Written by Ben Ellison on Feb 22, 2016 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

While we’ve barely begun 2016, the state of recreational marine radar is entirely different than it was in 2015. The simultaneous introductions of Furuno and Garmin solid state Doppler radars in Miami was a stunning coincidence, but the bigger picture is that all four major brands have now embraced solid state technology and a major transition is underway. During the show I spoke with a lot of product managers as we checked out their particular new radar underway, and my (partial) track map above (in two scales) may help readers to better understand the screenshots I brought home...

Thanks to a wide variety of fixed and moving targets, the Miami area is a pretty good place to test radars. It may never suffer the near-zero-visibility fog conditions that make the tool so important where I cruise, but a dark night with all sorts of boat traffic masked by sometimes over-the-top downtown Miami lighting must still make a good radar very valuable. This channel along Brickell Key is actually one of the least congested around the city, but I like how the photo also shows the big Rickenbacker Causeway bridge that goes out to the new MIBS site on Virginia Key. I took this photo on the early Furuno demo that began downtown and ended at the show, but proximity to the bridge meant that most demo trips could slip under it to get long radar views south down Biscayne Bay.

That’s exactly what’s happening on this screen with a Simrad Halo 3-foot open-array radar set to 24-mile range but painting Biscayne Bay as far as 32 miles away with the windows in “look ahead” mode. As with all the demos, the radar antenna is installed about 10-12 feet off the water on a T-top so radar horizon is definitely a factor, and checking the charts and satellite photography I don’t see much in the way of high, hard targets way down that bay. Thus, I think this looks quite good for Simrad Halo and solid state in general, and I’m bringing it up now because long range performance is the aspect of ss radar that informed boaters worry about the most.

In fact, all the solid-state marine radar developers seem to agree that putting sufficient energy on long-range targets is their biggest challenge. But here’s the Garmin Fantom 4-foot open array similarly imaging the low shores of Biscayne Bay in 36-mile range, and it was still running beta software. The real test for solid-state open arrays is probably how they compare to their proven magnetron competition at spotting distant weather cells and birds, and I particularly look forward to reader feedback about this (as I don’t have much recent experience with big, high power “traditional” radars).

One thing I’m pretty sure of, though, is that we’re just seeing the beginning of where solid-state radar will go. The Doppler target speed-marking feature that I will cover deeper in the next entry seems hugely valuable, for instance, but there are other possibilities like improved weather and bird discrimination, better wave filtering, and more. It’s not easy, though. While the availability of reasonable cost solid-state components is definitely a reason that all this change is happening now, a marine electronics company cannot just buy a generic ss radar module. All these new radars represent long development projects, the abilities of individual RF and software engineers is critical, and the resulting radars are all different even if they have similar long-term possibilities.

One sign of this nuance is the fairly significant main bang (blacked out) area you can see around the Fantom demo boat at 36 mile range. Fantom and Halo apparently use a similar pulse compression technique with multiple simultaneous burst lengths — Halo tech detailed here and here — but in Garmin’s implementation the ignored area is proportional to the range. This particular detail doesn’t seem very important in practice — note the fairly minimal main bang on the Fantom’s simultaneous 2 mile range — but don’t expect all these solid-state radars to work the same.

(By the way, I was completely surprised when Garmin announced acquisition of DeLorme on the first day of the show, but it was a little more fun making those tracks in the top image with my latest test DeLorme InReach. I’m excited about what the DeLorme team can do under Garmin’s wing, and hope to report more when possible.)

Now, here’s the new solid-state Raymarine Quantum 24-inch radome at its maximum 24-mile range, with results I’d guess similar to its most direct competitor, the Simrad Broadband 3G, but not as good as some smaller magnetron radomes like Ray’s own RD418HD (which I’ve been long testing on Gizmo since 2009). Note how the low Florida mainland peters out at about 8 miles, though one good target is visible at about 19. (I think it may be the Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station, but the out-of-whack overlay and even the available charts don’t help.) But we’re talking about this radome’s longest claimed range, which many boaters may never use for navigation (thanks, GPS) or distant collision avoidance (thanks, AIS). Overall, my first Quantum impression is of a competent $1,600 radar with some neat possible updates in its future and a genius install option already available. You’re looking at radar data coming to the MFD over WiFi, which means that most any radome can be replaced with a Quantum without replacing the cable; it’s not the ideal way to go, but you or your installer can simply find the two power wires in an existing radar cable (that may be inextricably buried in your mast), splice them to a Quantum pigtail and then set up your Ray WiFi to include the radar. Done!

We did not get south of the Rickenbacker bridge during the Furuno DRS4D NXT demo I greatly enjoyed, but Furuno kindly sent me some screenshots from a later trip. Looking ahead here at 16 nm range — NXT like Halo purportedly optimizes all ranges simultaneously — the returns look most similar to the Quantum, with the shoreline fairly flaky beyond 8 miles and the Turkey Point towers joined at 20 miles with what’s probably another industrial stack more inland. I don’t doubt that the NXT has earned its 36-mile rating with some good high targets, but again long-range solid-state high performance from a radome-size antenna seems a work in progress. And then again, wait until you see what else NXT can do…

First, let’s look at another round of solid-state radar screens, but at closer ranges. Above is the Simrad Halo3 looking good, I think, at both 4 and 1.5 mile ranges. I’d had a less satisfactory experience with Halo’s longer ranges and the recent MARPA update during the January writer’s event, but learned in Miami that we’d been using a heavy sea clutter setting that was later identified as “over aggressive.” You’ve already seen decent Halo range earlier in the entry and those two MARPA targets above are a tiny percentage of all I tried in Miami. Seeing a MARPA vector calculation match a target’s AIS vector is always comforting and I saw the Halo quickly lock and accurately track several center consoles doing over 40 knots.

Navico’s solid-state Broadband 4G radome, which I’ve long tested and really appreciate, is getting short shrift in this entry, but many owners will be glad to hear that migrating the Halo’s new MARPA algorithms to 4G (and 3G) is a “high priority item” (recent Panbo discussion here).

During a busy day of demos, I frankly wasn’t anticipating organizing my coverage by ranges, but here’s the Garmin Fantom 4 at 1 mile range just south of the bridge with lots of traffic going every which way. Its MARPA worked very well, but we had the radar set up for Doppler “Motionscope” and I’m pretty sure that most users would prefer that for easily identifying important targets, plus it’s a whole lot easier. My intention is to focus on Doppler in the next entry, but, dang, I’m also pretty sure that two of those red targets are boats overtaking us while still under the bridge, and several more are shuttle buses or trucks on the bridge which happen to be moving in our general direction at over 5 knots in the traffic!

Here’s the Raymarine Quantum Q24C — there may be other models soon — at 1.5 mile range. It, too, was acquiring MARPA targets quickly and accurately (which I could verify in the clear daylight conditions). I also noticed the results of what FLIR/Ray calls “ATX advanced target separation technology,” which means better horizontal resolution than what’s normally seen with magnetron radars of the same antenna size and which seems like one of the many feature possibilities common to all solid state marine radars (like quick startup, low power use, and negligible emissions).

Now a bigger thought: Isn’t radar the very crown jewel of marine electronics? GPS chartplotting is nearly essential, of course, but there’s not that much specialized hardware involved, and some of the best plotting and planning software runs on standard computers. Sonar is very marine hardware and software specific, and recent advancements are wicked exciting, but it is not as critical to vessel safety (and backup navigation) as radar.

At any rate, below is a screenshot of the first Furuno NXT at 1 and 0.125 nm ranges. Again we had the radar in Doppler- target-speed-discrimination mode even while tied up at the show marina, maybe just because we could. True-color mode could have indicated more detail about the various targets, as it also did on the Garmin Fantom, but it’s very special to see any target moving toward you highlighted in very contrasting red. As enthusiastic as I am about marine electronics, “game changing” is a term I rarely use. This is it, I think; more to come.

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Written by Ben Ellison on Mar 1, 2016 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

Why is this guy grinning? At the end of the solid state radar #1 entry, I suggested that the Doppler target speed discrimination feature just introduced by Furuno and Garmin is truly game changing. Now I’ll try to break that down. While Doppler effect is a seasoned and fairly well known concept, I suspect that its sudden and intriguing arrival to marine electronics is going to effect change…

If you’re not a pilot or meteorologist or similar, you too may appreciate the Doppler radar pages in Wikipedia. That 1950’s GPI AN/APN 81 airforce navigation system above may weigh 380 pounds and seem complex — imagine the cables! — but I also enjoyed learning that the first Doppler radar speed gun started with coffee cans soldered together to solve a PBY landing problem during World War II. Incidentally, one way that Furuno product manager Eric Kunz (the grinning guy) explained the NXT radome’s Target Analyzer function was to picture 50 cops with radar guns arrayed around the deck.

Going further back, the classic explanation of Doppler effect is the way a train whistle appears to sound higher pitched when the train is coming toward you than it does when going away, even though it always sounds the same if the train is stopped or you’re aboard (hear it here). The train’s motion changes the frequency of the sound waves unless you’re also moving in the same direction and speed.

The same is true of radar microwaves bounced back from a moving target. Measure the frequency difference between the pulses sent out and the pulses returned and you get an instant indication of the target’s speed. Of course, if it were really that easy, we would have had Doppler marine radar a long time ago. It’s telling that Doppler effect was already developed into Furuno’s meteorological radar and Garmin’s avionics version, and if it took those companies this long to get marine Doppler as right as what I saw in Miami, so be it.

Now let’s think about how the radar game is currently played. In our recent era of HD, UHD, xHD, SHD, etc., even small radomes are able to paint nuanced target screens so that we might better understand what’s what. True color target returns is one example, as shown above from the modestly priced Raymarine Quantum radome, first imaging the bridge and marina just outside the Miami Boat Show at 3/8 nm range and then zoomed tighter on the demo and water taxi traffic. Note how many of the individual supports for the high bridge are shown, and even some of the long fishing pier on the other side. It’s probably Quantum’s “ATX advanced target separation” at work and, like Simrad 4G and Halo beam sharpening, an example of how solid state radar can improve on the conventional magnetron-based systems.

And here’s the Simrad Halo-3 at dual range in nearly the same location. That’s clean, detailed target imagery in the conventional sense, and the true color would show better if we’d set the background to black. As discussed in part #1, both these radars were locking onto and holding MARPA targets quite well during my demos, and of course they offer several other tools for dealing with moving targets like echo trails and easy EBL/VRM marking.

Then there’s Doppler. The Furuno DRS4D-NXT can do true color, but in Target Analyzer mode most of the imagery is quite the opposite. And why not, if all that’s green and blobby is either stationary or moving away from you, while anything heading toward you at over 3 knots is highlighted in red? In this shot the demo boat had just left Sea Isle Marina and was about to go under the Venetian Causeway bridge when another boat apparently cleared the marina entrance and picked up speed in our direction, which caused it to go red on our screen.

Right after that bridge another boat came zipping in from the same abaft-the-beam sector — an area which many of us tend to ignore — and was also quickly highlighted. In fact (wish I had the screenshot), when this vessel popped red, its slower wake stayed green on the Furuno TZT2 display!

Again and again, and nearly instantly, the Doppler lit up boats headed toward us and faded them back to green when they passed us or turned away. When you see it working in clear conditions where you also see exactly what the closer targets are doing, the Target Analyzer display makes complete and simple sense. Then, of course, you start imagining what this newer, easier level of situational awareness would be like during a light-crazy Miami night or in a deep Maine fog speckled with ledges, nav aids, and fast dancing lobster boats.

This screen also illustrates the NXT’s RezBoost beam sharpening capability. Before we turned it up, the pair of boats headed toward us almost looked like a single target.

When I wrote about the February 11th introduction of NXT and Fantom, at least one reader wondered if there might be problems with Doppler speed discrimination when your boat is bouncing around in a seaway, and that may be a valid concern. A few times in Miami a wake jerked the demo boat enough that a couple of nearby targets lit up briefly. Eric Kunz said they’re looking at integrating motion sensor info to help with that, but note how NXT can automatically and quickly acquire up to 40 ARPA-style targets around you (plus 60 more MARPA-style), and I believe that those vectors are more dampened than the Target Analyzer coloring.

We didn’t get to see it, but Kunz said that NXT can both image or filter rain cells well and can even highlight hard targets within precipitation. When I asked if the Doppler was or could be used in other ways like improving sea clutter filtering, it took a little translation, but then one of the engineers smiled and got out this intriguing answer: “Potential!”

Garmin product manager Ryan Schmitz had a similar answer, but he also pointed out how sea clutter isn’t as important once you’re confident that actual moving targets amongst the clutter will be highlighted. This screen illustrates his point fairly well as the gain on the GMR Fantom 4 is in Auto High mode, but I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t missing any of the traffic around the show. Garmin hasn’t settled on a final Motionscope (Doppler) speed filter yet, but red targets on this screen are coming in our boat’s general direction at over 5 knots, and green targets are moving away from us at over 5. Do you like getting both coming and going info (as I do)?

Notice the lines of fixed targets seen on this screen and others in the series. I’m told that they are poles marking some sort of protected area, but I can’t find them on any chart. At any rate, they showed up quite well on all four of the solid state radars I experienced in Miami, and that’s great. But only the Doppler-using radars offered some assurance that they were fixed, and when a boat occasionally moved through that area (as seen above), Doppler spotted it faster than any crack radar operator I recall sailing with. And those of us operating the NXT or Fantom involved didn’t have to do a darn thing except to mentally integrate the clear and valuable target motion info into the bigger scene unfolding around us. Game changing?

This screenshot was taken just two minutes before the Fantom had locked in on all the MARPA targets seen on this part #1 screen, which speaks to fast MARPA, but isn’t this screen (which took no effort) equally useful? It seemed like Peter Truslow, a sometimes fellow Mainer who was driving the Edgewater demo boat (and also built it), was thinking along those lines; his exclamations of delight about Motionscope (Doppler) didn’t stop.

I suspect that this sort of reaction will ripple out around the boating world. I also suspect that much of what I saw will get improved and that many more models of solid state radar with Doppler features will come along. This is a good time to note that Navico has been talking about Halo Doppler at least since I mentioned it after the NMEA conference. And that FLIR already has at least one very interesting Doppler ground surveillance radar, and that the Raymarine product manager who showed me Quantum thinks it may have enough horsepower to adopt Doppler. I won’t hold him to it — radar development is hard — and I can’t predict the overall timetable of this shift, but…

…While I may be carried away, I’m seeing Doppler target speed discrimination as the killer feature that will drive a lot of competition, sales, and more relaxed boating. Verily, I even picture legions of crusty sailors and power cruisers with older, “hey, it works” radars having “come to Doppler” moments.

But all these radars are just one (important) part of larger MFD systems, and there are many factors to picking the best one for any given boater (though it’s hard to go too far wrong at this point). That’s a much bigger discussion, but since I already showed some of the many controls Garmin has included with the Fantom and its latest MFD software, let me go a little further. While I probably over fiddled with those controls, as you might notice in the multiple radar palettes, as we ended the demo I wistfully chattered about how it would be nice to save multiple radar setups. That’s when Ryan Schmitz showed me the elaborate screen below. It’s is under the new “star” tab you can see on the Garmin shots just above, which means easy access for power users, easy “nevermind” for others.

While it’s probably no surprise that I personally like nameable and deeply configurable modes like this, the bigger picture is that even “Power of Simple” Garmin is reaching out to user types it didn’t used to court. Perhaps easy presumptions about Big Four styles are getting thin? Even the game beyond radar may be changing.

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Written by Adam Hyde on Mar 29, 2016 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

West Marine’s first ever Marine Electronics Expo will kick off in four states (NY, FL, CA, CT) on April 8th (thru 9th) and also online. Besides some deals on electronics gear, there will be live educational seminars from Icom, Shakespeare, Lowrance, Fusion, Uniden, Lowrance, Simrad, B&G, Spot, Delorme, and maybe more at the select stores…

This looks like a good opportunity to learn about radar, 3D sonar, managing a MFD and a variety of other topics (but note that the schedule above is tentative and only apply to a sample store location). There will also be product demonstrations and the ability to ask questions directly to manufacturers. Additional vendors on hand include Garmin, Sony and Raymarine, and Ray will apparently host celebrity fishing captain appearances in some of the Expo locations. See: West Marine press release with list of Expo locations and more.

*Note: Planned for West Marine’s website is a dedicated Expo page where there will also be a gathering of the electronics advice already online (below) and hopefully more. We’ll add a link here ASAP.

ACR LED Searchlight

Few marine searchlights are as widely used and popular as the ACR RCL-100. That searchlight used halogen bulbs to produce 200,000 candela of light output, but the new RCL-100 LED version was seen above in Miami and will soon come to retail with the same output. While there are no power consumption specifications yet, it is likely that the draw will be substantially less. The light features two-speed 360 degree rotation and a 9 degree up / 17 degree down (internal tilt). Multiple control options include wired, wireless and app-based wifi control. The ultra-bright 9 LED’s are rated by the manufacturer at 40,000 hours. This is a high-end tool and pricing may exceed the $1,200 cost of the halogen model, though perhaps not over the lifetime of the LED technology.

Scanstrut USB charging ports

Keeping a phone or tablet charging in a wet environment is asking for premature failure of the USB connectors, or worse. For something more robust, check out the new Scanstrut SC-USB-01 USB charging port, which is IPX4 rated. For a product that looks like it will last and has a snappy design, it’s $23 online price may seem quite reasonable. The needed DC input can range from 6-30V and the dual outlets deliver standard USB 5V at 1 and 2.1 amp. For potential issues regarding tablet charging see Panbo’s 2014 USB discussion (though Scanstrut likely did it right). Finally, the charger’s required panel hole size allows retrofit to existing USB and cigarette lighter style 12v outlets. Panbo is currently reviewing the Scanstrut Rokk Mini so stay tuned for that…

Navico Precision-9 Compass

Navico (Lowrance, Simrad, B&G) has introduced an upgrade to the RC42N Rate Compass and perhaps also an answer to competitive devices like the Maretron SSC300, Furuno PG700, Garmin MHS, Airmar H2183, and Raymarine EV1/EV2, which to some extent use AHRS multi-axis technology. The Navico Precision-9, like the others, offers easy power and data installation via NMEA 2000 connectivity, and is fairly compact at 4.7 inches in diameter (the bracket is optional). Heading is purportedly accurate to about 2 degrees after calibration, and the Precision-9 also notably delivers heave information (that can presumably correct fishfinder imagery for swell motion. An automatic calibration routine is initiated from compatible MFDs. It can also be done manually by turning the boat 360 degrees three times within five minutes of power up. The compass can suppossedly be installed anywhere except on steel hulled vessels where it needs to go at least 3 feet up a mast.

Note that Navico does not warn users about limitations on how Precision-9 sensor data is used, unlike the multi-named GPS/heading sensor introduced in 2013. The Precision-9 has a suggested price of $645.

Triton Artificial Gills Rebreather – Fantasy?

