Months ago I heard that Navionics was planning to add boating magazine content to its mobile charting apps, but I didn't know until the new 2.0 version came out that "my" Bonnier Marine Group was a lead participant! The implementation is pretty slick too. As long as your iPad or iPhone is online you can browse the "NewsStand" for cruising pieces relevant to your location or for articles listed by various subject categories or even ranked by reviews from fellow Navionics Mobile users. And you can download and read them two ways...
The UK company Yellowbrick has made a name for itself primarily by supplying offshore racing fleets with self-contained tracking devices based on Iridium's original 9601 short burst data modem. But the new Yellowbrick 3 hardware announced this week is build around the smaller, less expensive, and more able 9602 modem and Yellowbrick intends to sell it as a standalone marine safety, tracking, and communications product as well as use it for fleet rentals. Yes, the Yellowbrick 3 is similar to the DeLorme inReach announced earlier this summer, but it's got more features and flexibility, and it costs more...
Yes, that's Nobeltec Time Zero Trident running on Gizmo's Mac Mini with NMEA 2000 data coming in via Actisense NGT-1 -- as seen in an earlier entry on ChartTable21 -- but, wow, the screen shot was taken on my iPad. And I had complete control of Trident from the pad without any noticeable delay in commands or zoom/pan screen refreshes, even with the intense graphic data seen in those nicely blended MapMedia hi res photo maps. If you're interested in extending an onboard PC navigation system over WiFi to an Apple (or Android) pad you may recall that in October the possibilities weren't thrilling, but that was before Splashtop Remote Desktop came along...
The Raymarine e7 being announced today may be the most important launch of the year, because it's not only a hot new 7-inch MFD design but it also marks a complete refresh of Ray's multifunction display software. While it wisely retains the "HybridTouch" mix of touchscreen and keypad controls introduced in the E Wide Series -- though with notably fewer and bigger buttons -- I understand that the underlying code began at zero several years ago. And I see a lot of fresh interface ideas in the many product photos you'll find after the break. But while the e7 will network with up to five other e7s and all sorts of existing Raymarine sensors and black boxes, it apparently will not network with existing Ray MFDs, which may be the downside of a complete software rewrite {correction: will network with E Wide and G series MFDs, see comment}. But then again, it surely can make some interesting new connections...
It hasn't gotten much press yet, but Sabre Yachts recently introduced something called LaunchPad, which is a collection of boat specific apps and services that purchasers of certain Sabre models will receive on an iPad2. I haven't yet seen a demo, but besides manuals for everything, the user will purportedly be able to report service issues using the pad's email and camera functions and a full service history will acrue on the pad and on a land-based server (lest the pad goes swimming). Of course there's much more that the LaunchPad bundle might do aboard, like control a specific AV system, but further good news is that it will eventually be available for many existing Sabre owners -- because Sabre has kept an archive of manuals and specs -- and perhaps to many other boat brands because LaunchPad is based on the ambitious Yacht.com idea...
A few weeks ago I tweeted about how I'd had a nice dinner meeting with Raymarine and that they had all sorts of interesting product news that I couldn't write about yet. But, dang, they didn't even mention that they were in acquisition mode, let alone that they were quite close to sealing the deal to buy Tacktick announced earlier today. This move has to feel good for the Ray folks who were around during the hard times before FLIR bought the company, and also for the innovators who created Tacktick's neat wireless instrument systems and struggled against much larger marine electronics manufacturers -- like Raymarine -- before joining Suunto, which didn't appear to make much sense in terms of product integration...
The original Wirie -- seen above being assembled on a cruising boat in the Caribbean -- is a 1,000 mW USB WiFi transceiver which seems smartly set up for marine use and has many fans. But I've been one of those boaters who prefers an Ethernet-based alternative because it can be installed beyond USB cable length limitations, plus it can go right to a router and thus easily serve the Internet to multiple devices. (A particularly good Ethernet-based, high-power WiFi radio is the Ubiquity Bullet, which is available in many marine packages, as we discussed at length last Fall.) However, the new WirieAP model adds a local boat WiFi access point to that waterproof plastic case, which means that the install only requires a 12 volt feed to let every WiFi-enabled device on board share a well-amplified shore-side Internet connection...
Impatient me was beginning to wonder if the intriguing Iridium 9602 short burst data modem would ever materialize into a useful product. The Cerberus communicator and service I discussed in Januaryis supposed "to arrive" for real in 7 days, but it's gotten zero marketing so far, and I haven't heard about any other 9602-based devices that might seriously appeal to boaters until yesterday. And, in fact, even the DeLorme inReach isn't scheduled to ship until Fall. But it certainly looks neat...
It's obviously not practical to anchor in Camden's Inner Harbor -- especially as there are often two Gizmo-size boats on each of those floats -- but it was a good first taste of Boat Monitor, a very interesting new remote anchor watch system. What's happening here is that I used Gizmo's low-power Datalux police car computer (seen in yesterday's entry, and also here) to log onto Boat Monitor's web site and establish a sophisticated anchor watch keyed to a Garmin 17x GPS connected via NMEA 2000. Boat Monitor's server then started minding Gizmo's position, ready to serve it elsewhere and/or send alarms as needed. One possibility is this $5 app on my Android phone, but there are others. The details and flexibility are impressive...
When I wrote about Garmin's new GDL 40 cellular weather system recently, the comments reminded me about how many different ways there are to access data and forecasts (and how opinionated some folks are about the methods they favor). So I guess I shouldn't be surprised when two apps that both specialize in downloading and displaying GRIB weather model data on iPads, or their smaller siblings, take quite different approaches to the task...
