November 17, 2010 09:54
Greetings... I would like to introduce myself. I am a long-term Mac user who avoids PCs - I was once an IT professional, so I know what I am avoiding here!
I have for two years been using iNavX on an iPhone aboard my Morgan Giles 30 yacht, and have had a great experience. I am now fortunate to have just ordered a brand new boat, an Alubat Ovni 395, to be delivered next April, and I am designing the electronics, amongst many other tasks. I favour open systems, rather than putting a lot of money into proprietary displays and getting tied to a particular manuafacturer, so will be using my trusty MacBook, MacENC and iPhone, or may be iPad.
I have a Schematic of how things should work here . The dotted items are planned for Phase 2 - initially I intend to have MacENC do the broadcast to the iPhone/iPad. Later I may install the Brookhouse iMux so that the MacBook does not have to be running. Note that I have an AIS transponder in here. This led to the choice of the Standard Horizon GX2000 VHF radio, as it, uniquely as far as I know, has the ability to process AIS data via NMEA and list AIS targets, so they can be called via DSC without having to enter MMSI numbers - not something I want to spend time on if needing to discuss collision avoidance in a hurry.
An earlier version of this scheme used the cheaper Digital Yacht AIS transponder and I hoped to use the in-built GPS as my main GPS receiver, but I have been warned off relying on that. The various NMEA 0183 connections were looking more like a bird's nest of different in and out wires at various speeds and needed multiplexors, and I was getting apprehensive at the amount of fiddling it might take to get it working. I have now focussed on NMEA 2000 wherever possible, and this has greatly simplified the whole thing. I am telling myself the extra cost of the NMEA 2000 compliant AIS transponder, GPS receiver and tridata transducer is a wise investment.
Will it work? Does anyone see any problems? Any comments would be really appreciated - thanks.
I have for two years been using iNavX on an iPhone aboard my Morgan Giles 30 yacht, and have had a great experience. I am now fortunate to have just ordered a brand new boat, an Alubat Ovni 395, to be delivered next April, and I am designing the electronics, amongst many other tasks. I favour open systems, rather than putting a lot of money into proprietary displays and getting tied to a particular manuafacturer, so will be using my trusty MacBook, MacENC and iPhone, or may be iPad.
I have a Schematic of how things should work here . The dotted items are planned for Phase 2 - initially I intend to have MacENC do the broadcast to the iPhone/iPad. Later I may install the Brookhouse iMux so that the MacBook does not have to be running. Note that I have an AIS transponder in here. This led to the choice of the Standard Horizon GX2000 VHF radio, as it, uniquely as far as I know, has the ability to process AIS data via NMEA and list AIS targets, so they can be called via DSC without having to enter MMSI numbers - not something I want to spend time on if needing to discuss collision avoidance in a hurry.
An earlier version of this scheme used the cheaper Digital Yacht AIS transponder and I hoped to use the in-built GPS as my main GPS receiver, but I have been warned off relying on that. The various NMEA 0183 connections were looking more like a bird's nest of different in and out wires at various speeds and needed multiplexors, and I was getting apprehensive at the amount of fiddling it might take to get it working. I have now focussed on NMEA 2000 wherever possible, and this has greatly simplified the whole thing. I am telling myself the extra cost of the NMEA 2000 compliant AIS transponder, GPS receiver and tridata transducer is a wise investment.
Will it work? Does anyone see any problems? Any comments would be really appreciated - thanks.