Approaching $1 Million in Indiegogo crowd-sourced funding, Triton’s $300 underwater breathing device is said to ship by this December. We don’t use the term “game-changer” lightly but it might be in this case. If you remember Sean Connery in the 1965 Bond flick Thunderball, you might have seen a similar device envisioned (see video below). But then “might” is the operative word. According to Tech Insider a product like the Triton could still be decades away. After three years of development the Triton — not related to Triton luxury subs — purportedly uses a special membrane combined with a very powerful micro compressor to extract oxygen from the water and allow you to breath to a depth of 15 feet. But the claim gets better…

45 minutes to charge! We’d have to see that to believe it. Wouldn’t it be the perfect device for zinc and propeller maintenance or perhaps bottom cleaning? That is unless your hull sits below 15 feet of water. If that’s your reality you should probably buy scuba gear or pay a dive shop to do the work. Until Panbo gets to test the real device don’t believe everything you read on the Internet!

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Written by Ben Ellison on Apr 15, 2016 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

At this moment in time, the Garmin GPSMAP 8600 multifunction display announced in February may be the most powerful premium MFD available. That’s the “little” 8617 model of the series above — apparently now shipping at $7,500 retail — and that Quatix 3 smart/fitness/boat watch is not trivial technology either. So even given two full days with four Garmin-loaded boats, I feel like I only grazed the surface of all that’s going on. And frankly, the story is similar across the four major electronics brands and beyond. Next week, for instance, we hope to share some startling new features that may be coming to an MFD already on your boat. Today, though, let’s look at some Garmin demo highlights…

Before we get into the details, a warning is in order. The modern marine multifunction display has so many possible functions — plus Garmin is already integrating an ecology of its own portable gadgets (which the other brands may emulate via partnerships) — that a boater may throw up his or her hands in confusion and exasperation. Please don’t freak out; you generally only have to buy or use the devices, functions and features you want, and if they’re designed right, they should be fairly easy to utilize.

For instance, it only took a few Quatix 3 button pushes to get the watch into “Fish” mode — though, my bad, the start icon is about halfway through the successful sailfishing afternoon that Adam gleefully covered — and few more once we tied up. Fish mode, like many other “Activity” apps you can load into the watch, starts the GPS and brings up a couple of relevant data screens (I could record fish catches and set a tournament timer in this case). And, just like hikes and other activities I’ve recorded with the watch, the data automatically went up on my personal Garmin Connect website (above) and also to the Connect app on my phone.

It’s true that Connect does not show the fish catch and times I recorded, and there’s no way that any watch could figure out how many calories I burnt (or drank) on that mostly slow boat ride, but maybe that will be straightened out the next time I try Fish mode, because the apps and the watch update themselves automatically. And, yes, the boat’s own GPS hit nearly 60 mph on our way back through the Miami cut, so that data looks spot on. Note that Fish mode and many other Quatix 3 features work without any other Garmin devices, but during the demos I was also able to see boat data like depth and water temperature on the watch and also use the Q3 to operate Garmin Virb XE cameras that were additionally networked to Garmin MFDs.

Talk about connectivity – check out the backside of an 8600 MFD and also understand that these displays support both WiFi and ANT+ wireless protocols. Note that the four Ethernet ports make this MFD an able network switch and that the HDMI IN and USB ports mean that this display can show and control a touch command charting program running on an onboard PC (or any other PC program).

Also, HDMI IN and CVBS (analog) video are both encoded inside the 8600 and can thus go out on Ethernet. Finally, the SAE J1939 port means that many engines or engine networks can plug directly into an 8600 for gauge display and that the data can also be bridged to the NMEA 2000 network. In fact, we learned in Miami that this J1939 port will soon be included on new Garmin 7400/7600 MFDs (as a rolling change that will not effect prices but will get new part numbers).

Here is the 8617 (seen in the top photo) imaging the Miami Harbor bottom with four different sonar modes emanating from a GSD 25 Premium Sonar Module and three different transducers (B175HW, GT51M, and Panoptix PS21-TM). Note that if you click this or the following screenshots bigger, what you’ll see is actually 80% of the original 1,920 x 1,200 pixel screenshot (to keep the image download reasonable). Also note that while the 8600 series has no direct transducer ports, the somewhat less premium and less expensive GPSMAP 7616xsv can process all the sonar modes above with just the three transducers involved.

Adam already explained that the Panoptix transom transducer was temporarily mounted with a pole and suction cups for this demo, and the little boat icon upper right in the LiveVü Forward window shows how its internal heading sensor knows where it’s pointing relative to the boat. Finally, note the distinct pole-like object seen on the left side of the SideVü window, because it’s a day beacon that we used to test the new FrontVü collision and grounding avoidance view coming to Panoptix Forward looking sonar.

Tada! There’s the daybeacon seen 90 feet ahead of the transducer with FrontVü overlaid on LiveVü. The Garmin software is guesstimating solid objects — bottom and steel beacon pole in this case — very much like the Navico ForwardScan I’ve been long testing. FrontVü was impressive even in beta version with temporary mount, but I remain skeptical about the 300-foot claimed range, particularly in shallower water, and FrontVü won’t be useful to cruisers until Garmin can figure out a through-hull transducer design (which I’m sure they’re working on).

In the long term, though, I suspect that Panoptix-type technology may be the one that can finally see an awash container or deadhead in enough time for a fast skipper (or another algorithm?) to avoid it, and right now LiveVü seems capable of brightly painting a manatee or similar, no problem.

Another of Garmin’s many February announcements was BlueChart g2 HD Charts with Auto Guidance 3.0 and other enhancements. We only got a brief look at the new Auto Guidance, but it does seem able to handle narrow and complicated waters much like the impressive Navionics Dock-to-Dock (supposedly coming soon to Raymarine MFDs). On the screen above you can see how AG3 has calculated a route under the downtown Miami bridges and is also warning us about some submerged pilings ahead (why it didn’t route around them I don’t know).

Note how the route goes by the day beacon where we’d already tested FrontVü, as you can see not only by our track but also by the Quickdraw Contours feature discussed here last November. And there’s Fantom doppler radar highlighting three vessels coming our way even while at fairly long range in the downtown mess (and spotting something like a convoy of semis headed away from us inland).

This screen may be helpful as it shows G2 charting for the whole downtown area with the Contender 25 parked in its home slip where I later spent more time with the Fantom radar. Note that by this point I’d gotten the Panbo test Virb XE waterproof camera networked with the 8617 MFD. In fact, I made that connection on three different demo boats, and I think the Virb XE integration is even more sensational than when it first wowed me in Baltimore.

I’ve always liked how you can tap a Garmin chart, sonar, or radar window to full screen, but note how you can do the same with the camera view, thanks to that icon at the right end of the cam control bar. I’ll have more on camera support below, but note, too, how you can get right to the autopilot menu from its control bar.

Now — sorry, Garmin, can’t help myself — I’ll interrupt the screenshots to show a relevant example of the paper-like raster electronic charts that I’d love to see on these beautiful Garmin screens just like I can view them on many Furuno, Raymarine, B&G, and Simrad displays! I know that many boaters don’t give a hoot about raster charts, and this one would definitely be harder to use with the text and soundings upside down, which is what you’d see if the display was in heading up mode like the screens above and below.

But, dang, aren’t human cartographers usually better at clarifying for the boater important details in a complicated place like this? Honk if you want Garmin to add raster chart support, because I’m pretty sure they could display the freely available U.S. NOAA portfolio quite easily and maybe Garmin’s chart department could even work with their international hydrographic office partners to include raster charts like C-Map has done with their 4-D Max (Raymarine Bahamas image here) and Max-N+ for Navico charting bundles.

At any rate, here’s a zoomed-in screen of the Sea Isle Marina and the low Venetian Causeway bridge (so nicely detailed on the raster chart). You can see that Quickdraw Contours presumes water depths right over charted piers and other objects just like the Navionics Boating app’s SonarChart Live does. The big difference right now is that the underlying sonar logs get uploaded to Navionics and processed into the more rational SonarCharts that many Navionics users can download to the app or to a Freshest Data card that can display on many MFDs (this Navionics PDF includes Garmin MFDs, but there’s big caveat to that).

The Garmin folks at the demo made no promises about future developments, hardly hinted at them in fact, but it seems very likely that Garmin will eventually let users upload and share the depth data they collect (if they want to). And the process will probably be smooth and easy.

Hopefully, the charts will help you understand this Fantom radar screen taken while the Contender 25 was in its marina slip. It also happened to be low tide, so there were even taller obstructions very close by and extending all the way out to the 3/4 mile range I’d set. All the Doppler (MotionScope in Garmin speak) moving targets, for instance, are vehicles moving across the high bridge on the other side of the Venetian Causeway bridge and some of the AIS equipped vessels being targeted are beyond all that.

Now I’ll admit that it’s a bit odd to further test a new solid state Doppler radar like this, but it was blowing like stink, so most boats were staying put (like us) and the way Fantom handled the traffic on the bridge was amazing. The Contender’s heading was almost perpendicular to the bridge, but just about every westbound truck or bus — cars didn’t show enough over the bridge’s fixed guard rails — tracked red and the eastbound ones tracked green. So at least at rest, Fantom is superb at separating possibly coming traffic from going away traffic and it can do it even in the midst of large fixed targets. No, we have not heard much about actual Fantom (or Furuno NXT) use at sea, but my expectations are high.

On this screen the radar is still in 3/4 mile range, but I’ve used the 8617’s multitouch screen to zoom in on the big bridge and the targets beyond. I’m not sure I’ve seen that radar viewing capability before and it seemed useful, especially since you just tap the Stop Panning button to go back to normal. If I had managed to capture the AIS info we tapped onto the screen, you’d see that the vessel was Mark Cuban’s 288 foot Fountainhead which was tied up to the new Island Gardens megayacht marina on the west side of Watson Island. That’s a big target, but still the Fantom was picking it up from a low mount on the 25-foot center console and either through or over the huge concrete bridge supports.

Talking about huge, Garmin is now up to 11,600 employees according to a presentation we received, and a lot of those are engineers. I believe that’s a bit scary to the marine electronics competition, but then again marine is still a very small part of what the company does, and Garmin no doubt feels small compared to, say, Apple and Google.

Back to the screens, here’s one showing all the possible window layouts on the 8400/8600 series and this vast choice may also extent to the 7400/7600 series. (Garmin shoppers should be especially careful about feature presumptions these days, because the company has been changing up its underlying marine operating system — in fact, the premium 8600 runs Linux — and that makes backward compatibility harder.)

Combine all those window layouts with the ability to change the window split lines (and the ability to tap a window full size I mentioned), and you should be able to build favorite screens that are very functional, even on a mega-multifunctional display. I was building this screen and about to put a video source in that third window when I realized that this 8600 series can network analog and HDMI video all around a boat. That’s darn impressive in itself, but actually I was looking for the special Virb X/XE window type that can show and control one to five wireless cams!

I will do full reviews of the Quatix 3 and Virb XE eventually, but here’s what I think after fairly extensive testing: Once users realize what’s possible with these boat “accessories” from other Garmin departments and how easy they are to integrate with Garmin marine electronics, they are going to be quite popular. But there’s also an opportunity for the competition here, because what Garmin probably won’t do is to integrate with devices like Pebble smartwatches and GoPro cameras.

Yes, I’m pretty sure things are going to get more complicated faster, and we’ve barely touched on the online integration part. Please don’t freak out, and do hopefully enjoy a short video demonstrating how the Virb XE can integrate boat data with what it collects itself:

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Written by Adam Hyde on May 19, 2016 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

If you have a Raymarine a, c, e, eS or gS Series MFD, you just got an astonishing array of free new features thanks to the just announced and available LightHouse Release 17 software update. In fact, I got the chance to try an early version of R17 on my boat Journey and have so much to report that I’ll divide it over two entries. In part 1, we’ll look at R17’s new full-featured weather display capabilities, as well as some advanced chart and waypoint enhancements, plus the unique WiFi capabilities that Ray has introduced over recent LightHouse releases. In part 2, I’ll share my adventures with the first MFD implementation of Navionics SonarChart Live and Dock-to-dock Autorouting, and there’s even more to milestone Release 17…

Lots of new feature information, a PDF handbook, and a link to the large R17 download are all available on the Lighthouse II page.The folks at Raymarine have been improving their MFD software at breakneck speed with R17 the third public release since January. R16 v16.47 was just delivered in late March to add Quantum solid-state radar support, new search and rescue patterns, and other improvements. In fact, if your boat is still on the hard after a long winter your Ray MFDs are probably running v15.59, which added the new AIS collision avoidance features Panbo explored. Note that the decimal part of the release number is an indication of how many versions are tested before a new whole number release goes public. For instance, I’ve been testing beta version LightHouse v17.34 for about two weeks, but today’s release is v17.45.

You should have seen the smile on my face when Raymarine product manager Mark Garland walked Ben and I through an online Powerpoint of all the new features in mid April. The “touch anywhere” SideVision waypoint placement feature (above) was “near the bottom” of Ray’s whopping 54-slide r17 presentation. (I couldn’t test this feature — which is a catch up with Garmin, Navico, and Humminbird side imaging — but Ben says he saw it work well on his fishing trip to Marco Island.) Perhaps the biggest surprise was a flexible new weather viewer.

Theyr & free weather

That’s my Raymarine c125 on a docked Journey’s flybridge showing LightHouse R17’s new weather app in action (photoshopped for clarity). The green icon that launches the app had to be added to my home screen (via the Customize menu), but that may be changed in the finished release. Once tapped, you’ll have a GRIB (Gridded Binary) weather data viewer that can use any source’s GRIB files that you bring to the MFD on an SD card or it can access weather forecasts from Theyr.com that you can get instantly if the MFD is online (and that you can also download for higher resolution and later use).

Having access to Theyr data on an MFD can be thought of as an alternative to the Sirius Satellite Marine Weather that has long been available on LightHouse displays and costs $13, $30, or $55 per month depending on your selection of data packages. You may not know of UK-based Theyr, but they offer worldwide forecasting derived from various models like GFS and NMM. Here’s Theyr’s global coverage map with the resolution, forecast length and frequency of updates. North America has coverage to 4km resolution with four-day forecasts and hourly updates. Theyr also offers an iPad app, which is included in a Ray MFD subscription made through the LightHouse Store.

With no Sirius hardware to buy, $15 per month or $99 per year seems very reasonable to have the convenience of U.S. NEXRAD and Theyr worldwide GRIB forecasts conveniently viewable on a nice bright helm display. The screenshot above is the Theyr GRIBview iPad app pricing options if you buy direct from Theyr. Bottom line, you pay $20 less per month for “super-high-resolution” data including NEXRAD by subscribing through Raymarine.

Ray/Theyr are offering a free 30 day trial just by choosing “Start Trial” on the MFD’s Chart Store login screen, and that’s what I tried. Once logged in you have two ways to fetch weather data and they have different retention implications. The first is to simply select/touch one of the data type icons at the top of the screen — like the green flag for wind — and the data will be instantly fetched. This data lives for 12 hours and writes to a hidden cached file, used for quick access and when you don’t need the data later. If you exit the viewer app and launch another one, the data will be erased. To save a GRIB forecast for future offline viewing, you select download in the right menu bar.

The forecast download screen shows the types of data available but note that “Tidal Stream” is presently only for Northwest Europe. It’s nice to have some granular control over the resolution and frequency of data along with a slider to control the forecast duration, because the download file sizes are dependent on those selections plus how much of the base map you’ve zoomed into. NEXRAD files can be particularly large, with one I fetched for the entire US/Canada west coast weiging in at just over 26MB.

Here are GRIB file sizes for a two day detailed forecast with hourly time steps. Kudos to Theyr for the relatively small sizes (0.1 to 0.2 MB). Underneath you’ll see GRIB files from two other free sources — Global Marine Networks & GRIB.us — that I added to my microSD card for testing. If you don’t choose to subscribe to Theyr data you can still display GRIB 1 format files you load directly from SD card.

This is the downloaded 7-day wind GRIB from Global Marine Networks for an area they labeled Vancouver. I’d call it “Vancouver Offshore” because that’s blue water coverage and probably not useful for coastal cruisers. I’m not sure of the exact data resolution but it seemed to be fairly low when I zoomed in. Here’s the wave data file from Global Marine:

Those are amazingly calm seas on the west coast of North America! The info is not super useful for me but if you were doing the Vic-Maui yacht race it might be.

Mark at Raymarine suggested I try GRIB files from GRIB.us. This turned out to be a bigger challenge than it needed to be. I tried to register multiple times, but a glitch on the website won’t send out new account activation codes. I hope they fix this soon. In the end Ben found an old test account login and emailed me a GRIB.us file for my area. This time 7-day wind and pressure data were included in the same file as you can see from the two icons:

From the GRIB.us website…“The data being served here is from the US GFS global weather model. Its has a native resolution of 0.5 degrees and includes surface winds and barometric pressure. The forecast you get from the web page is a 7 day forecast with a 3 hour timestep.”

That purple low pressure area is headed this way but only shows briefly when I looked through the timesteps. For my location it seems GRIB.us data is more useful than Global Marine because it covers the full coastline. It will take longer term testing to gauge the accuracy of the different free data sources but it’s nice to see free GRIB files viewable on my MFD. I wasn’t successful getting PredictWind files to display properly and guess that they aren’t in the GRIB 1 format that Raymarine uses. Readers will no doubt try to display a variety of GRIB files, so please let us know your results. Other possible free sources are the NOAA Ocean Prediction Center and of course the SailDocs GRIB Service.

While Theyr explains better than I can how their precision weather is more detailed and full featured than the free sources I looked at, I found the presenation definitely better and it includes NEXRAD precipitation radar for at least the U.S.

In fact, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Theyr NEXRAD covers the lower portion of Canada’s west coast as well. That’s a rainy April Vancouver day and so I stayed tied to my dock. The horizontal line on the right side of the map shown in my animated GIF is the US/Canada border. The colored rainfall areas step in 10 minute increments up to one hour ahead (possibly changed to 4 hours in the public R17 release).

Because my c125 is not a touch-screen I found that it takes some practice to work with the GRIB Viewer screen (as well as that slider on the data download page). For instance, as soon as you download data the screen starts animating and it isn’t obvious that you need to activate the right menu bar to stop or control the animation. In my opinion non-touch capable MFDs would create a better user experience if they didn’t animate by default.

Here I’m selecting a spot on the map (English Bay) which brings up a View Graphs option. These are Theyr “meteograms” showing detailed data tabulations for a specific area:

I will probably be using screens like this on the MFD and iPad app a lot this summer to avoid the strong north-westerlies that can make crossing from Vancouver to Vancouver Island challenging. Note that if you download weather forecast files one day and want to look at them again the next because you don’t have Internet, you won’t see see any data in the GRIB Viewer until you access it the My Files area and reload the file you downloaded previously. This will probably perplex a lot of users but that’s how it works. (Also I’m not sure why wave frequency — the zeros at the bottom of the screen above — is missing, but perhaps the data isn’t available in that area.)

For future improvements I would love to see a departure planner like PredictWind offers (above) which compares conditions over four days based on criteria you set. Note that Raymarine’s PC Voyage Planner software will apparently also display Theyr data as part of your paid subscription. I could not make this software work on my new under-powered $180 Lenovo ideapad laptop (Windows 10, 2GB RAM), but it might with more memory. Finally, if you want to run the weather app on multiple networked MFDs you will need to download weather data individually on each display. The good news is that you can use the same account and don’t need multiple subscriptions.

