly notable about the exhibit shown above and below is how many design iterations were created and modeled for the 78, and how detailed they were...
