June 25, 2010 12:41
I'm outfitting my sail boat for blue water cruising and am planning to build in a mac mini to run MacENC as my real time dashboard.
Boat is 36 foot traditional cruiser - currently minimally equipped with speed/depth, VHS, and compass. I've been using handheld GPS for most ocean trips.
I'm moving from Puget Sound to San Diego and want to upgrade with radar, tiller pilot, and ais transponder (so I can hopefully be 'seen' in the ocean and the fog).
Wondering what components people have integrated with MacENC successfully. My electronics guy has proposed two different radar systems - one is Furuno 1715 LCD/18" http://www.consumersmarine.com/modperl/p...1&i=200065 (seems like "basically just radar") which is cool if I can just feed the data and view it on MacEnc.
Other suggestion is Furuno NavNet VX 2 system 1834C/NT http://www.go2marine.com/product.do?no=196571F which is way more money and seems to also want to do MacENC's job?
I'm new to all this boat electronics stuff (although I work as a Mac/iPhone developer and would donate programming effort to get a better system for myself).
What would you experts buy for radar? Is the less expensive one fine if what I'm looking for is help through fog into marinas, weather info, and big iron avoidance?
Second:
AIS - seems you can spend a lot:
http://www.boatersland.com/furfa50.html ($1450)
or much less:
http://www.navsoftware.com/comar-csb-200...onder.html ($720)
and I can't really see a huge difference here.
What am I missing?
Finally - interfacing the tiller pilot to the Mac - what kind of benefits does this have? Can I feed it course info from the computer? I'm looking at a Navico TP32 (beefiest I could find). I'm only using this for motoring - I have a Monitor vane for steering under sail.
Boat is 36 foot traditional cruiser - currently minimally equipped with speed/depth, VHS, and compass. I've been using handheld GPS for most ocean trips.
I'm moving from Puget Sound to San Diego and want to upgrade with radar, tiller pilot, and ais transponder (so I can hopefully be 'seen' in the ocean and the fog).
Wondering what components people have integrated with MacENC successfully. My electronics guy has proposed two different radar systems - one is Furuno 1715 LCD/18" http://www.consumersmarine.com/modperl/p...1&i=200065 (seems like "basically just radar") which is cool if I can just feed the data and view it on MacEnc.
Other suggestion is Furuno NavNet VX 2 system 1834C/NT http://www.go2marine.com/product.do?no=196571F which is way more money and seems to also want to do MacENC's job?
I'm new to all this boat electronics stuff (although I work as a Mac/iPhone developer and would donate programming effort to get a better system for myself).
What would you experts buy for radar? Is the less expensive one fine if what I'm looking for is help through fog into marinas, weather info, and big iron avoidance?
Second:
AIS - seems you can spend a lot:
http://www.boatersland.com/furfa50.html ($1450)
or much less:
http://www.navsoftware.com/comar-csb-200...onder.html ($720)
and I can't really see a huge difference here.
What am I missing?
Finally - interfacing the tiller pilot to the Mac - what kind of benefits does this have? Can I feed it course info from the computer? I'm looking at a Navico TP32 (beefiest I could find). I'm only using this for motoring - I have a Monitor vane for steering under sail.