Ray AP & Client WiFi

So how does a Raymarine MFD download Theyr weather data? Starting with v15.59 update last September, LightHouse software got new WiFi capabilities that are critical to the Theyr services and also possibly important to boaters using Ray WiFi in other ways. Lighthouse MFDs can now go online and more. My first experience with it was connecting my c125 to my Mikrotik boat router (which I’ve named “Panbo dot com” so that nearby boaters know where to find me). As you can see from the screenshot the router wasn’t connected to the Internet at the time and it was nice that the MFD reminded me.

That situation was because of a firmware upgrade gone wrong on my old Rogue Wave WiFi booster, but once a new one is installed, I should be able to download Theyr data via my marina’s WiFi access point, or once underway I’ll connect the Rogue Wave to my iPhone’s WiFi hotspot if I want a fresher forecast or current NEXRAD imagery. (I used a direct connection, MFD to iPhone hotspot, for this testing.)

I often use the RayControl app on my iPad as an MFD at my lower helm or as a remote touchpad so I can sit in a more comfortable position at the upper helm. I was curious if RayControl would connect to the MFD through my WiFi router but it unfortunately doesn’t. However, you can still use the Ray MFD as a WiFi access point for an iPad or similar device even while the MFD is online, and in fact your device will also be online via the MFD. In other words, the MFD is acting as both an access point and a client to another access point, which is useful (and currently unique among WiFi MFDs, we think).

The new ability of LightHouse MFDs to both go online and be an access point may be best way to go. For instance, when my c125 could only be an access point, it was somewhat painful to use with my cellular-capable iPad. The iPad, like many no-so-smart phones, will disregard its cell connection when it’s on WiFi because it presumes that the WiFi connects to the Internet. On the other hand, I had quieter afternoons with no iMessages or email.

Advanced Map Options

This screenshot shows some of the new Navionics Map Options that come with R17. SonarChart Live can be activated here along with a transparency setting I’ll talk more about in part 2. A new fishing range feature colors the map differently depending on what depths you enter. You could fish 40-60 foot contours which in this case it colored white on the the West Vancouver shoreline near a popular Coho salmon migration area. Incidentally, the red crosses in shallow water are drawn based on the minimum safe depth setting not shown on this Options menu. Potentially it’s a nice visual way to avoid areas that are shallower than your comfort level. (Note that the air temperature wasn’t really 33.8; that’s coming from my fridge via a Yacht Devices temperature sensor I’m testing.)

I’ll end part 1 with a screenshot showing the customize page screen used to setup the GRIB Viewer. It also shows the new switch panel and audio apps I’ll discuss in part 2 along with my testing of the first MFD implementations of Navionics Dock-to-Dock Autorouting and SonarChart Live. Raymarine’s LightHouse R17 is a big release.

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Written by Adam Hyde on May 23, 2016 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

When Raymarine’s significant LightHouse software Release 17 became public last Thursday, I’d already had a chance to test a beta R17 version on the water and was able to discuss the new global weather display feature along with the LightHouse WiFi capabilities that can make weather data access fairly easy. In this part 2 entry, I’ll share my experiences with the new Navionics SonarChart Live display and Dock-to-dock Autorouting, and also discuss R17’s new NMEA 2000 Audio app and other improvements…

It’s important to understand that you need a Navionics chart card with a current Freshest Data subscription in order to use SonarChart Live and the vastly improved autorouting (as warned about above). In fact, you probably need to update the data on your card to get the charts that work with Dock-to-dock as well as the correct “eligibility file” (and looking at your card with the Navionics Chart Installer program is a another way to check your subscription status).

By the way, the charts on an expired Navionics card will still work for all other tasks, and the original Navionics autorouting will continue to work on Ray MFDs until the end of 2016. But as seen on Journey’s Raymarine c125 above, I did have the right card to test the new Navionics features during my first cruise of the season.

SonarChart Live

Let’s recall that while SonarCharts have been available on the Navionics Boating app and on some multifunction displays for a while, Raymarine was first to integrate with the app so that sonar logs collected on an MFD can be easily added to the public charts. That’s how Ben helped chart the Barred Island anchorage above in 2014.

Later the Navionics app got SonarChart Live (SCL), which meant a tablet and smartphone with depth input could paint rough raw data bathy maps in real time and even more easily upload them to Navionics for further processing into the master SonarChart database. Ben tested SCL using a Vexilar WiFi fishfinder, and his iPad mini screens above show how the raw Live data differed from the existing SonarChart (which was later improved with his data).

My depth sounder is a basic but reliable Standard Horizon DS150 with a thru-hull transducer and the ability to output NMEA 0183 depth data, which I have multiplexed to my c125 MFD along with AIS and DSC data. Strangely, it only outputs data when the SH display is set to show depth in meters. But SonarChart Live can purportedly use any depth input the Ray display sees, and it seemed to work fine in my testing.

You can see SonarChart Live guesstimating a bottom contour swath as I took Journey out of my Mosquito Creek Marina slip on Vancouver Harbor’s North Shore and headed west under the Lions Gate Bridge to the mouth of the Capilano River (Google Map here). Though it’s a popular coho salmon fishing area, the season hadn’t begun and I pretty much had the area seen above to myself on a beautiful day. Note how red is SonarChart Live’s default shading color to differentiate it from the regular chart or SonarChart blue shading it overlays, and the shading intensity is correlated to depth based on a user setting.

Since Ben tested SonarChart Live, the Navionics app has gotten the ability to correct the Live data for a nearby tide prediction station (as well as the transducer’s depth), and that’s also true in Raymarine’s implementation. So when I switched on Tide Correction in the Advanced Map Options menu, the data was corrected about 10.2 feet to show low tide soundings like regular charts.

You can also control SonarChart Live overlay opacity as shown on the smaller screen above (which was taken from the R17 New Features PDF). Notice how I was using little opacity — that is, lots of transparency — when leaving my marina so I could also see the underlying charted depth bathymetry and the above water structure. By the time I took the screen below, I had turned the opacity up to 100%.

I guess I should not have been surprised when I measured the width of the SonarChart Live bathymetry swath at about 220 feet wide because it looks similar to what Ben saw on the app. In fact, according to Navionics a 50 meter swath is the standard convention for surveying that has been adopted by the industry including other depth collecting features like Navico Insight Genesis, Humminbird Autochart, and Garmin Quickdraw. There’s a lot of guesstimating going on — especially if you’re in shallow water with your transducer only seeing a narrow section of the bottom — but you can improve the accuracy a lot by making multiple passes. Plus, if you contribute your sonar logs to Navionics, the data will be rationalized with all other data collected in the same area.

Incidentally, most of my SCL data was collected at under 6 knots, but I did go up on plane to about 17 knots as I moved past the mouth of Capilano River (shown as the green low tide area in the bottom right of the screenshot chart above). SonarChart Live kept laying down contours no problem. You can see that the soundings I created were similar to the underlying chart values so I felt some assurance as to its accuracy.

Zooming in further on my return under the Lions Gate Bridge, you can see my parallel track joining up with my outbound readings. Since I’ve got the SCL overlay opacity setting cranked up to 100% here, it’s painting over chart features like the bridge. (The pixelation on the right was a sporadic screen rendering issue that may have been fixed between the LightHouse version 17.34 I tested and the public v17.45 version.)

Back at the dock the next step if you want to share your data is to either sync the Navionics app with the Raymarine MFD or take your chart card home and run it with Navionics Chart Installer program. Your data should be processed and added to the SonarChart community data within about a week, and it seems quite predictable that Raymarine will eventually make the upload process even easier using the MFD WiFi discussed in Part 1.

Overall I really like SonarChart Live. It is easy to use and I think most useful to create your own chart detail for fishing, diving or choosing the best anchoring spot.

Dock-to-dock Autorouting

Turn on the Navionics Dock-to-dock Autorouting now in my Raymarine c125 Build Route menu, pick my start and end waypoints, and then wait for the route to magically build — that’s it!

There’s some history here. Almost two years ago in Lighthouse 11, Raymarine offered Navionics autorouting (if you were using a Navionics card) but I was underwhelmed by the results. By contrast, Navionics Dock-to-dock is a pretty amazing and award-winning replacement autorouting technology that Ben comprehensively explored when it came to the Navionics Boating app last December. The Raymarine version of Dock-to-dock in R17 was previewed last fall at METS and it may have taken this long to launch because it’s not a trivial feature.

Here I’ve built my first route from just outside my marina breakwater to the end of False Creek. This is a scenic 7.2 nautical mile trip that I often entertain guests with because of the protected sections at the start and finish. Navionics told me that the MFD software and Boating app algorithms are pretty much the same, and what you see on the chart is actually two routes overlaid on each other. I wanted to see if my MFD would calculate the same 43 waypoint route as the iPad, and it did exactly.

Here’s a closer look at the end of fairly narrow False Creek as you move under the Cambie Bridge. Note the triangular warning symbols used to mark waypoints. These are pretty liberally shown after autorouting calculations and are meant to warn you about dangers like shallow water or to check bridge heights. Dock-to-dock does not check your boat’s air height, but route calculation is very dependent on your minimum safe depth setting. (To avoid unwanted “Safe route could not be generated” messages, I did all my testing with this set at 5 feet.)

Dock-to-dock did a great job respecting the lateral buoys near Cambie Bridge and elsewhere, but I didn’t like how it guided me east of the QC west cardinal buoy, which literally means “safe water is to the west of the buoy.” In this case cutting the corner a bit wouldn’t be a critical error but the route is too close to the rocks for my liking. Note that route editing is different on the Ray MFD than on the Navionics app. On the MFD you can manually edit waypoints (quicker with a touchscreen than non) but unlike the app, the MFD-based route won’t automatically re-calculate legs after a waypoint is moved.

Another Dock-to-dock difference from the Navionics app is that on a Raymarine MFD you can’t use a Point of Interest (POI) like a marina for a route start or end. You also won’t see a list of POIs around your destination or get an immediate trip distance, time and fuel burn (though those values are available on the MFD if you have the right data windows set up and the new route is selected). Hopefully Raymarine’s implementation of Dock-to-dock will catch up with the Boating app version, but I have some suggested improvements for that one too.

For instance, it would be helpful to get a warning symbols when a Dock-to-dock route passes through a charted Traffic Separation Scheme. And perhaps I’m nitpicking but wouldn’t it be good to have warning symbols for this route that crosses the large “Whisky Golf” WG torpedo testing range near Vancouver and smack dab in the middle of the incredibly popular south-north route to Desolation Sound? I’ve skirted around WG during military testing and seen pleasure boats chased out of there. (Always check with Winchelsea control when passaging this hazardous area.)

There are also minor anomalies, like where Dock-to-dock becomes “dock-through-dock” at my Marina. This is a pretty obvious error that hopefully most boaters won’t fall for. As has been often discussed, no autorouting can be completely relied on. Think of Dock-to-dock as your junior navigator; it’s nice to have the help but you won’t trust them without checking their work!

Overall I’m pretty excited about Dock-to-dock. It is miles ahead of standard autorouting, it’s a huge time saver, and it’s great to have it on my Raymarine MFD.

C-Map ActiveCaptain

Of course Raymarine also supports C-Map cartography — right up to 4D-MAX+ — and with R17 that includes the ActiveCaptain cruising POI info that C-Map now adds to its chart cards. We discussed this and Furuno AC support on Panbo (bottom of entry), and here’s a good Ken Cirillo video on the subject. Judging from the LightHouse R17 New Features manual above, Ray is using a wider selection of POI icons than normally seen on ActiveCaptain displays, but so far it does not seem possible to filter them so that you only see the ones you want.

NMEA 2000 Audio App

The new NMEA 2000 Audio app that comes with LightHouse R17 was foreshadowed when Raymarine announced MFD control for the Rockford Fosgate PMX-5 in February. Then Ben discussed how this and other N2K stereos might bring competition to the boat integration trailblazed for years by Fusion, though he was skeptical that it could be done as well just using NMEA’s new entertainment PGNs. Well, so far the Rockford Fosgate PMX-5 is only the stereo listed as fully compatible with the new LightHouse app, but Raymarine says it’s all done with the standard N2K message library and that other stereo manufacturers can follow suit.

The Audio app does looks quite complete — as seen in part by the snips from the R17 New Features PDF above — and it includes the PMX-5’s intriguing ability to use two different audio sources with different speakers zones on your boat. So Raymarine seems well prepared to work new N2K stereos announced by JL Audio and most recently by Prospec Electronics.

And don’t fret about Raymarine keeping up with new Fusion Entertainment marine stereos; LightHouse R17 also includes numerous updates to the Fusion-Link audio app, including support for new audio sources like MTP, DAB+, and built-in Bluetooth, as well as deeper zone controls and maintenance functions.

& more in R17

As shown in the slide above from Ray’s r17 powerpoint presentation, the LightHouse Switch Panel app is improved and now able to display in a split-screen window. Raymarine’s digital switching has become quite sophisticated as also described recently on Panbo, but its use is still largely limited to boat builders.

However, there’s also a new Homescreen and Databar Locking feature that will be appreciated by many boaters like me who enjoy letting crew use the electronics to a certain extent (or sometimes accidently mess things up by ourselves ;-). And LightHouse’s new ability to choose available chart types by itself even if you’ve switched or added cards sounds good for all.

These features are explained below in the New Features PDF, which is available in full here along with the 1GB R17 update. All in all, it’s a pretty remarkable free system update and we look forward to hearing how it works for you.

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Written by Ben Ellison on Jul 9, 2016 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

Mount the new Garmin gWind Wireless 2 transducer on your mast head, plug the GNX Wind display into your NMEA 2000 network and — badda bing, badda boom — your sailboat has quality networked wind data that hardly uses any power and retails for $900 bundled. And if you already have a Garmin GPSMAP 7400/7600 or 8400/8600 chartplotter series, you don’t even need the GNX Wind to display and network the data. Meanwhile Raymarine’s updated i70s all-in-one N2K instrument display looks great on several levels…

To understand what’s going on here — and to avoid confusion about Garmin’s various current gWind offerings — note (above) all the hardware needed for the original gWind Wireless transducer that came out in 2013. In fact, the unusual sensor is actually a 2006 Nexus design and Garmin acquired Nexus in 2012. So the WSI connection box at top right bridged the wireless signal to the Nexus network and then the GND 10 box bridged Nexus data to NMEA 2000 for use on Garmin’s growing selection of instrument displays. What’s new? The gWind Wireless 2 uses the same ANT wireless protocol built into the already mentioned displays and thus neither box is needed anymore (unless your boat has a Nexus network or you want the GND 10 support for advanced integration with PC sailing programs discussed in these Panbo comments).

While the included ANT wireless wasn’t mentioned when Garmin announced the GNX Wind in January — surprise! — its notably low 0.4W maximum power draw was obviously due to the unusual semi-monochrome LCD screen we first discussed regarding its sibling GNX 20/21 instrument displays. With the gWind Wireless 2, Garmin now offers a black-box-free GNX Wireless Sail Pack that adds a GNX 20 and a depth, water speed and temp Airmar DST800 and thus makes quite a powerful and easy-to-install instrument package for a small sailboat. And it wouldn’t take much of a battery and solar panel to power it.

The gWind Wireless 2 would also be an easy addition to a Garmin equipped power boat — the maximum range is 50 feet, incidentally — but the sail packs remind me of the nearly all-wireless and solar-powered Tacktick gear which I once covered and tested and which is now available as Raymarine Wireless. I don’t know if Ray has any plans to update these instrument systems to get the flexibility and integration that NMEA 2000/SeaTalkNG and maybe Bluetooth LE would provide, but Tacktick’s design is still viable and Raymarine has certainly been busy on other fronts.

While the new i70s Multifunction Instrument Display is a fairly minor update to the original i70 design — especially compared to LightHouse R17 — there’s much to like. For instance, the i70s claims a maximum 1.7W power draw to acheive an LCD brightness of 1,200 cd/m2 (candelas per square meter or Nits), while the i70 uses 1.6W to put out a maximum of 700 Nits. So I’d expect the i70s to be much brighter if needed and also to use significantly less power to produce what looks pretty good as the i70’s max setting. (All the marine LCDs I’ve tested seem to use much less power as soon as they’re turned one click below max with the increments decreasing as you dim further).

The i70s also has the black, flat, square-cornered, mostly glass look which has become so common for marine displays like Ray’s own eS and gS Series, not to mention all the other major brand marine all-in-one full-color instrument displays (and most computer monitors, televisions, phones, tablets etc). I think that the style is going to stick and that helm stations, even mixed ones, will look better for it. (Presumably Ray will offer similarly updated p70 and p70R autopilot heads eventually, and the existing silver bezels do take black spray paint fine ;-)

What’s not necessarily common among all the square, black NMEA 2000 instrument displays are the available graphic screens, the understanding of less common N2K data types (PGNs), the calibration of sensors, and the availability of complete manuals. The i70s manual seems very complete (download under Documents tab here) and I noticed lots of goodies behind the screens.

I was amazed, for instance, at how sophisticated Raymarine has become about the calibration of Speed Through the Water (STW) sensors. I’ve collaged snips from the four well-written manual pages above to show how choices range from a simple one-point routine using GPS Speed Over Ground (SOG), automated multi-point speed runs, and even manually editing a calibration table. And all this applies to a wide range of analog transducers connected to SeaTalkNG/NMEA 2000 with Ray’s Speed pod or iTC-5, or to native N2K ducers like the same Airmar DST800 that Garmin supports. Accurate STW values are critical to quantifying sailing performance and also to calculating tidal currents and true miles-per-gallon fuel burn, not to mention your actual speed through the water. Is any other brand offering boaters such calibration?

Finally, I also collaged the extensive list of data items available on i70s Favorite Pages or on the Quick View screen that’s specific to every Favorite Page and easily accessed from it, plus the list of NMEA 2000 PGNs that transport all that data around. It’s impressive, but it’s also similar to what’s happening on a Garmin GMI 20, a B&G Triton, a Simrad IS35 or 40, a Furuno FI70, and whole lot of MFDs, not to mention the extended world of Maretron DSMs and maybe coming soon to Signal K apps of all sorts. There’s a lot left to do but I’m thinking that marine data collection and display has come a long way already.

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Written by Ben Ellison on Jul 27, 2016 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

Have we reached the era when “special ops” makes sense as a superyacht style? I joke, but RH3 would be pretty imposing even if it weren’t cruising Maine in company with the all-black, dual jet drive, 40-foot-plus RH4. Given the two other substantial black tenders on the boat deck — and lord knows what’s in the hidden arms lockers (ok, I’m fantasizing, but armament is a seriously untold big yacht story) — this team seems ready to fend off a serious bad guy attack or invade a small island nation…

RH3 is even somewhat mysterious as an AIS target because it’s still listed at Marine Traffic under the prior name Private Lives. With that intel, we learn that this 120-foot expedition yacht (with a range of 5,000 nm at 10.5 kn) was sold in early 2014 and went to Florida for a “massive refit” and the distinctive restyling. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know about the new electronics that probably went onto the ship and tenders (and also about those unusual overhead light fixtures)? RH3 departed Lunenberg this morning, headed north, and was probably the talk of the harbor as here in Camden last week.

