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Useful link posted on rec.boats.electronics, with advice on maximising Wi-Fi reception on board.

http://wireless.wikia.com/wiki/Wi-Fi_on_a_Boat

Looking for an update to Mr Tides on MacUpdate.com and found a piece of software called Wx. Looks good.. but doesn't appear to support locations outside of the US. I've emailed the developer.

http://hunter.pairsite.com/wx/

I've added a new RSS feed of posts for MacSailing.net. It's pretty basic at the moment, but can be accessed at:

http://www.macsailing.net/bbs/rss.php

Use an RSS syndication tool such as Newsfire to access.

Was flicking through the latest Practical Boat Owner last night when I saw one of the chandlers selling a "WIB2 USB Navtex receiver" by a German company called Wetterbox.
My initial thoughts were that it would probably incorporate an internal serial to USB convertor, and would as such require a specific driver for Mac OS.



However, it turns out that this nifty little piece of kit is accessible from either Windows or OS X as a USB memory stick, with Navtex data being nicely indexed in HTML format. There's a demo device you can access here:

http://www.wetterinfobox.com/wib2demo/index.htm


What's more, the WIB2 has an internal battery which apparently lasts up to 3 days, so you don't need to have your Mac OR boat battery on.

The only disadvantage I can see with this device is that it doesn't output the standard serial stream of other Navtex decoders such as the Nasa engines which some charting programs use to integrate Navtex warnings into their systems (see my earlier post requesting this functionality in MacENC! ;-) )

Still pretty impressive, if you ask me...[url=http://www.wetterinfobox.com/wib2demo/index.htm]Full Specification Here..

Rich internet clients are all the rages these days - iTunes, iChat for example.

MacENC will also be. The next release of MacENC supports TCP/IP for NMEA data. What does this mean?

- MacENC can be a client to any NMEA stream. For example a public AIS data stream like this one..

telnet://66.235.48.168:3047

Allows AIS targets out of the range of a conventional AIS receiver to be plotted right on the MacENC chart.

OR

Another MacENC NMEA stream.

- MacENC can be a server of its received NMEA stream from traditional NMEA serial devices like GPS, AIS, instruments. Any Mac or PC can listen to the NMEA stream. For example Coastal Explorer on Windows supports NMEA from TCP/IP as does MacENC. So could an iPhone or Pocket PC.

So one could have a Mini down below running MacENC that is the NMEA server and any number of clients can see the NMEA data wirelessly.
This opens up many possibilities.

Stay tuned.

GPSNavX wrote:

Quote:At this time GPSNavX nor MacENC process NMEA DSC messages. Something I could add if there is any demand. I assume in the event of a DSC message a new waypoint where the distressed vessel is could be created? Any feedback as to how the response to each NMEA DSC message should be handled would be very helpful.

NDI has had an exclusive monopolistic lock on Canadian charts for sometime. Looks like that is finally changing. Could Canada go the way of NOAA and possibly offer the charts FREE or at the very least very low priced.

http://www.digitalocean.ca/digitaloceane...b19_07.asp

Here is hoping!!

I've been hosting MacSailing.net for a couple of years now, and have to say that it's been a very worthwhile experience.

However, I can't help feeling that there's a lot more that could be done to the site other than simply a forum. A few ideas that I had were:

Wiki
Set up a MacSailing.net Wiki where users can publish content around specific topics. This could be anything from discussions of available software and hardware to wiring diagrams for NMEA cables.

Blog
When I first set up the site the homepage was a blog, where news articles could be added. I still think this is a valid idea..

Please let me know your thoughts... any suggestions are gratefully accepted!!! I can't promise that I'll implement everything of course, but will try to accommodate sensible suggestions!

Cheers,

ReeferJon

Last weekend, I fitted the new Nasa BM-1 battery monitor to High Spirit. My primary reason for doing this was that I've just had an eberspacher heating system fitted, and am worried about the potential current draw, and the risk of running my auxiliary batteries flat.

High Spirit's got a fairly standard (in the UK) Off - 1 - 2- 1&2 battery selector swith, and the BM1 was pretty easy to install. As I'm only monitoring one bank of batteries, I fitted the supplied shunt on the Negative return cable to the domestic battery. One minor annoyance was the my negative cable was two big to make decent contact with the nut and bolt terminal connector on the shunt. This was rectified by sandwiching it between two 3/4" washers on the bolt. In addition to this, there's four thin cables that need to be connected to either side of the shunt or battery, and lead back to the BM-1 display.

The BM-1 display itself is a standard size (as in Raymarine ST60 series et al) unit that was easily mounted to my existing chart table nav aids panel. Once connected to the battery, the BM-1 begins to calibrate itself. You need to manually configure it to the Amp Hours of the battery bank you're using in order to get meaningful information, but the instructions provided are excellent and this literally takes seconds.

The BM-1 provides a wealth of information about the current state of your domestic batteries, and the current demands on them. The default screen displays battery volts, % of charge remaining and amps being drawn.



The amp reading is particularly useful. I had great fun recreating the Ed Harris scene from Apollo 13, switching on the different electronics and electrical systems on the boat to see what the current draw was!
Of particular interest was the eberspacher heater (Gosport's cold in February) which, at one point during it's start up cycle, peaked at 10.4 Amps of load for a few seconds. However it fairly soon dropped down to a more conservative 1.6 amps.

Other information that can be displayed is similar to that you'd expect from a laptop's battery monitoring software; Time to charge / discharge (depending on whether you're charging the battery).

With more and more electronics on-board, the BM-1's particularly relevant. I've recently added quite a few bit of kit; AIS engine, SSB radio, NavTex receiver etc, and to know what these drain gives me the confidence to use them more. Definitely recommended.

I'll be publishing some ampage figures soon, particularly for running a MacBook under inverter.

ReeferJon

The S-57 ENC is a complicated data structure with many intricacies. Over in the MS Windows world 7Cs provides the tools to create S-57 ENCs and read and display them. Unfortunatley those same tools are not on Mac OS X. So back in 2005 I began the steep learning curve of figuring out the S-57 ENC data structure. After almost two years of working with this format I learned a lot. From that information I have developed a new S-57 rendering engine for MacENC. It is faster and provides much more detail than before. This new rendering engine will make its way in the next release of MacENC which will be released early next week.