While it seems fairly common for high-end yachts to carefully paint away brand names, this customized Airship RIB 330 went the other way. Do you suppose that Garmin helps when someone wants to highlight their 18 xHD Radome so sharply? Judging from the name and logo this speed machine is associated with the handsome sailing catamaran Archer, which I haven’t seen yet but know to be an Outremer 51 recently test sailed by Sail’s Peter Nielsen. This is yacht watching season in Penobscot Bay and thanks to AIS, Marine Traffic, and Google for the help.

Speaking of AIS, regular Panbo reader Don Joyce sent in this impressive screen showing the Nobeltec TimeZero charting software on his vintage 78-foot Cat’s Meow detailing a Class A target vessel almost 100 miles away. The atmospheric conditions were no doubt friendly, but Don has also smartly equipped his Raymarine AIS650 Class B transceiver with super low loss LMR-400 coax cable running 105 feet up the mast to a Shakespeare 6396-AIS Phase III antenna.

“Everything working well…” was the short email that came along with this pilot house image as the splendid Lord Nelson Victory Tug Sally W negotiated a thunderstorm while steaming from Camden to Portland (and points south). Panbot Allan Seymour has a GXM 51 XM satellite weather receiver networked to his GPSmap 7215 and hence real time NEXRAD rain density information helping him strategize the situation.

But a few days later, Allan sent this screen photo of Garmin Auto Guidance making a serious routing mistake somewhere near Hull, Massachusetts, adding, “7215 is set to Safe Depth 12.0. And NORMAL shoreline distance. And yet????” Well, I’ve yet to test a marine auto routing system that doesn’t sometimes make mistakes, so I’m glad that Allan is a careful navigator and hope everyone else is too. And testing the latest auto routing — like Raymarine’s implementation of Navionics Dock-to-dock and Garmin’s Auto Guidance 3.0 — is definitely on the Panbo agenda.

Admittedly, the testing agenda has been going slow, but one reason I’ve been hanging around the harbor so much (and sometimes vicariously enjoying other’s cruising) is a lot of install work. “Glass Bridge II” is almost complete, with the reinstalled Simrad NSS evo2 16 the only remaining MFD from the 2014 glass bridge set up. That’s a Garmin GPSmap 7612 in the ScanStrut Deck Pod and a Furuno TZT2 12 panel mounted alongside the NSS. Since I took this photo last week, I’ve added a Raymarine eS128 to the left side of the bridge and got a chance to try them all out on the bay.

Of course I’m going to write much more — where should I start? — but I’m already seeing lots of improvements in all brands and several truly fine new features. And I include the Simrad in that comment; it’s been updated and, besides, the three newer MFD models are arguably a response to the value/feature package NSS evo2 offered in 2014. The wonderfully ranting marine installer, Bill Bishop, may think that general purpose Android machines will supercede dedicated marine MFDs on many boats, but I’m not so sure (and what fun to argue about it).

And, another wow, It’s been great to have the new Firefly Carbon Foam battery bank keeping Gizmo rich in 12-volt juice. In fact, the bank hasn’t been charged with shore power yet, even in the boatyard, and I’ve only run the engine once at the float after a long spell of poor solar power and much use of inverter, PCs, refrigeration, stereo, AIS, N2K networks, test MFDs, etc., etc. On the two short cruises we have made so far — tracked via inReach — I was delighted by how long the bank will take a high amperage charge when the State of Charge (SOC) has been run down by, say, showing off the new underwater lights.

But I do have some tweaking to do on the battery monitoring systems (and maybe some additions). Blame neither the Smartgauge nor the Victron BMV-600S in the left-hand photo above, but the first is showing a 64% SOC, the other 100%, and neither is correct. For instance, on the right you can see that Gizmo’s solar panels are outputting 16.6 amps in bulk charge mode, 14 of which are going through the Victron shunt into the bank. That’s not what happens when the bank is truly at 100%. Counting amps is hard, however it’s done, and I may be able to improve both monitors with adjustments I haven’t attempted yet.

But I did get a Furuno NXT solid state Doppler radar installed and this afternoon I hope to add the Raymarine Quantum. Will five radomes qualify as “special ops” style or do I need to apply a lot of black paint?

And, holy cow, within minutes of first installing the NXT it was automatically highlighting any vessel moving toward me in Camden Harbor, and that includes 10-foot tenders hidden behind a forest of masts. Wait until you see how well this radar performs underway, which has to be the next entry up.

It will be harder to illustrate how well the Lumishore EOS mini and SMX92 LED underwater lights work, but I hope to have some fun trying.

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Written by Ben Ellison on Aug 2, 2016 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

After many hours testing a NXT radome on Gizmo in often busy Maine waters, I believe that Furuno’s bold “Radar Redefined” claim is completely justified. This radar is so smart that it makes sense to run it in broad daylight. Brightly highlighting the one vessel (above) moving toward me in Camden Harbor’s forest of moored and moving boats is just one example of its highly automated and intelligent features. I fear that many readers will suffer radar jealousy as I detail what I’ve seen so far, but let’s look at the bright side and honor Furuno for setting a significantly new performance bar that other major manufacturers will hopefully try hard to attain…

First, let’s consider the hardware involved. The Furuno DRS4D-NXT is a 24-inch radome (with an unusually low 8.7 inch height) that works with NavNet TZT and TZT2 multifunction displays. I’m testing it with a 12-inch TZT2, specifically known as a NavNet TZTL12F. The TZT2 hardware and software are quite different from the TZT, and while Fred Khedouri nicely shared his first impressions here last summer, I plan to add my two cents in a future entry. I will, however, point out aspects of the new TZT2 interface that add to the NXT’s easy-to-use high performance.

Installation is simple, too. Up on the mast a pigtail coming out of the radome plugs into a combined Ethernet and 12v power cable which splits at the helm end, Ethernet plugging into the TZT2 (or a Furuno network), while the 12v wires only need a 2.5 amp supply as NXT is a solid-state radar using semiconductors to transceive pulses instead of a traditional magnetron. That also means that the NXT goes into standby and transmit modes very quickly and does not emit dangerously high power microwaves.

While it’s great that Furuno (plus Garmin and Raymarine) joined the Navico brands with solid-state radar this year, I got especially excited about the Doppler radar target speed feature that Furuno (and Garmin) demonstrated at the Miami Boat Show. Well, Camden outer harbor can be an even more challenging target environment and the NXT Target Analyzer feature has consistently nailed it. All those green blobs are boats (some several boats), and a few of the ones up ahead of Gizmo are moving away or quite slowly. Similarly, the AIS target (and handsome trawler) Nobska Light behind Gizmo is not highlighted because it’s not overtaking at more than 3 knots. What are highlighted, however, are two boats that really were of concern, neither of which was particularly obvious even in broad daylight.

Now you may be thinking that the NXT targeting looks a little rough, and that deserves discussion. For one thing, the right hand radar window is set at 0.25 nm range and slightly zoomed in, while the same range is showing on the much more zoomed in chart overlay window. I could, for instance, tap that Refresh button (near Nobska Light on the overlay) and the radar would instantly range down to a more zoom appropriate and better resolved 0.125 or 0.0625 nm range. I also could have put the NXT into truer color mode with RezBoost beam sharpening to maximize the target detail. But radar target detail becomes much less important once you’re confident that the Doppler aids really work, and Target Analyzer’s red highlights are just the beginning of what NXT does with Doppler.

“Auto Acquire by Doppler” is found in the TZT2’s Home/Settings/Radar menu and in my experience it’s so good that it ought to be On by default. Furuno has long been the only company to offer ARPA, not MARPA, on recreational radars. Not surprisingly, Automatic Radar Plotting Aid means that the radar can automatically lock onto targets and determine their course and speed, as well as the Closest Point of Approach (CPA) and Time of CPA (TCPA) that you and that vessel will experience as long as both maintain course and speed. Mini ARPA (MARPA) would be better named Manual ARPA because you have to select each radar target to acquire (though touchscreens have made that easier).

At any rate, my testing indicates that Furuno has substantially outdone its own unique self; NXT’s Doppler assisted ARPA is fast, accurate, and darn smart. While it was impressive that the 19-inch DRS2D I tested could do ARPA at all, it had to be set up in a Guard Zone and it sometimes tracked nav aids and ledges as well as moving boats. NXT ARPA just works, rarely makes mistakes, and I find myself using it all the time, as you’ll see on many of the following screens. Furuno, incidentally, calls this new level of ARPA “Fast Target Tracking,” and again I believe that’s justified.

Here I’ve headed back into Camden Harbor’s main entrance while the NXT is making Doppler assisted decisions about which targets to track. Obviously, they’re not just the ones that Target Analyzer highlights, as the single fully red target hasn’t even been selected yet (it was a very fast outboard as I recall, and it did get quickly tracked shortly thereafter). The NXT also hadn’t yet tracked the AIS equipped vessel Gizmo is leaving to starboard, but it was a daysailer nearly stopped as it set sail. But note target #4, which was coming in fast on Gizmo’s port quarter and which Target Analyzer is just starting to paint red as it turned more toward Gizmo’s path.

Frankly, I don’t know the exact logic to NXT’s Doppler ARPA acquisition — the brochure simply says “any vessel approaching yours will automatically display a target vector” — but in the last 10 days it has often been my first warning of incoming targets that I could have seen myself, and I think I have a pretty good sea eye. Added to the image above is the menu you get by tapping on the radar screen. You can manually acquire a target if Doppler hasn’t done the job already, and the target is usually resolved very quickly and accurately (probably with Doppler help). This is also where you can turn Target Analyzer on or off…

…and, dang, how nice it was to realize that the automatic Doppler target acquisition works even when Target Analyzer is not in use. This screen also shows how you can left swipe the TZT2 screen to get the Data Box with its Radar control tab. Here or from the Radar screen tap menu above — there are often multiple ways to access controls on the TZT2 — you can manually control radar gain as well as sea and rain clutter. But so far the auto modes have worked very well for me (and in Target Analyzer mode, they are all auto).

In this scene I’ve been loosely following a route up the Bay and those ARPA targets behind me were meaningful. The fact that the NXT has decided to track blob #25 strongly indicates that it is meaningful. Incidentally, NXT ARPA targets seems to work pretty much regardless of range settings. I can range in tight for minutes at a time and when I range out again, distant targets are still there and accurate. Wow.

And that’s not all. The NXT and TZT2 can also display a graphic Closest Point of Approach (CPA). If you click the screen above larger, you’ll see that Gizmo will soon pass ARPA target #7 port-to-port and that the two connected “+” signs show when, where, and how the CPA will take place. I find this graphic much more informative than the numeric CPA and TCPA I could have gotten by tapping target #7, and that’s especially true in a crossing situation when a CPA of, say. 0.1 nm does not tell if that’s in front of or behind the vessel you’re crossing.

You may notice how my radar and chart overlay windows differ in terms of ARPA and AIS display. Those and many other data layers are easily controlled with the Layer menus you get by swiping up from the bottom of a TZT2 screen. The image above shows what I get when the swipe is done on the Radar window side with Chart Layer collaged above. This is an easy, powerful interface and I’m finding that I like different Layer mixes in different target density conditions. Note that full Active Captain info is available on the charts, and that these menus can be invoked in other ways including the new MCU004 Remote Control I’m also testing.

Here is a fairly extreme example of the DRS4D-NXT RezBoost beam sharpening feature at work on the TZT2. In the foreground, RezBoost is in “Standard” mode which seems to be essentially off as the targets are blobbed together and elongated in the way typical of a 24-inch radome with a 3.9 degree horizontal beam width. But with RezBoost at maximum Enhanced3, the gaggle of sailboats waiting for wind to start a race are better defined (as is the Heading error that shows on nav aids and in some of these screen shots). Furuno claims that RezBoost can effectively emulate a 2 degree beam width, and that seems true (as it is with other solid-state radars like the pioneering Simrad Broadband 4G).

But again, target detail becomes a lot less important if you’re confident that Doppler features will quickly highlight incoming vessels. And while I’ve seen excellent NXT performance, all the testing so far has been in quite calm and clear conditions. If that race had ever started, for instance, I might have captured some memorable target screens. I also look forward to getting out in rain cells — Target Analyzer has a mode for that — and there will be a series of radome comparisons.

The NXT also has a dual range mode, though it’s limited to 12 nm range max and the NXT’s antenna rotation stays at 24 RPM. Yes, in normal single-range mode, the NXT automatically chooses 24/36/48 rotation speeds, and those higher speeds must help the Doppler with the amazingly accurate tracking of fast, close targets.

The DRS4D-NXT may not have the range of Furuno’s similar size magnetron radars, but it’s not bad. On the screens above, NXT is imaging Matinic Island at 17 nm and Monhegan (I think) at about 26. Click the collage bigger to see how I was able to pinch zoom and drag the chart overlay window to better see what was going on out there. The TZT2 is smooth and quick at screen manipulations like this, and it’s dead simple to return to normal operations with on touchscreen control buttons like Center Vessel, Reset Range, Head Up / North Up, and more.

I have seen a possible bug or two, which is not surprising with a brand new radar technology and quite young MFD software. The worst was Sunday evening on the third leg of a fabulous Maine mini cruise. TZT2 and NXT were a great help getting to a granite island hike in the morning and then to a fancy lunch and live Shakespeare in Stonington, but when fired up for a sunset crossing to North Haven, there was no chart detail. There was also no way to change to raster charts (as seen in the Layer menu above), even after a total reboot. So that’s only a crude Mapmedia base map seen on the chart window above, but — holy cow — that Target Analyzer hot blob and ARPA target #15 was a kayak and it was coming out from behind a high ledge and large nav aid

Yesterday morning the TZT2’s included NOAA-based vector and raster charts worked just fine again, and I’ll conclude with two more NXT Doppler screens. Maybe I’ve gone overboard, but have you ever seen a radome (or any recreational radar) able to automatically highlight and track like this? In the situation above, the sailboat was first shown by Target Analyzer, then detailed by ARPA, and finally the CPA was drawn on screen. I didn’t do anything except tap the ARPA target on the radar window to pop up the numeric details, and note how the same target was then nicely marked on the chart window with an orange circle.

A short time later I was ogling and photographing the fascinating SWATH superyacht Silver Cloud when NXT and noise alerted me about an open lobster boat crossing from the starboard danger zone so fast that I only captured the screen below after the fact. That’s what I mean by radar that makes sense to run in broad daylight, and doesn’t it look to be invaluable in fog or darkness? Congratulations to Furuno for the DRS4D-NXT, may the competition take heed, and sorry about the radar jealousy.

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Written by Ben Ellison on Aug 8, 2016 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

The latest multifunction displays (MFDs) look smashing on Gizmo’s flybridge, I like to think. And it’s not just that Raymarine, Simrad, Furuno, and Garmin — that’s the lineup, left to right — have almost all further evolved the black glass style that promises to be with us for a long time. Those two articulating pods also contribute to the clean look, plus they make it easier for me to use the podded MFDs from different spots on the bridge. It’s time to discuss the SeaView, ScanStrut and NavPod articulating pods I’ve tried in the last few years…

SeaView Power Pod

You may recall Gizmo’s first glass bridge testing setup in 2014, when that big SeaView Power Pod rather dominated the port side. That wasn’t SeaView’s fault as it took the largest of their five Power Pod sizes to fit the Simrad NSS16 evo2, but it did teach me that the smallest possible pod may often be the right one. And that may be regardless of manufacturer as all of them are making quality competitive pods.

In fact, the SeaView design held up fine from Maine to North Carolina and back again, solidly holding the NSS where I wanted it, whether I was in the helm seat, standing up or in the port mate’s seat. (However, it sometimes blocked the view of my petite and favorite mate, and that’s a big reason that I just moved the NSS16 to the dash panel; her wishes count ;-).

Here’s the SeaView pod before MFD installation in 2014. Note that it only has one gasket between the back and faceplate while both the ScanStrut and NavPod designs use two, but there are 10 fastenings holding that joint tight and, besides, a little water intrusion isn’t really an issue with electronics that are designed to be exposed in a bail mount. The main point of an articulating pod is being able to adjust viewing and touch angles, and the big pluses with any pod are good looks and the protection of cabling from physical damage. Note that this SeaView faceplate came perfectly precut for the NSS16, even to the tiny screw holes.

I was also impressed with the SeaView’s separate swivel and tilt mechanisms. ScanStrut’s combined ball and socket mechanism is easier if you want to adjust both at once, and it offers more tilt freedom, but often I just want to swivel the screen to get a better seat or sun angle. The maximum tension on both of the SeaView controls can also be easily adjusted, but when the locked ScanStrut mechanism gets a little loose, it’s a much fussier maintenance operation. Finally, while tilting the SeaView Pod did often take some two-handed effort, that may be due to its extra large size.

SeaView also offers swivel only Power Pods and all these manufacturers offer the fixed pods more appropriate to sailboat helms, as does Edson.

ScanStrut Deck Pod

Here’s a partially disassembled look at the fully articulating base of the ScanStrut Scanpod Deck Pod. It’s those three fasteners in the retaining ring, particularly the one extending to the lock lever, that are a bit fussy to adjust. But then again, the relatively heavy Garmin 8212 took almost two long seasons of sometimes hard pitching in the SPD-12D size Deck Pod before the base needed adjustment, and I regularly flipped it around with one hand on the pod and one on the lever.

Actually, I tested the first generation Deck Pod in 2009 and am grateful that ScanStrut removed the logo bump in this version. The double gasketing and fastening design are also improved, and here you can see the internal backing plate that helps make this articulating pod so solid when locked (as a similar one does with the SeaView). As with the first Deck Pod, though, I had a little trouble cutting the faceplate well…

…and if you click this photo bigger you might notice that the 8212 ended up slightly out of kilter. I also included the cutout in this 2014 photograph and notice that Garmin did provide a nice adhesive template. And while I may not be perfect at layout, I have learned to use a really toothy jigsaw blade and to cut very slowly so that the thick dense plastic doesn’t melt and reseal itself.

But this season I faced the task of making the hole smaller for the lighter — and less expensive yet arguably more powerful (a nice trend) — Garmin 7612.

A big hole smaller?

This is an aside for sure, and probably not fit for a proper yacht, but some of you may appreciate the thin, black, expanded PVC sheeting I used to mask the Deck Pod’s oversize hole as well as for rejiggering the flybridge’s already expanded PVC dash panel. The sheeting is cheap and can be cut with a utility knife. Many other thicknesses are available, but this 3mm stock bridges gaps like the one above fine, and so far no Gizmo visitor has seemed to notice.

NavPod PowerPod

The Ocean Equipment NavPod Gen3 PowerPod just went on Gizmo last week, but I have many reasons to think that it will hold up very well. Note the heavy duty construction and dual (gray and black) gasketing, for instance. And whereas this PowerPod only swivels, the mechanism is quite straightforward and appears bulletproof. (Note, too, how NavPod cut a perfect faceplate hole for the Raymarine eS128, such a time and frustration saver.)

In fact, I really didn’t need to take the NavPod swivel apart; it already turned very smoothly and then stayed where you left it. But it is impressive to see the delrin bushings and large cushioned turning surface, and if it ever did swivel too easily, it’s not much trouble to back off that retaining screw and tighten the big nut.

Like the SeaView and ScanStrut pods, the NavPod came with stainless tamper-proof fasteners and the special tool needed to use them (two in NavPod’s case). That may look like an allen wrench, for instance, but its tip is hollow, and maybe that would frustrate a marina thief.

Finally, let me point out that all three of these pods are designed so that many cables can be run through their bases and thus kept completely out of sight (or danger) at the helm. That’s not how I use them on Gizmo because I’m trying to minimize the testing damage to that fixed (and balsa cored) flybridge shelf, but the pods are still darn useful. Note how the VirbXE camera in the middle of this photo is showing on the 7612, because next up is an entry about Garmin’s wondrous wireless features.

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Written by Ben Ellison on Sep 6, 2016 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

Today I’ve got a smorgasbord of new gear to share, starting with a trio of serious multi-sensors from Lars Thrane A/S in Denmark. The company first came to my attention when they inquired about advertising — thanks, LT — but a little research revealed why their products may well appeal to Panbo readers. The LT-500 AHRS in the foreground is an 11-sensor Heading, Roll, Pitch, Air Pressure and Temperature device; the LT-300 GNSS not shown is a 72-channel GPS/GLONASS/BeiDou receiver; and the LT-1000 Navigation Reference Unit (NRU) shown installed essentially combines the two. Common to all of the current Lars Thrane products is promised high precision, reasonable pricing, simultaneous NMEA 0183 and 2000 output, and an impressive attention to the real boat details involved in installation, calibration, and future proofing…

For instance, while it’s common for heading devices to offer automated Deviation calibration when you run the boat through a manuever like the one diagrammed at left above, the Lars Thrane version looks particularly easy and the engineers went one smart little step further: Until an LT-500 or an LT-1000 is calibrated the Heading output (True or Magnetic) is limited to 5 degree resolution and thus it should be obvious if you need to do a calibration maneuver and then if you did it correctly.

For further configuration, the LT-500 has a button and screen interface — its menu layout shown above right — that’s unique for a compass, I’m pretty sure. The LT-1000 has a simpler interface more appropriate to its usual install location, but, then again, I don’t know of any similar device that lets an installer change NMEA 2000 backbone termination mode and/or NMEA 0183 baud rate with dip switches and also shows status lights. Moreover, all three Lars Thrane products can be configured even deeper and updated using a free PC software tool that communicates to the device via the serial 0183 port.

The LT Service Tool software is shown at left above, and though it’s almost DOS-like, I’ll bet that some pro installers and/or DIY boaters who’ve struggled with third party electronic compasses will find it beautiful. Airmar and Maretron, for instance, make good combo NMEA 0183/2000 heading devices — a sign of how many boats need both — but I’m not sure that either offers this level of configuration and flexibility, and they definitely need additional hardware like an N2K gateway or display for any manual configuration, let alone firmware updating. That’s why I think that the LT-1000, which comes complete with a 10m cable and a field installable N2K connector, is reasonable at about $850 retail.

While I may get to test an LT-1000 or 500, the specs already look impressive. Static Heading, Roll, and Pitch, for instance, are all claimed accurate to “<0.5°” (with Rate of Turn at “<1°/s” and dynamic Heading at “<1.5°”). And while Lars Thrane A/S is a new and small company, their boast about putting 40 years of experience into their products seems fully justified. In fact, the company could be called Thrane, Thrane & Thrane, and this profile of the patriarch suggests significant ambitions, as does their partnership with Iridium.

B&G Triton2

I might have noted that while sensor specialists like Lars Thrane have much to offer, I think, they are also challenged by the big brands that can integrate what are often middling sensors with very sexy screens. But B&G made that point well when the Triton2 Instrument suddenly appeared online this morning. It’s not really a surprise as the hardware seems the same as the Simrad IS42, but B&G has added attractive SailSteer, Wind Plot, and AP-by-wind-angle screens (and maybe more). This video shows them well.

The Triton2 can be paired with the Triton2 Autopilot Controller (like the Simrad OP12), and thus you get the bright, clean, low-profile glass bridge look in a full AP head that’s usefully divided into two parts. I’ve been long testing the original Triton and AP keypad for years now, and while all the majors now have good remotes that usually include some AP control, I think there should be more dedicated autopilot pads like this.

It’s interesting that B&G calls out NMEA 2000 certification as a T2 feature, and the point is evident in this system wiring example from the install manual. The orginal Triton gear on Gizmo is working fine with SimNet to Micro-C adaptor cables but now Micro-C — also known as DeviceNet, and the N2K standard — is everywhere, apparently including the Triton2 sensors. That’s good news — the alternate N2K cabling schemes caused confusion — but the Triton2 also lacks a second port for daisychaining, which might make fitting several into a tight pod harder. I’m not sure that the NMEA should have prevailed in that regard (as discussed here).

It’s also worth noting that in the system above sensor configuration is going to be easy, maybe even graphically slick, via the instrument display. But a firmware update to add new features or fix bugs is going to take a borrowed B&G MFD with an SD card slot, and I believe that’s true of Furuno and Raymarine instrument and autopilot systems as well (unless they too offer something like Garmin’s N2K Updater). That’s more evidence of how clever Lars Thrane’s old school serial connection seems at this point in marine electronics evolution. And while I’m confident that an LT sensor would feed the Triton2 displays well, it can’t update one. The conundrums!

Maine Cat 38

I spotted the Triton2 amongst the new boats and products vying for a Newport Boat Show award, and I figure that one possible winner is the Maine Cat 38. Admittedly I’m a longtime fan of what is possibly Maine’s most unusual boatbuilder, and almost purchased a P-47 power cat. But I got to see the first 38 debut at the Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors Show and suspect that it’s a major improvement on the company’s already beloved 30 and 41 foot sailing cats. Note, for instance, the significant tuck in the hulls, which is how MC founder, owner, designer and chief bottle washer Dick Vermeulen managed to combine the narrow 12:1 length-to-beam ratio that can make a cat really perform with an interior that feels remarkably spacious.

Of course, there are a lot more details like window placement and berth height that make this cat seem particularly livable. And, yes, that is one of the coolest showers I’ve seen on any boat this size, and Maine Cat did dare to build a cat with only one head space (as Charlie Doane enthusiastically noted). But it also takes light construction to float a good accommodation on an efficiently skinny wet surface, and the lower left sample shows how MC is thermoforming Core-Cell to achieve excellent strength to weight. The 38 seemed like a really solid boat, especially given a complete package price currently under $400,000.

I failed to get a good photo of the 38’s immense semi-enclosed main deck and helm, but when I wondered to Dick if this might make a good power cat, he just grinned and pointed at that prototype rendering below. What I didn’t add is how perfect the 38 seems for electric power, specifically a Torqeedo Deep Blue Hybrid integrated propulsion and house power system once that’s evolved to work with the Torqeedo outboards that could replace the gasoline ones that are the 38’s worst feature, in my opinion. Picture fairly quick, nearly silent and redundant electric performance with backup generators and nearly infinite power for the appliances and gadgetry that could make this boat even more comfy (as long as you kept them light). It’s just a thought, but one of many reasons to check out the first MC 38 in Newport next week (or even get aboard for a leg to the Bahamas).

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Written by Ben Ellison on Sep 22, 2016 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

That’s very good radar imagery in my experience, especially given that it’s the fully automated output of a relatively small and affordable radome which can be super easy to install. Note, for instance, how well it’s separating the moored boats in Camden’s recently discussed Outer Harbor and thus usefully revealing the channel into the Inner Harbor (that many visiting boats have trouble finding even in clear daylight). I also got to see how well Raymarine navigation networks can handle dual radar scanners and how sophisticated their WiFi has become. And finally I hope to spank Ray about its annoyingly overprotective MARPA alarms (though that situation could be easily fixed in software ;-)…

Let’s look first at the Raymarine Quantum Q24 hardware. At 21.3 inches in diameter and 8.25 high, the radome is wider but lower than the Simrad 4G radar on which it’s temporarily installed, and it only weighs 12.3 pounds. I appreciated all that because in order to test the Quantum’s WiFi data connection with the flybridge eS128, I moved it around to more difficult locations like the aft cockpit. It was only happenstance that Gizmo’s tired old 1,200 Watt microwave oven was also there (on its way to the recycling center), but it’s pretty amazing how the Quantum really can reach its 24-mile maximum range with just 20 peak Watts of compressed microwave pulses drawing 17 Watts of 12 (or 24) volt DC boat power.

It wasn’t clear when we first discussed the new Quantum in January, or even when demoed in Miami, but there are two distinct Q24 models. What I received for testing is the orginally announced Q24C that can make its data connection with either WiFi or Ethernet, specifically part number E70210, which does not come with an Ethernet cable (though Raymarine added the 10m one seen inset) and which typically retails for $1,549. However there’s also a Quantum Q24W (E70344) that is WiFi-only and $200 less expensive. Not all retail outlets are clear about the differences, and the WiFi-only model presents a conundrum for installs where the WiFi connection may be dicey.

More on the WiFi next, and note the Quantum SSID and Passcode on the label above, but before we leave this collage, also note the multiple bolt locations to fit different radar mounts. The Quantum is designed to easily replace any old radome since you probably only need the power wires already run to the mount (or if your old dome used a single Ray digital cable, there’s a power and Ethernet adapter).

So this was a first in my marine electronics installation experience, and it may have taken more than one try because my old brain is not good at copying meaningless passwords. It would be nice if Ray let you click a box to make the password visible, like many modern apps do, but the bigger news is that once my test Quantum connected with the eS128 display, it has run rock solid for over two months. On power up the WiFi connection did take a little longer when I had radome in the cockpit (with a lot of structure in between) and longer still when I hid it in the cockpit of the boat that shares my float, but as mounted on Gizmo it’s nearly instantaneous.

But what if there’s 50 feet of air and a fiberglass cabin top between the Quantum radome and your Raymarine MFD? Ray’s Quantum install manual is very thorough on this subject, and while it suggests that such a scenario will work, it also calls for a careful site survey, including a sea trial in case a neighboring boat’s structure is providing a WiFi bounce. If in doubt, it would seem prudent to purchase a WiFi-only Quantum with return privileges.

But if the Quantum WiFi connection is as solid on your boat as it is on Gizmo — and mind you the range is purportedly over 300 feet in optimal conditions — you may be amazed at how well it fits into Raymarine’s overall wired and wireless networking. While it wasn’t surprising that the older a78 MFD (above) at my lower helm gets the Quantum over Ethernet from the eS128 — Ray’s whole MFD line has remained highly compatible — it blew my mind when I realized that it could make the Quantum connection even with the eS128 turned off and no effort on my part. Once you teach one network MFD how to connect with a Quantum, it teaches the others!

Moreover, the Quantum WiFi connection doesn’t seem to affect Raymarine’s other WiFi capabilities, which have gotten quite advanced. I can, for instance, still log onto the eS128 with my iPad or Android phone and run Ray’s View, Control, or Remote apps. In fact, I can also have the eS128 join Gizmo’s WiFi router, and if it’s online, my mobile is also online. Yes, I’ve seen Internet, MFD apps, and Quantum all working at the same time using just one MFD’s WiFi, and performance was good all around. Can any other MFD do that?

(I know that some sophisticated users would rather run their MFD app through their router, as Furuno TZT permits, and it’s true that one of my onboard router connections — the Fusion stereo remote app — does not seem to work via the Raymarine connection, but then again the Vesper Marine XB8000 does. I can also picture how the Ray way could work nicely on a boat without a separate router; you could sort of get the triple WiFi connection I experienced simply by switching your phone to hotspot mode, or fully by having two mobile devices, no changes needed on the Ray MFD.)

The Quantum install further challenged Gizmo’s Raymarine network because it already included a RD418HD radome. No problem! Both radars are available on both MFDs, even for simultaneous use. And note how the power button dialog box above lets you Power Down either radome as well as switch them back and forth between Standby and Transmit. MFD radar power down is a valuable feature, especially for magnetron radars with high Standby power draws on sailboats, that I first saw on Raymarine and that has only been duplicated by Simrad/B&G to the best of my knowledge. I do know that the only way I could run the current Furuno and Garmin MFDs on Gizmo with their radars shut down would be to put them on separate power switches, which seems crude.

Here’s the eS128 showing the magnetron RD418HD and the solid-state Quantum Q24 radars both at 1/8th nm range in target-rich Camden Inner Harbor. In this case the automatic performance was looking pretty good and also pretty similar, though I found that the Quantum was the one that could be improved by manually lowering the Gain. The real point of the photo is to show how the Gain, as well as Sea and Rain filter, can be seen and adjusted right on the touchscreen. The RD418HD and other Ray radars offer the same controls (if you choose to display them in Presentation Menu) and they work pretty well for me.

The Quantum also offers a 1/16th nm range that the RD418HD does not, though it does not have quite the up-close resolution that the Simrad 4G radar does, perhaps not surprising since Navico 3G and 4G remain the only solid-state marine radars that use Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) technology.

Here I’ve tried to show the various menu items that apply to the Quantum setup and display. You’ll see that it offers four Preset Modes and that you can modify the active mode long term (which is different than simply manually adjusting Gain etc. for a short-term situation). I have not yet felt the need to change those presets. Note a fairly full set of Presentation choices, and that Echo Trails of various time periods are available elsewhere. I’ve also tried to show how some menus need to be scrolled to access all choices, even though there is more room available on the 12-inch screen, a minor annoyance.

Now here are the two radars head-to-head at 24-nm range, though the screenshot seems to have been caught just before the HD image completely filled in. In practice the 20 Watt Quantum is not better than the 4 kiloWatt radome at longer ranges, but it seems nearly as good, even though the Quantum is mounted about 8 feet lower. That’s impressive. This screen also shows how you overlay AIS onto radar screens if you want, and that Ray is properly showing synthetic AIS aids to navigation (which have even come to Maine).

And, yes, I have been trying out the Navionics dock-to-dock autorouting that came to Raymarine MFDs with Lighthouse 17. I’ve mostly seen smart results, though I do wish Ray would make it easier to hide all the waypoints generated.

Unfortunately, most of HD to Quantum comparison screenshots did not capture the full screens, maybe because of the unsychronized scanning, but this image is true. What it shows is how completely the Quantum pulses are blocked by all the gear installed behind it on Gizmo’s flybridge. I think that any radome would be somewhat blocked, and I’ve tried several in that position, but solid-state radars are particularly vulnerable. (The Simrad 4G does slightly better than the Quantum, but I think the 3G would be similar.) I intend to document more radar comparisons and also to move the Quantum to the mast, but onboard obstructions do seem a factor with this radar.

This screen shows the Quantum doing good work at 1-nm range and also its relative and true vector MARPA abilities. The two targets I selected on the touchscreen (or with the eS’s excellent cursor control) were small sailboats working slowly to windward, and the true speeds and headings being tracked in the radar window are close to what I could see with my eyes. Meanwhile, seen on the chart overlay side is their motion relative to Gizmo motoring along at nearly 8 knots. The Relative and True Vector calculations don’t jibe precisely, but they’re reasonably close, and reasonably close is the sort of MARPA performance I’ve seen regularly from both Raymarine radomes. Note that one of those sailors either had significant local knowledge or took a chance with Merriman Ledge.

Unfortunately, Raymarine’s MARPA is marred by two unchangeable alarms, at least for my taste. While the graphic display of how their MARPA alarm works is excellent, note that you cannot turn it off (like you can the AIS alarms) and that the minimal settings are 0.1 nm in 3 minutes. So if I target an approaching vessel a few miles away and the information helps me determine that a close pass is safe, I will still get alarmed. Plus I’ll also get alarmed for every MARPA that the radar loses track of, and eventually that’s every vessel I track unless I dig into the menus and cancel the targets.

No doubt I’m more sensitive than most about unwanted alarms because I run so many display systems at once, but those MARPA alarms seem even worse this season because they’re firing off near the Furuno TZT2 and NXT radar that mandate no alarms while automatically acquiring intelligently chosen and quite precise ARPA targets even at ranges I’m not viewing. In fact, I don’t think I can evaluate any new radar without thinking about the amazing and easy collision avoidance features Ive been seeing from the Furuno NXT.

So while the MARPA alarms issue could be easily fixed by Ray, and may be trivial to you anyway, anyone shopping for a radome should be aware of what’s possible with Doppler solid-state technology, though that doesn’t simply mean buy NXT. These radars are just components of much larger systems, and Furuno, for instance, doesn’t offer TZT 7- or even 9-inch displays that will work with NXT. The good news is that I’m pretty sure all the major brands are working furiously to approximate the NXT features, and Quantum may even be backward compatible. (The Simrad open array Halo is another candidate for Doppler update, and rumor has it that Garmin will be bringing their Doppler Fantom tech to radomes fairly soon.)

But even if the Quantum nevers get an update, I think that it’s a very solid radar with a remarkable level of install flexibility at a reasonable price.

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Written by Ben Ellison on Nov 2, 2016 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

Were you hoping that Garmin would bring its Fantom solid-state radar technology down to radome size, including the Doppler-assisted target motion highlighting they call MotionScope? How about two sizes, 18 and 24 inch? Or maybe you’re a Garmin owning cruiser jealous of Simrad or B&G users with ForwardScan forward looking sonar? That’s also taken care of, sort of. And these are just two highlights of all the new products Garmin announced today, many of which will ship soon…

Let’s start with the new GPSMap multifunction display series. The 7-inch touchscreen MFD above is one of four new 7×2 models and there will also be four 9×2 models, all now online here. Here’s how they differ: The top-end 742xs retails at $1,000 with preloaded U.S., Canadian, and Bahamas charts, plus U.S. lake maps and also built-in traditional/CHIRP fishfinding and CHIRP ClearVu (the bottom right window above, called DownView or DownScan by other manufacturers and subject to a long-term patent dispute). For $100 less you can get a 722xs with just a worldwide basemap or a 742 with no sonar, and, finally, the $800 GPSMap 722 has neither sonar nor detailed charts.

The 9-inch touchscreen is a new size for Garmin and the four 9×2 models follow the same naming conventions and pricing increments, with the GPSMap 922 at $1,100 and the top-end 942xs at $1,300. Feature wise, I don’t see much that hasn’t already been introduced in Garmin’s 76xx/74xx models and high-end 86xx/84xx series. But I think it is a big deal to have all those features at much lower prices (still not cheap, but the press release’s, “designed for the budget-conscious customer who desires premium features,” seems fair). I’ll discuss the features further below, but in the meantime, can anyone find a significant difference between the $1,100 GPSMap 7407 and the new $800 722 aside from the J1939 engine port?

The new not-touchscreen GPSMap 10×2 and 12×2 series follow the same four-model-per-screen-size pattern, except that sonar models like the 12x2xsv above also include SideVu processing. The 10-inch models range from $1,700 to $2,300, and the 12’s from $2,400 to $3,000. Personal opinion: if the newly designed “keyed interface” with separate knob and cursor controls works as well as it looks, I’ll be lobbying Garmin to put it into a remote keypad alternative to the big GRID or the Wireless Remote.

While this screen shows the new Garmin Fantom 24 radome at work, it was not taken with one the new MFDs. But it could have been because the 7×2, 9×2,10×2, and 12×2 series all support newer Garmin features like that Virb camera window (I so like) plus the built-in ANT connectivity to goodies like the gWind Wireless 2 sensor and the Quatix 3 watch (that have both also tested well for me and await writeup).

But the change runs deeper than surface features. Over the last couple of years Garmin seems to have changed MFD software platforms and even how it does some wireless connections like ANT. The results range from interface routines that work differently between different model networked displays to new accessory products that don’t work with fairly recent MFDs, or vice versa. For instance, I was surprised to learn that the RF Wireless Remote Control that had worked with many past Garmin MFDs had been replaced by the very similar Wireless Remote. Paying attention to “Compatible Device” lists is always important, but with all these new MFDs Garmin seems to be getting back toward the single software/hardware platform that makes for smooth networking and less “backward compatible” pain.

Before moving on to new radios and the especially interesting new Garmin forward looking sonar (with a little of that pain), do click on the screen above for a bigger view of what’s happening as that vessel runs fairly fast at night. The FLIR thermal camera image is obviously valuable, especially contrasted with the VIRB that seems to be just showing the boat’s own bow running lights and maybe the lit nav aid about a third of a mile ahead. But check out how the Fantom MotionScope (Doppler) indicates that both the vessels ahead are moving away, which is arguably more valuable information than what shows on the more expensive thermal view. I’d probably still slow down.

That’s the new $600 VHF 210 AIS left of the $289 VHF 110 radio, both of which await FCC approval before real shipping dates can be set. Both have NMEA 2000 interfaces, which Garmin has made good use of in the past (with smart added emergency call help last year), and I think that they look sharp. But I don’t see any mention of wired or wireless remote mics; I found the previous models a little hard to read, anyway, and, particularly at the 210 AIS price level, the new Standard Horizon GX6000/6500 and also the Icom M506 series both have lots to offer, though with more generic N2K networking.

And here is Garmin’s new Panoptix PS51-TH multibeam thru-hull transducer, which seems to look a whole lot like the Simrad/B&G ForwardScan I’ve appreciated testing over the last two years. In fact, it fits in the same 2″ Airmar casing and that means that the PS51 now in transit from Kansas should be working in Gizmo very soon. I’m hoping to see better forward looking performance from the Panoptix technology, but there’s also a substantial cost difference with the PS51 at $1,500 and the FowardScan transducer at $699. Game on nonetheless (and here’s hoping this doesn’t trigger more of the confusing patent fighting well covered here by Reagan Haynes).

But do note the PS51 compatability list. It does extend down to Panoptix-enabled fishfinders like the echoMap series, but some older Garmin network MFDs, still otherwise quite useful, did not make the cut. Every major electronics brand has been through platform changes like this, but they are still only good performance and lifetime news for owners on the right side of the change.

The testing situation is also good for the new GMR Fantom 24 radome and the screen above sets my expectations high. What I like is the mix of true color returns with approaching and going-away moving vessels color coded and usefully echo trailed. Even the $2,600 Furuno DRS4D-NXT Doppler radome that’s so impressed me this season can’t do that, though I notice that the similarly premium $2,800 Fantom 24 doesn’t seem to have anything like the NXT’s Doppler-assisted ARPA capabilities. Then again, the $2,000 Fantom 18 has the same 40 W output as the 24 and the original open array Fantoms I saw demoed in Miami, which bodes well for range.

Yes, I’ve got some install work to do, and there is still some fall color up here (and unraked leaves in the driveway). The Fantom 24 arrived yesterday afternoon and I’m fairly sure that I can use the power and data cables already run for the test Garmin xHD 24 currently aboard Gizmo (the test Raymarine Quantum Q24 remains the only radar able to use WiFi instead of Ethernet for the MFD network data connection). In fact, Gizmo may soon sport just four radomes again, but all solid-state. What a difference this year has made.

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Written by Kees Verruijt on Nov 18, 2016 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

This year’s annual Marine Equipment Trade Show (METS) in Amsterdam seemed busier than ever. It’s good to see that the marine industry has largely recovered, although the sailboat business still seems to lag behind behind motorboats. The super yacht halls were very busy too. I saw some exciting new developments from Navico, who were showing the brand new NSS evo3 and B&G Zeus3 as well as their recently announced instrument displays. Fusion had a new high-end speaker, and Airmar showed me their brand new electromagnetic DX900+ multifunction speed sensor.

Simrad NSS evo3 and B&G Zeus3

First up is the new ‘evolution’ of Navico displays in the form of Simrad NSS evo3 and B&G Zeus³. Visually they look quite similar to the previous generation; it seems that the designers are now satisfied that a combination of touch and keyboard is the way to go in the mid-range. Part of what drives these upgrades, I think, is that the low-end devices had overtaken these mid-range series with built in features. So now all the new Navico MFDs contain WiFi and have sonar built in. Another part is the continued refinement of the user interface (UI). Besides seven buttons and a rotary knob there is now a separate cursor pad. Having more controls means it is now possible to drive the complete UI without needing the touchscreen at all. If you’re on a wild ride you can even disable the touch controls, thus preventing accidental touches from messing with your display. The LCD screens have been improved, with higher resolution, better sunlight visibility and improved off-angle color reproduction.

What I think is the most important development here, and a very smart move, is that Navico has included a customised web browser in their new NOS (Navico Operating System). Until now integration with parties like Mercruiser and CZone was done by including additional UI pages written by either party, but included in the software image that was installed in the MFD. This means you need tight cooperation between two development teams and a new release of the MFD software if something in the digital switching system or engine changed. By moving to a HTML5 based web browser this is now much easier. On Simrad NSS evo3 the launching integration partner for this is Naviop, who they have been working with for over a year now (as Ben reported from METS 2015). On Zeus³ they are using the HTML browser to allow full configuration of the H5000 CPU, which required a laptop or tablet until now. I’m sure that they will find new uses for the web browser.

Lastly I find the new addition of PredictWind integration in NOS very useful. It allows users of the PredictWind weather service to download forecasts directly onto their plotter and view GRIB files and predictions directly over the chart window. Navico is also making it possible to download updates for the chart plotter itself directly from the device, further enhancing their GoFree strategy. I’ve seen a different part of their download update capability in action on my own Lowrance HDS2T last weekend — I switched it on and it reported that I should update the software on my AIS. Very cool.

I hope to make a more in depth report on this in Spring, as I will likely be updating my HDS2T to Zeus³ once it is available.

Simrad IS42 and Triton2

Also on show were the Simrad IS42, AP44 and B&G Triton² displays that were covered by Ben when announced in September but I was able to see in the flesh. They have beautifully rendered screens with (if you want) very high information density. The AIS display seems a bit of a gimmick, but I really liked the updated SailSteer page that has improved markedly over the wind page in the earlier generation IS40/Triton. I also liked the rotary knob on the AP42 and the buttons in general are much nicer with a better feel, so it is much clearer when you have actually pressed a button. I also like the capability to use a reverse color palette with white letters on a dark background. There are two downsides to these new displays though. Software updates need to be applied over USB, so you need access to the backside to update them. Furthermore they are not direct drop in replacements as the rear side doesn’t use the traditional circular hole that earlier versions (and most of the competition) use. You now need to cut a 10.5 cm square cutout, which also means you only have a 6.5 mm overlap of the display over the hole.

Fusion

As Ben reported last month, Fusion is still on a roll as Garmin lets them do their thing quite separately from the mothership even after the takeover — they’re not taking the word Fusion literally in that particular sense! Besides what Ben got to see I was able to see the new Fusion Sound-Panel in action. It’s a dual speaker system capable of stereo sound, all encapsulated in a neat, single, very shallow enclosure. It has uncharacteristically subdued styling for Fusion, with just a small emblem and no swishes, swashes or LED lighting (which look cool on a powerboat but may be out of place on a more traditional yacht.) It’s fully closed at the back as well, ensuring well defined bass. The sound environment at the show didn’t lend itself well to a qualitative assessment, but given the size of the drivers and their reputation I’m pretty sure it will sound very nice indeed.

Airmar DX900+

I am happy to report that Airmar is now finally shipping the long awaited ST900/950 ultrasonic speed sensor (for either NMEA0183 or NMEA 2000 output). Reading the updated Airmar brochure PDF it sounds all very well and seems especially suited to high speed motorboats. What was even more interesting though was another new paddle-less electromagnetic speed sensor oriented to racing and high-end sailboats, which will be on the market in just a few months. I wasn’t the only one impressed as the DX900+ MultiLog won the DAME electronics and software category award. Airmar was confident enough to let me speak to the three French engineers who developed it. It’s always a good sign if a company lets you talk directly to the engineers behind the product.

The first thing I liked is that it adapts existing technology to a new use. The core of this same sensor has been used in the fishing market for years to monitor trawls. The sensors are mounted on the net ends because the fishermen want to keep the mesh square so that the trawl has the optimal size and strength, and thus they must measure sideways as well as forward speed. The beauty for sailors is that the DX900+ can measure leeway directly, instead of inferring it from the difference between speed through water and speed over ground. As the sensor is fully symmetrical it can even measure reverse speeds accurately. It’s been tested in non-saline waters as well as sea water. It also contains a fast response temperature sensor (I think it’s the fifth metal surface you see) and a three-axis accelerometer and gyroscope, outputting heel and trim. Since the technology measures in the boundary layer it does require some calibration, but the engineers have found that one point calibration is good enough for all but high end racing conditions.

Another DX900+ advantage over a paddle wheel speed sensor is its sturdiness. The four speed measuring pins stick out of the epoxy core about 1 mm or so, to ensure a good bond of the epoxy to the alloy. Since they are bonded in completely it should survive being covered by a sling when hauling the boat (it’s also retractable), or flotsam passing by whilst sailing.

There will be three models, one with speed and temperature outputting via NMEA 0183, and two with depth, speed and temperature and either 0183 or 2000 output. The latter include a small interface box. All three are calibrated using an application from your smartphone or tablet, and the BlueTooth connection can also be used to view the data. Software updates will be possible using this method as well.

As you can imagine the DX900+ is a much more complicated product than a simple paddle wheel sensor. The predicted end user price will be around $1,400. This means it’s quite a lot more expensive than a DST800, but if you want to have direct leeway measurement, or are just fed up enough about cleaning or breaking your paddle wheel, this seems to be a very good option. And lastly it’s a simple retrofit as it fits the DST800 housing perfectly. I hope to report on a field test soon, as Airmar have promised to come by and install one on my sailboat.

Signal K

I didn’t have as much time as normal to walk around with my “Panbo hat” as there were two Signal K meetings and some meetings with vendors involved. We had a “meetup” with about 20 people meeting the four out of five Signal K core team members present. Not only was it fun to finally meet each other, but the core team was amazed that so many people took the effort to come over! Discussions continued until late at night at a local Amsterdam “brown cafe” where bonds were improved over drinks and dinner. This resulted in a commitment by the Signal K core team that we will release version 1.0 of the specification this year — likely between Christmas and the end of the year. New versions will be released after that on a regular schedule, probably every 12 months as that is a natural cycle in boating.

Many thanks to Kees Verruijt for again sharing some METS impressions with Panbo readers. Kees owns and operates the cool sloop Merrimac and is a member of the Signal K core team ~ editor

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Written by Ben Ellison on Dec 1, 2016 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

It went unmentioned at our large family Thanksgiving feast last week, but I am thankful that solid-state radar became omnipresent in our marine electronics world this year. In fact Gizmo’s four test radomes now all share the solid-state virtues of near instant power up, low power draw, low emission levels, and long life (at least theoretical). They are all decent performing radars, too, and several offer very special features that only seem possible with solid-state technology. In this entry I’ll try to sort out the field, while also sharing first impressions of that spanking new Garmin Fantom 24 radome.

While the solid-state radome comparison table above — click it bigger to see the detail — took considerable time, please consider it a work in progress. Readers and manufacturers may have corrections, but it is a start at understanding the similarities and differences. For instance, the claimed maximum transmit power draw of these radomes only varies from 17 to 30 watts, or 1.4 to 2.5 amps at 12 volts (and I suspect that Furuno number is high in practice).

Low power draw is especially important on sailboats, but it also means lighter cables and easier installs on all boats. And though the standby draws are pretty much trivial, I’ve still pointed out in the Extra Features column that both Navico (Simrad plus siblings B&G and Lowrance) and Raymarine let users turn the radars on and off from their multifunction displays. This feature, as well as Raymarine’s unique WiFi utilization, are illustrated in Panbo’s Quantum Q24C review.

Speaking of which, strong evidence suggests that Raymarine is helping Humminbird to join the list above with a “HB 2124 CHIRP Radar” version of the Quantum Q24. There may be five brands of solid-state radomes soon, and I say the more the merrier (and congrats to Humminbird and Raymarine for forging what looks like a smart partnership).

Now let’s discuss other aspects of the solid-state radome spec list with screenshot illustrations. This one shows the Garmin Fantom 24 — first discussed here on Panbo — just after I installed it at the inner Camden Inner Harbor dock pictured at the top of the entry. It’s a radar challenging spot tightly surrounded by boats, floats, piles, buildings and steep terrain, but the Fantom is doing fairly well at its minimum 1/16nm range (380 feet) and AutoLow gain. (Note how the gain level and other important settings nicely overlay on the bottom left of the screen. Thus I didn’t need to tap Menu, then Radar Options, to see that the Doppler MotionScope feature is turned on; it’s just that few boats are moving around here these days.)

Now here’s the Simrad 4G — first tested in 2011! — running in the same spot but with the right hand window set to its minimum 200-foot range (about 1/32nm). In my experience the uniquely tight ranges offered by 4G (and 3G) are justifiable, as evidenced by how this screen shows a lot more of the floating dock structure ahead of Gizmo than the Fantom does. (Note that the old Navionics chart doesn’t show the current dock layout or dredging, but the current online Navionics version is close to perfection.)

The Furuno and Raymarine radomes image that spot and other very close targets much like the Fantom, and the 3G/4G difference is probably due to their unusual FMCW solid-state radar technology. All the others use pulse compression instead of continuous wave, as reflected in the spec table’s seemingly strange Output Watts column. Note, too, that this screen also shows how the 4G can overlay two independent radar ranges on charts, which was another unique feature and one I’ve personally appreciated a lot.

So it was great when I first opened the Garmin 7612’s default Radar mode screen after installing the Fantom and saw Dual Overlay. It’s also interesting because the original Fantom open array demoed in February had dual range, but only one could be overlaid on a chart. Almost all (current) MFDs and most of the devices attached to them are sometimes updated to add features (and/or fix bugs), but I think that solid-state radar is particularly prone because so many of the engineering teams are relatively new to the technology and the competition is fierce. More dual overlay, Doppler, and automatic tracking features please.

So here I have Fantom’s dual overlay mode in action, and it turned out to be virtually the same mode as plain dual range, in a good way. That’s because it only takes two finger (or GRID or wireless remote control) taps to find a neat little menu that lets you display (underlay?) charts on either or both ranges. It’s easier to set up the dual range and chart configuration you may want, or change it quickly, than it is on the 4G, but, then again, Garmin’s dual range radar is a special mode that can’t be mixed with other windows while you can mix radar ranges and overlays any way you want on NSS evo2 and Zeus2 screens.

It’s worth discussing how Garmin handles radar overlay with regular single-range radar because that too is different, not in a bad way. The collage above shows the main Radar Menu you’ll see with any radar screen or window (dual range/overlay excepted), plus its major submenus. Note “Chart Display” at the top of the Radar Setup menu. So, unlike all the other MFDs I’m familiar with, you don’t open a chart window and overlay it with radar; on Garmin’s you open a radar window and underlay it with Chart Display.

Of course the menus also show many other controls Garmin’s latest MFD software provides for Fantom radars, and, in many cases, their magnetron radars as well. They are discussed rather briefly in a user manual like the 7612’s (PDF download here) and if I fail to cover a detail that interests you in this or upcoming radar entries, don’t hesitate to ask.

Here’s a Fantom 24 dual-range, dual-overlay screen, and I hope you can imagine how useful it could be in certain situations, like if there were rain cells out ahead that I was trying to dodge. I have not yet taken a stormy opportunity to compare these radomes (like 2012’s 4G vs Ray HD in rain), but that will be interesting.

It will also be good to do more long-range testing, especially because I was somewhat surprised that the fairly large Fantom 24 with its 40 watts of output didn’t see further in situations like that 16nm range window at right above. I am aware that dual range means less on-target energy for each, but the results look similar with the Fantom 24 on single range, and also with manually increased gain. Garmin may need to do some Fantom radome tweaking — heck, they’re not even shipping quite yet — but before we leave this screen, note how Fantom’s Doppler-assisted MotionScope is purple highlighting a lobster boat that suddenly accelerated toward Gizmo’s port quarter from 1/4 mile away. Useful!

More on target tracking soon, but first check out this screen showing the Raymarine Quantum Q24 looking ahead at 16nm range. Panbo’s initial Quantum testing is here and I took this screen before moving the Q24 up to the mast (where the WiFi data connection is still working fine and it can now see behind Gizmo). Yet its 20 watts of transmit power images quite like the Fantom’s 40 watts in that important 8-mile range, plus it’s peeking at a little of what’s much further away, including a nav aid at 20 miles (I think).

In fact, I’m not sure that solid-state transmit power has that much to do with actual performance, but more testing is in order and software updates may change things. But let’s also note that the super easy-to-install WiFi-only Quantum is about half the cost of the Fantom 24 and almost half the weight.

But neither Quantum nor 3G/4G can currently provide the instant and automatic target assistance seen on this screen (though Doppler updates are vaguely rumored). I was motoring to Rockland in hopes of testing MotionScope on the state ferries, but the scenario got more realistic when I spotted two small speeding boats ahead but couldn’t tell where they were headed. The purple target 2 miles off Gizmo’s starboard bow says “vessel coming my way” and the longish echo trail says “fast.”

Interestingly, the other fast boat target — just to port, a little over 2 miles away — had shown purple just before I took the screenshot, and if you look closely it’s just starting to turn all green, which will indicate that it’s moving away. So far Fantom is the only radar using Doppler to show both coming and going target motion, as I saw in Miami, but several times I noticed the Fantom 24 briefly go thru this red phase as the relative motion changed.

Incidentally, the latest Fantom MFD software offers a choice of seven different radar color schemes with automatic contrasting MotionScope colors, but only the red one shows “true color” target hardness shades. Also, that small purple incoming target behind Gizmo was yet another working lobster boat that was going the other way moments before.

Doppler-assisted motion highlighting is great but, dang, look what the Furuno DRS4D-NXT was doing at the same time. Since enthusiastically reviewing the NXT Doppler assisted radome in early August, I’ve learned that while I like its Target Analyzer mode in busy tight situations like summer Camden Harbor, out in the Bay I tend to turn it off and count on the NXT’s incredible Fast Target Tracking (also known as Doppler-assisted ARPA). This is a good example why. Quite quickly and totally automatically, the NXT was tracking the two fast boats with graphics accurately indicating their real headings and speeds, and more detail just a tap away. (And I’m pretty confidant that it was about to lock onto the lobster boat that had just turned toward Gizmo’s stern.)

I’ll add that the Furuno NXT can do Target Analyzer and fast ARPA simultaneously, but you can’t have true color returns with Target Analyzer, it doesn’t highlight boats moving away, and at least on the Furuno TZT2, there’s no echo trail option at all.

Finally, here’s a Fantom 24 screen showing its MARPA capabilities, and it’s particularly nice because the target calculations confirmed what the MotionScope was already indicating in a more general way. The target off to port was a little tug/barge combo and it’s probably not highlighted because it was moving below MotionScope’s speed minimum — which is 5 knots, I think, while Furuno’s is 3. Meanwhile the two boats ahead are above the speed threshold and MotionScope was already showing their going and coming nature before my MARPA selecting taps even began the calculation process and its more refined results. And notice how the Fantom is also highlighting a going away vessel on the other side of the rocky Rockland breakwater.

So far the Fantom 24’s MARPA seems a lot like what I see on the Quantum and the 4G. All can definitely be useful but none compares to the Furuno NXT ARPA even just in accuracy and speed, and the NXT also does an excellent job of picking which targets to track. With NXT no target tapping — or accidental double tapping, as seen above — is usually needed (though it’s possible).

But I’ll repeat: these are all decent performing radars in my view, and that’s good because you don’t get to pick radar alone these days. What’s more, I don’t know of any reason that all the features highlighted here are not possible from any determined manufacturer, at least eventually. Behold the new world of solid-state radomes and rejoice.

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Written by Ben Ellison on Feb 15, 2017 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

Raymarine and FLIR are coming to the Miami Boat Show loaded for bear. Those three new 7-, 9- and 12-inch Axiom multifunction displays are showing new LightHouse 3 operating software and new RealVision 3D sonar. Moreover, you’ll learn below about how new M100 and M200 thermal cameras can give the Axioms some features normally seen on superyachts. BAM! The theme that seems evident throughout is modern interface and hardware design with value pricing and a potent dash of innovation spice…

The new Axiom MFDs are compact all-glass designs said to be very fast and capable with their quad core processors and ample memory chips, and you can learn much more by digging into the Axiom MFD web pages that just went live. For instance, if you want more than the multi-touch interface, you can add the new RMK10 remote keypad and/or the RCU-3 steering wheel remote. And while the slim Axioms are designed to surface mount with back fastenings — an Axiom 9 can purportedly fit where an old Ray A7 like the one on Gizmo used to live — there will also be a rear mount kit for flush installs and a front mount kit for those who can’t fasten things from behind a helm panel (and the in-the-box trunnion mount choice of course).

The Axioms include WiFi, Bluetooth, NMEA 2000 and Ethernet communications, and they’re compatible with most all of Raymarine’s current displays, radars, sonars, etc. And, yes indeed, the Axiom 7 plotter-only model is just $650 retail with Lighthouse U.S. charts, and included Navionics+ US and Canada charts add just $50 more.

Many Axiom models, however, are designed to show off the new 4-in-1-transducer RealVision technology that Raymarine is also introducing today. That’s the RealVision RV-100 transom transducer at upper right in this slide from the preview presentation I received, and alongside is one of the RealVision thru hull transducers that will be available when all this gear ships (soon, purportedly). In fact, there will be RealVision thru hull transducers with 12 and 20 degree tilted elements so that many boats will be able to fit a linked pair without fairing blocks but with a full SideVision view as well as the 3D.

While there’s more on RealVision below, note here all the other transducers that some Axiom models can support. Moreover, I understand that multiple transducers will be able to Y into that large rear sonar port. Meanwhile the other ports in this streamlined design are for RayNet, USB, and a combined 12/24 volt DC power and NMEA 2000 cable. The N2K connector will be standard DeviceNet, with an adaptor available for those who’d like to use SeaTalkNG style cabling (or already are). There’s also a protected micro SD card slot on the back of Axioms, though there will also be a remote dash-mount SD card reader available and it will even include a powered USB port.

So here’s the Axiom 7 pricing picture with sonar included, and Raymarine is proud about it because existing 3D sonars like Lowrance StructrureScan 3D and Garmin Panoptix RealVü currently cost almost as much or more without the MFD. I haven’t seen RealVision for real yet — hopefully that will happen tonight and tomorrow — but the 3D imagery looks a lot like the Lowrance SS3D I found quite fishing effective. Moreover, the RealVision transducers include AHRS-based “gyro stabilization” that sounds a lot like the technology I’ve watched keeping Garmin Panoptix imagery steady even in a small overloaded demo boat.

There’s more on RealVision 3D Sonar here, but you may appreciate the high-resolution screen thumb-nailed above (click on it for full size, like other Panbo images). What you’re looking at is all four RealVision sonar channels working simultaneously, plus you’ve finger panned the 3D view a bit right from the default stern view. The white grid shows where your boat is in the 3D space, so those red and yellow “balls” near the grid — they’re color coded for depth — represent the same fish or whatever seen off the bottom in the three other views. This screen also shows how Axiom with Lighthouse 3 lets a user build pages with custom size windows, quite easily I’m told.

While LightHouse 3 is a major rebuild of Raymarine’s operating system — lots of LH3 detail here — one design goal was to keep the interface familiar to current Lighthouse users. In fact, LightHouse 3 will be coming to existing Raymarine MFDs, though it may take six months or more and some features may not be possible on older hardware. By the same token, not every feature seen in the latest LightHouse R17 software will be available in the initial release of LH3 — advanced sailing features and full autopilot setup are examples — though they will be eventually.

The chart screen above shows LH3’s more iconic menus and also how major modes like chart views have been organized into easy top menu buttons. And don’t worry if you notice the lack of C-Map references in the current Axiom material. That’s only because LH3 compatible C-Map cartography isn’t ready yet, which confirms what I heard at the recent Navico Hawks Cay writers event about how independent C-Map will stay even as a Navico sibling. (Much more coming to Panbo about that event, by the way.)

While there’s lots to LightHouse 3 (even an “Android layer” for you geeks keeping track), these slides illustrate two features I particularly like. One is live view menus, meaning that you get to see the effect of menu choices before you commit to them. That’s being done elsewhere, and should be everywhere in my view, but I think that individual MFD profiles are new. Again, I haven’t seen the feature live yet, but I gather that we’ll be able to custom set up an Axiom for ourselves and also for other members of the crew or guests. Nice!

Now here’s a peek at what FLIR is calling “ClearCruise intelligent thermal analytics technology” and which so far at least is only available with Axiom and the new M100/200 Series cameras. Apparently ClearCruise can identify solid objects visible on the water in the camera view and can do it even while filtering out solid objects above the horizon. In fact, it can even alarm you when the camera image is not on screen. All of which sounds quite intelligent and useful, even with the fixed M100 Series with a first model retailing at $2,495.

This slide collage shows how the 9-inch-high M100/200 cameras look in comparison to their M cousins, and also the new compact JCU-3 controller that can be paired with the pan-and-tilt M200 Series (with a first model price of $3,495). The M100/200 cams also use IP over Ethernet for video as well as control, which means that they will be easier to install and that they will network across multiple display. I hope to double check tonight but I suspect that the M200 Series can also cue and slew to selected targets — a terrific feature I experienced with the test M618CS — and if they can’t at first, they should be able to eventually. And, incidentally, most of the orginal M cams are getting refreshed to M Series Next Generation with improved cam cores, zooming and more.

Are you tasting the BAM! yet? Now obviously Raymarine has aimed Axiom and RealVision at the huge smaller boat fishing market, but they struggle to be reticent about how these developments could work themselves up and down their product lines. I will report on Ray and FLIR demos in the comments section below at minimum, and there will no doubt be lots more electronics news in Miami. It’s show time!

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Written by Ben Ellison on Mar 13, 2017 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

While Furuno USA had a lot to show off at the Miami Boat Show, let’s start with the new 1815 standalone radar. Recent Panbo entries about Raymarine’s sleek new Axiom Series multifunction displays and Navico’s ambitious systems integration strategy drew some keep-it-simple skeptics. But it is still possible to find single function marine electronics if that’s your preference, and the 1815 may be an excellent small radar choice packing a whole lot of performance for the price…

The Furuno 1815 radar retailing for $2,500 includes the 8.4-inch color portrait display and control head seen above, along with a 19-inch 4kW radome. And those bright blue “True Trails” seen on the screen are a very useful feature not available on most recreational radars at any price. True echo trails, as opposed to the much more commonly seen relative trails, means that the trails show actual target motion regardless of your boat’s motion. The direction of the true trail indicates the target vessel’s heading over the ground while its length suggests its speed.

Incidentally, some other recreational radars can show true trails but usually as only one aspect of a True Motion view in which your vessel moves across the screen instead of the targets, trails, etc. moving along with your vessel (more detailed discussion here). Some users are confused by true motion, and, to the best of my knowledge, only Furuno offers true trails regardless of viewing mode. Moreover, the 1815 also offers an unusual True View mode, which is a lot like the simple and popular Head Up mode, except that all the target imaging responds to your boat’s actual heading instead of just where the bow is pointed.

Both of these 1815 screens show True Trails at work (in Head Up mode) as well as the 1815’s ability to plot AIS targets and to track its own targets. I was intrigued to see the latter described in Miami as “10-target ARPA (TT) with Fast Target Tracking”, because FTT is also what Furuno calls the phenomenal ARPA tracking I’ve seen from their DRS4D-NXT radome.

For instance, in my experience Fast Target Tracking would mean that target #3 on the left screen above was intelligently and automatically selected, because it’s moving my way, and, moreover, that its true heading and speed were calculated very quickly and accurately. With the NXT, I also see very fast results for targets I select manually, which I’m usually doing with a fingertip on the test NavNet TZT2 12-inch MFD, and then a similar tap pops up the target’s heading and speed info.

On the 1815 display that sort of easy finger work will have to be done with the cursor control and Enter button, and while the NXT radar can handle 100 automatic and manual targets at once, the 1815 is limited to 10. And it turns out there’s more Fast Target Tracking limitation in the 1815 than that.

As you can see in the 1815 manual inset above, automatic target acquisition is limited to a fixed 90° guard zone two miles ahead of your vessel. That’s like the first Furuno NavNet ARPA I experienced, except that you could customize the zone, and the amazing NXT acquires whatever targets it thinks are important anywhere around you, no zone needed. Tentative 1815 owners should understand these limitations, but complaints aren’t easily justified. I’ll bet that few readers have any sort of automatic radar plotting aid (ARPA) unless they already own a fairly modern Furuno.

Actually, the ARPA situation is rather remarkable given how competitive marine electronics is. For years Furuno has been the only manufacturer I know of offering it in recreational radars, even though this valuable feature seems high on the list of every radar product manager I know. But recently Furuno has apparently improved the speed and accuracy of its MARPA and still unmatched ARPA with Fast Target Tracking algorithms, and absolutely supercharged them with the Doppler assistance available in the solid-state NXT.

So even the 1815’s limited ARPA/MARPA FTT — maximum five targets each — is impressive. But tentative owners should also realize that getting the 1815’s advanced features requires NMEA 0183 interfacing with Heading, GPS, and AIS sources, and a plotter data interface can be very useful, too (chart overlay is not possible, but you can at least have a shared go-to waypoint that helps orient your radar and plotter views). In other words, a full-featured 1815 installation won’t be completely standalone, as suggested in diagram above. Also, it’s almost invariably smart shopping to study the product manual as well as the brochure.

X-Class 12 & 25 kW

In Miami Furuno also added 12 and 25 kW versions to its X-Class family of NavNet open array radars. They’re modular — so, for instance, that original $5,395 DRS6AX with a 3.5-foot antenna could be alternately rigged with 4- or 6-footers for a maximum retail total of $6,240 — and you have to delve into both TZtouch and TZtouch2 operator manuals to see some of the possible radar display features (which differ between the two MFD series).

Actually, right now only the TZT2 software 4.01 literature will tell you about that Echo Trail, and Average functions are now available (which Fred Khedouri missed in his early TZT2 review). Also, X-Class True Trails may only be available on TZT displays, and I can’t find the exact parameters of X-Class automatic and manual Fast Target Tracking, but hope to add this information to the entry soon.

A lot of features like automatic and effective bird mode are highlighted on the dedicated X-Class radar site and in the X-Class video. Adding to the high performance image roster is the Miami presentation screen above, which seems to indicate very effective auto rain filtering. It’s interesting that Furuno, which has already developed commercial FAR-3000 solid-state S-band radar plus the remarkable NXT radome, is so far sticking with magnetron technology for its high-end recreational X-band open arrays.

Yamaha engine integration

In Miami we also got a peek at the Yamaha gauge and control integration that will soon come as a software update to TZtouch2 displays. It’s not quite the “first” Furuno expected, but it certainly looks like a complete integration close in style and function to Yamaha’s own Helm Master display, and it can also emulate the Command Link LCD and Digital interfaces. All that’s needed is a NMEA 2000 “interface unit” which may be the adaptor cables detailed at BOE Marine or may be a new Yamaha N2K bridge that has not been publicized yet (again, detail I’m after).

Furuno’s Yamaha integration is not diminished by a similar Simrad announcement during the Miami show nor the fact that Yamaha simultaneously chose the Garmin 7-inch MFD as its new full–featured CL7 Command Link Plus and Helm Master display. (Garmin has not said if the Yamaha integration will also come to their regular MFDs, but that seems likely (and would be a lot like the Navico/Mercury VesselView relationship).)

DFF-3D multi modal sonar

Last, but certainly not least, is the new DFF-3D multi-beam black box sonar for TZT and TZT2. Based on experience with their commercial WASSP muti-beam technology, Furuno developed four different modes for viewing the DFF-3D output, all of which can be used simultaneously.

The side-scanned structure imagery visible on the background screen above is now familiar to many boaters because it’s available from the other three big brands. And the 3D view at lower right — in which the side scan info becomes a skin over a 3D model of the bottom with separate targets, often fish, highlighted in 3D underwater space — is likewise becoming familiar (and popular). But that triple beam version of a traditional fishfinder view and what they call the cross section view are new to me, and both are potentially useful.

But what really seems different compared to the competition is the DFF-3D’s higher power and lower frequency, a combination that seems to fit with Furuno’s brawnier, bigger boat style. Note, for instance, that the 3D example Eric Kunz is discussing above shows bottom detail 600 feet deep in a swath about 800 feet wide. In fact, this sonar only sweeps 120 degrees port and starboard, not 180, and that makes sense away from shore where there’s not much to see that’s sideways and nearby.

The DFF-3D retails at $2,095 and that’s without one of the necessary multibeam transducers developed with Airmar. The closeup view of the transom mount model below says a lot, though perhaps mainly that this multimodal sonar is unlike anything else I know of in the recreational world. Furuno did not respond quickly to the rapid evolution of side scanning and 3D for fresh water and coastal fishing, but now they have, in their own way.

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Written by Ben Ellison on Mar 26, 2017 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

It was good to see SkyMate return to the Miami Boat Show after years focused on commercial fishing, and the company clearly has not lost its touch at squeezing lots of easy utility out of skinny-band satellite communications. Its new Mazu/mSeries marine system promises surprisingly full-featured weather and email using Iridium’s least expensive service, plus texting, SOS, navigation and (optional) off-boat monitoring. And, just around the corner in the Si-Tex booth, I saw a very interesting Android-based touchscreen NavStar MFD nicely interfacing with SkyMate’s existing communications system…

Panbo first mentioned SkyMate in 2004, before I even got here, and in this 2007 “Connected Cruising” PMY article I discussed an ambitious low-cost cellular/satellite project the by-then well-respected SkyMate was working on. That didn’t happen, maybe because the boating world recession did, and so did some problems with the Orbcom satellite service that SkyMate originally used. Nonetheless, SkyMate’s basic tracking and messaging worked well for mandated VMS services, it was acquired by a company with deep engineering resources, and eventually they switched to Iridium’s faster and more reliable Small Burst Data (SBD) technology.

While you can peruse SkyMate’s existing systems here, the recreational marine link will take you to a new Mazu-Marine.com site and the very modern system diagram above. Mazu is specifically the name of the iPad app that lets you manage the whole mSeries hardware system, and also lets users transition smoothly back and forth from the broadband Internet connection they’ll likely have on land, or near it, to the thin data dribble possible with the Iridium 9602 SBD modem fitted into the compact (5-inch) mSeries antenna module (including a GPS receiver).

Iridium SBD tech is highly proven, especially for me after years of experience with various models of the handheld DeLorme inReach. (I’m now testing the Garmin inReach Explorer+ on the island of St Lucia, check our explorations including some crazy 4WD driving here.) So I’m quite confident that the SkyMate mSeries with its dedicated antenna module mounted as designed with a good sky view is going to provide excellent Iridium SBD service anywhere on the planet. Which is good, because SkyMate is doing things with SBD I didn’t even realize possible.

The ISI-2000 is the black box heart of the mSeries hardware system, and, boy, is it connected! In fact, many of those ports above are “future proofing” that, while intriguing, are not useful yet. So let’s first look at what will come with the $995 mSeries package planned to ship soon. On the far right is the cable port that powers and communicates with the four-button LED illuminated keypad that lets you quickly fire off a distress alert to the global GEOS Alliance, see that messages are waiting, or arm/disarm the monitoring option. Then there’s the single cable connection to the antenna module, which is actually Ethernet with POE, meaning that there is no coax signal loss and that extensions beyond the included 10m cable are painless.

Attaching to the big port at far left is a cable for 12 or 24v power (4 Watts normal draw) and also for the Sentry monitoring option detailed below. The ISI-2000 also has a built-in WiFi access point and that’s how you connect the iPad. So the Bluetooth wireless is there for possible future wireless Sentry sensors and there are also ports for an additional weather source (Sirius/XM perhaps?), USB, and CANbus (NMEA 2000?). Even without the future possibilities, this Iridium SBD system integrates more tightly with a boat than the inReach handheld or any other SBD device I can think of.

Perhaps the best way to understand SkyMate’s new system, if you have an iPad, is to install Mazu Marine and poke around. The app also has a pretty good System Tour starting with the top menu above (look under Settings/General). It’s an impressive feature array that gets more so as you dig down, I think. (I won’t detail the feature below, but, yes, you can plan routes anywhere on your iPad and use them with mSeries GPS underway, NOAA charts included if you’re in U.S. waters.)

Mazu email, for instance, is designed to work like normal email even though what’s possible via Iridium SBD is quite limited. You do have to set up your Mazu address in your regular email app, but then your conversations will be where you expect them and broadband goodies like big photo attachments will work fine when your iPad is fully online. Also, Mazu’s three other communications methods — SMS to phone, text to (synthesized) voice, and text to fax — also work through your regular email account (and SkyMate’s talented server).

Meanwhile texts to your Mazu “phone” number will get to you fine via Iridium (or regular Internet) and so will emails as long as the sender knows your limits. You set maximum incoming email size in KB and can also set up email subject keywords or allowed sender lists to further filter what gets charged to your Mazu Iridium connection plan. Incoming messages are noted in the app and on the keypad, but again you use your regular email to view and reply. This is a significant contrast to inReach (and similar Iridium messaging), where I can send a text to your email address, but you have to follow a link to a Garmin site to reply and that conversation only lives inside the inReach app, handheld, and website world.

Mazu weather is similar. While inReach can now pack a fair bit of weather forecast into a few short data bursts (details here), Mazu goes a whole lot further, including NOAA resources like graphic analysis, automatic alerts, and NEXRAD radar. You can try all this in the app without mSeries hardware, though you can’t see how many KB of data would be used over Iridium or how long it takes for the ISI-2000 to assemble the bursts into, say, that wet image of the West Coast.

Note how Mazu only lets you download one NEXRAD image at a time, but you can animate the last three downloads. In other words, this weather service doesn’t expect the data volume possible with, say, PredictWind via Iridium GO, but, then again, I don’t know of any easy all-in-one packages based on the GO or the similar Globalstar Sat-Fi (lots of GMN info here).

In my view, the cherry on the Mazu/mSeries parfait is the optional Sentry monitoring, which should let a user keep an eye on their boat anywhere in the world, whether they’re just dining ashore nearby (with WiFi or cell service) or they’ve left the dear vessel for months at a time. The $199 Sentry kit will include a water level sensor, a shore power sensor, a contact sensor (typically for a door), a tactile sensor (button under anything), and a DC actuator, but the 16 channels can purportedly be set up for all sorts of sensors and relays.

Sentry, which does necessitate an added-service plan, also unlocks geofencing, an anchor alarm, and Mazu pages like the ones seen above (which I got from SkyMate as they are not available in the app without activation). Note the nifty rules-based alerting and alarming, like “If shore power is disconnected for 2 minutes, then send an SMS text message saying Shore power disconnected to the number xxx-xxx-xxxx.” I’m pretty sure that it would be easy to set up a loud siren so that you’d learn about anchor dragging or high bilge water in your berth like you would ashore (similar to the on and off board beauty of Nautic Alert).

I’m looking forward to testing the Mazu/mSeries system soon, and what I’ll be hoping to experience is a useful array of reliable cruising communications that will be exceptionally easy to learn and use.

Si-Tex NavStar

Now let’s look at the new Si-Tex NavStar multifunction display series, which are nicely detailed in this Miami booth video. As Si-Tex VP Allen Schneider makes clear in his demo, this MFD is running Android with full touchscreen and browser capability as well as WiFi and Bluetooth. So while there’s Ethernet, NMEA 2000 and 0183, and dual-range radar and multiple sonar sources are planned, the NavStar can also work with a Bluetooth keyboard and/or integrate fully with the existing SkyMate system.

Actually, I did not realize at first that the SkyMate interface I saw working on the NavStar was not Mazu because the functions seemed quite similar. But while the SkyMate ISeries is feature rich and well proven, it doesn’t have all the future proofing built into the mSeries, nor the Sentry option, and its user interface is browser-based, not a dedicated iOS app.

Maybe the mSeries hardware will eventually get an Android app, or a browser interface – I don’t know. But what the NavStar can do right now is still quite appealing and unique for a full-featured 12-inch MFD retailing for about $2,700 (there will also be a 10-inch version available when the NavStars ship next month, and a 15-inch is planned). Note, also, the Sport Fishing service. The overall SkyMate Iridium services may also hint at what Garmin will come up with as they fully integrate all the assets they acquired with the DeLorme purchase, or what Simrad and B&G may offer as GoFree Vessel and Track evolve.

Easy-to-use is key these days, especially in areas as complex under the hood as skinny satellite communications. So it was neat when Allen Schneider quickly sent me an email from the demo NavStar, which could have been installed on a helm pedestal way offshore, and a minute or so later my reply lit up his SkyMate keypad below. Perhaps even neater, but much harder to test, is the GEOS response possible if you hold down those two SOS buttons. I once described the GEOS rescue center in Texas, and a lot of SPOT and inReach rescues have been handled since, many of which made use of Iridium’s two-way messaging. In fact, Steve Mitchell fully documented more than a test, and I’ll write up some boating examples soon.

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Written by Ben Ellison on Jun 20, 2017 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

There is understandable grumbling about how Raymarine’s new 7-, 9- and 12-inch Axiom multifunction displays shipped (somewhat late) without several significant features that Ray plans to deliver with a software update at a yet unspecified date. But I’m fairly confident that the longer term story is rosy. After two days of fishing with beta MFDs in Florida and installing a test Axiom 7 myself, I’m impressed with both the hardware and the new LightHouse 3 interface, and I’ll be surprised if the missing features and more don’t fill in nicely. Let’s take a glass-at-least-half-full look at this major product line change…

As discussed when launched with bam!, an optional but major new feature of the Axiom MFDs is support for new RealVision transducers capable of four different CHIRP-assisted sonar modes — all at once if you’d like. That was all working pretty well in Florida. What you’re seeing on the Axiom 9 and 12 displays above are fishfinding, DownVision, and RealVision 3D windows, and while the SideVision window was not visible on either boat at the time, the side looking data is being used to “skin” the 3D model of the bottom while also highlighting targets separate from the bottom, be they fish or turbulence created by the boat.

On the Axiom 12 display immediately above, Captain Chris Williams is blasting along beautiful Lake Rousseau at 27 knots, but all three sonar modes are still holding bottom, and I can testify that neither the sonar nor the internal GPS tracking seemed to lag behind the boat’s speed even a bit. Axiom is notably fast in all ways. But you may also notice, perhaps with a shudder, how shallow the channel was, and that’s in a flooded lake full of dangerously shallow trees (the same Navionics map detail here), which did not add up to a good sonar testing situation. In 5 feet of water, no sonar can see much in any direction.

Fishing way out in the Gulf of Mexico with Captain TJ Shea (whose seamanship skills already impressed me one night in Naples) was a better opportunity to see the multimodal RealVision in action, though still not ideal, simply because the bottom is so flat out there. Many of the hotspot waypoints that fishermen covet in these waters turn out to be minor bumps that show best in the regular fishfinding mode with its color coding of bottom hardness. It was impressive, however, that the Axiom 9 color CHIRP fishfinding seen from the RealVision transom transducer on Shea’s Southport 33 mirrored almost exactly what was happening on his big Ray screens with black box sonar processing and a much more expensive transducer (and perhaps it will be better in some situations once the RealVision transducer’s built-in gyro stabilization is enabled).

While the Axiom 3D and fishfinding images in the collage above are giving different perspectives on real fish being caught by enthusiastic boating writers, there are many other situations where the 3D, side and down views will have more value, like around this UK wreck. And in those situations I believe that users will be quite pleased with how easily they can set up and tune the sonar imagery using LightHouse 3 interface screens like the two shown. But do not presume that Axiom or LH3 are just about fishing.

While I suspect that we’ll soon be seeing more evidence of good fishing performance from the various Axiom displays with built-in sonar processing, that’s only part of the story. For instance, Steve Mitchell just installed a plain Axiom 9 on his Beneteau 311 sailboat and is impressed with many non-sonar aspects of the MFD. Also, owners of most Raymarine MFDs sold in recent years can purportedly look forward to a major software update that will deliver LightHouse 3 interface niceties like the ones Steve illustrates well and like I collaged above. Judging interfaces is subjective, but I’m certainly “getting” LH3 quickly and also loving how often the effect of adjustments can be seen live as you make them.

But like other early Axiom owners, Steve is anxious to see LH3 acquire features like the Navionics Dock-to-dock autorouting that came to LH2 R17 last year, and anyone installing Axiom now should be very careful about their expectations. Some currently missing features are noted on the Axiom model pages, and there are also numerous Axiom discussions on the Raymarine support forum, but perhaps the most complete summary is Jim McGowan’s Panbo comment here.

Axiom 7 install

It’s good to look at the rear end of an MFD because that’s where you see the connectivity that largely sets them apart from standard computers, mobiles, and sometimes each other. So there’s the big 25 pin port that handles all those RealVision sonar modes (and is also backward compatible with Ray’s CPT-100 DownVision transducers), and next is an unusual port for an included cable that splits for 12v power and NMEA 2000 networking (with a standard N2K male connector, not a SeaTalkNG “stub” connector).

I suspect that the power and N2K functions were combined to make room for that micro USB port that does look like what you may have on your phone (or camera). I haven’t seen detailed documention yet, but it certainly seems to be a versatile USB On-The-Go (OTG) port, which means it can support both “slave” and “master” relationships. In fact, I purchased an OTG adaptor and verified that this Axiom 7 can use either USB memory sticks and SD cards cabled to this port. The official Axiom A80440 Remote Card Reader doesn’t seem available yet, but I trust it will have an outer threaded connector to waterproof the port and it may also include its own USB port.

Finally, at left is the RayNet-style Ethernet port that can connect Axioms to various Raymarine radars, sonars, and IP cameras. Axioms can also be networked to each other, but apparently not to older Ray MFDs until the latter can be updated from LightHouse 2 to LH 3.

This photo shows the micro SD card slot on the back of the Axiom along with its waterproof cover (and that split power/N2K cable). I grinned when I tried the hard plastic suncover. Raymarine once provided soft covers that looked good but did not always stay put (in my experience), but it will take a hurricane to dislodge this new cover design. However, it only works if the Axiom is installed in its included bracket mount.

This test unit is the full $1,350 Axiom 7 RV model with the RV-100 transducer and a Navionics Nav+ card for all of the U.S. and Canada, but the base model without sonar and only U.S. NOAA vector charts is $650. I’ve already seen the Axiom display an older set of LightHouse NOAA raster charts, but I’m not sure it can work yet with the $10 regions available at the Raymarine Chart Store. Also, I wouldn’t hesitate a second to spend an extra $50 for the 8 gigabyte Navionics card which comes preloaded with all those charts (and many lake maps) and still had room to add SonarCharts and Community Edits from Maine to South Carolina. It was also easy to update all those charts with the online Navionics app and the card includes a year of updating.

I do hope that LightHouse 3 will eventually work with C-Map charts like LH2 does — particularly the 4D Max+ chart bundles that include a raster layer for most countries — but let’s acknowledge that a lot of software coding is involved when you’re pretty much starting from scratch with a new base operating system (Android), which apparently is the Axiom/LH3 situation.

Also, a word on Axiom prices: Like some other marine electronics companies — it’s looking like a trend — Raymarine seems to have adopted minimum pricing, which is different from manufacturer’s suggested retail pricing or even minimum advertised pricing. It’s Apple-like what-you-see-is-what-you-get pricing. So while Axiom prices look like a good value to me, you should not mentally knock off a chunk of change you think you’ll see as a discount from some sources. For instance, the Axiom 7 prices listed at Raymarine are the same prices you’ll see in a Defender shopping cart. I tentatively view this as a good trend that encourages quality distribution but I may not understand all its ramifications.

Back to suncovers, I don’t know how one can possibly secure to the all-glass face and shallow bezel of a surface-mounted Axiom, but that face sure is sleek and bright. Note here that at full 1200 NIT display brightness — which I saw working fine in high direct Florida sunshine — this Axiom 7 is only drawing 8W of power (or 0.7a at the 11.5v coming from the half-charged long test Weego). In my experience, that draw will drop noticably with a click or two of screen dimming and remember that a quad core processor, 4GB of solid state memory, and a high spec GPS are also being powered.

I was (unreasonably) hoping that in this faster-better-cheaper tech world the Axiom GPS would locate itself for the first time on the photo table deep in my basement shop, but it did only take a minute or so just outside. And look at all the GMDSS satellite systems it can use, as well as the sort of well explained and illustrated settings screen I keep happily finding in LH3.

Also impressive is the Axiom surface mount scheme. If you look at the backside photo above you’ll see four allen head bolts that allow the whole outer shell to slip off. Then you attach the four brass studs, place the Axiom in the right size whole, and the shell becomes a strong all-away-around-back clamp with no surface screws penetrating the glass face, plus no screw covers to lose or a thin removable bezel to break.

Before replacing the aSeries WiFi a78 (with the silver removable bezel I painted black in search of the glass bridge look), I took these comparison shots. The Axiom 7 model with DV sonar and transducer is directly comparable, yet a noticably better build with a lot more horsepower at a similar price. And using a touch interface is a lot easier when your fingers don’t jam against the edges of the screen, and also when it responds much faster.

Remember, though, that right now Axiom WiFi and several other built-in capabilities cannot do what an a 78 running LightHouse 2 can. Also, be aware that this first Axiom series is pretty clearly a replacement for the aSeries, and that Axioms with hybrid controls and a larger choice of screen sizes seems inevitable. In fact, a Panbo reader reports hearing that they’ll be called the “Axiom Pro” series and will be out “in a very few months.”

The Axiom 7 cut out is slightly smaller than the a78’s, but I disguised the difference fairly well with some thin black PVC sheet. I also temporarily hooked up a Cam220 IP dome camera largely to see if it would work cabled directly to the Axiom’s RayNet port instead of to the RayNet switch that both will eventually network to along with the eS12 on the flybridge. It did, without any setup on my part, and notice how I can turn the streaming video into a snaphot (like below) or a video recording. I can also give the camera a custom name and icon and, most impressively, run at least three more IP cameras on the network.

I’ve got a lot more testing to do, but it seems like the case can be made that the Axiom series as is right now would make a heck of a camera network with a good chartplotter and radar display thrown in, and lots more very likely to come.

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Written by Ben Ellison on Jul 10, 2017 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

I won’t be at the ICAST fishing show this week, but I do know something about two of the major pre-show product announcements that came out today. For instance, while the introduction of yet another outboard engine joystick control system might seem insignificant, what if the technology is deeply integrated into the outboards, requires little rigging work or locker space, and costs a whole lot less? Say hello to iDock as it joins Evinrude’s Intelligent Piloting System…

What’s significantly different about iDock is that all E-TEC G2 outboards already have hydraulic steering built in, as well as digital shift and throttle. So the “All-New Evinrude iDock” system requires little more than the joystick itself and a couple of small control modules, and it only costs $5,999. There are already perfectly good outboard joystick systems out there — like the SeaStar Optimus 360 I tried in 2012 — but they involve a lot more parts and costs more in the $14,000 and up range.

The iDock also works with a boat’s existing hydraulic wheel instead of requiring an electric wheel, which purportedly ensures that you’ll be able to turn the motors even if the steering electronics fail. The latter seems fairly unlikely, however, as the components communicate over redundant private CANbus and NMEA 2000 networks. And while iDock lacks several advanced control features like the Heading and Position Hold options SeaStar recently added, apparently they may come with future updates along with joystick control of more than two E-TEC G2’s.

In early May a gaggle of boating writers got to try iDock in Florida on both the Scout 255 LXF center console above and on a sizable pontoon boat. I was impressed. Using iDock was a gentle, quiet experience capable of making complex manuevers look casual, even elegant. And, if needed, extra boost (and noise) is right at hand with just a bit more pressure to push the stick beyond a detent.

With iDock you can theoretically rotate the boat while also going ahead or sideways, or even all three at once, but that can be a lot to ask of even two very smartly-controlled outboards, especially given the windy day we had. Evinrude engineer Sam McGinley — two years on the project and looking a bit concerned about my boat handling above — showed us that a step-by-step approach works well. Particularly slick is how the built-in gyro can solidly maintain the boat’s heading while you simply go sideways or backwards into a tight spot. You can see some of what I mean in this iDock marketing video, and hopefully there will be lots more demo and user videos to come.

Last year I got to try numerous Evinrude E-Tec outboards (as well as Rotax marine jet propulsion) in Wisconsin, and while I focused my entry on the nifty E-Link interface apps, I’ve become quite a fan of BRP’s multi-market engineering resources and overall innovative style. To me iDock looks like a nice cherry on top of a remarkably clean and modern outboard design.

Raymarine Axiom Pro

Also announced today were Raymarine’s Axiom Pro 9-, 12-, and 16-inch multifunction display series. BAM! A commenter on Panbo’s original Axiom entry suggested that the hybrid Pro series would eventually join the all-touch originals, but I didn’t think we’d see the details so soon. Note, though, that delivery dates are not yet specified, and that may be because of the delayed features discussed in this recent Axiom hand’s-on followup.

That said, it’s exciting see where the Axiom hardware platform and the LightHouse 3 operating system are headed. All Axiom Pros include CHIRP sonar, and I don’t think you’re paying much if you don’t use the single high channel variety in the Pro S model. But the Pro RVX models not only include all the RealVision 3D, SideVision, and DownVision seen in the top-of-the-line Axiom RV displays, but also 1kW CHIRP able to use low, medium, or high transducers and purportedly capable of imaging “bait, fish, thermoclines and more at depths to 5,000 feet.”

More differentiation from the regular Axiom series: The Pros can run on 24v as well as 12v, and each has two RayNet ports. The latter means that a center console could run two Pros, radar, tons of sonar, and still have room for a camera without adding a network switch. But, then again, the Pros can not only run eight IP cameras, they can also encode analog camera input so that it too networks. They also support Miracast wireless video streaming to smart TV’s and monitors.

Moreover, I was pleased to notice that Axiom Pros will eventually be compatible with CZone as well as Empirbus digital switching. But not so happy to see that the only specific audio system compatibility mentioned is with Rockford Fosgate. Their stereos are fine as far as I know, but this is another indication that something is amiss right now with standardized N2K stereo control.

Of course the Axiom Pro models, like this 9-inch, will have buttons and knobs in addition to touch controls (though you’ll also be able to add remote keypads to any Axiom). The combination rotary knob and cursor control looks exactly like the one on the eS Series the Pros may eventually replace, and that’s a good thing as this is a very accurate and capable knob, at least to my feel. But that “dot” button below right of the knob is a new one offering a custom command of your choice, which is a good idea first seen on the Simrad evo3 and B&G Zeus3 series (I think).

I’m guessing that some readers who have already purchased Axiom MFDs will respond negatively to the Pro news, as in “What the hey, they haven’t even delivered what they originally promised yet!” I certainly won’t argue, but this is a major hardware/software rollout we’re seeing, and that’s not easy.

Also, I continue to see lots of stuff that does work well and super fast on the test Axiom 7 installed on Gizmo. As of Saturday, two IP cameras and the Quantum radar are all networked to the 7 via a RayNet switch, and the CPT120 transducer is directly connected via an adaptor cable (which means I removed and will return the CP100 Sonar Module). Everything on the network also works fine with the eS128 on the flybridge, but I cannot yet run both MFDs at once. That will take at least a beta version of the LightHouse 3 that will replace LH2 in many pre-Axiom models — another exciting piece of Ray’s big project. And Gizmo is set up to beta ;-)

PS: Garmin Panoptix PS22-TR

Speaking of ICAST 2017, Garmin also spoke up this morning, announcing the Panoptix PS22-TR transducer that clamps to a trolling motor and can be manually turned to provide either LiveVü Forward or Down scanning modes (video here). When I first saw Panoptix demoed in early 2015, I thought it quite neat how you could sit in a drifting boat and use the trolling motor steering control to scan around to see fish and structure in real time. The PS22-TR seems to increase the flexibility of that use at a lower price (though without the wider beam angle and RealVü mode of the PS31 transducer).

I’ll add that I’ve seen some interesting LiveVü Forward imagery coming from the similar Panoptix PS51-TH thru-hull now installed on Gizmo, which also has a FrontVü grounding avoidance mode. The next Panbo entry will attempt to explain why my underway testing got delayed but how it’s going to get busy.

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