June 6, 2005 21:59
After months of using GPSNavX on other people's boats with my PowerBook, I have a 30' sailboat in my sights ...
I have picked my Mac, I am planning on installing a Mac Mini in the nav station. I found a site describing how to install a Mac Mini in a car which means there is a 12v power supply for it. This, along with a 17 or 19" LCD screen, will be mounted in a plexi enclosure that can be opened to insert CD/DVDs. The MacMini will have GPSNavX and (assuming I can figure out the best way to get it hooked up) Rusalka instruments. I will be using the blutooth keyboard and mouse so that when the water hits the keyboard it just kills the keyboard, not the whole computer.
The final piece of the plan is to be able to hook this machine up to a nice LCD TV screen (no bigger than 20") using the S-Video out and to a stereo. I have begun the process of converting my DVD library to H.264 encoded MP4 files and will be putting them, along with my iTunes library, onto a RAID 5 of 5 100GB notebook drives (total of 400GB storage) which will be bus powered. The final piece of the puzzle will be my EyeTV 500 which will allow me to watch HDTV broadcasts.
I hope to be able to (afford) install a daylight viewable (ideally transflective), marinized, touch screen (anyone know of one) 10-12" panel in the cockpit. It would be ideal of there were 4 or 5 programmable buttons on the screen but if no one offers that kind of functionality, it would be pretty easy to create some kind of 5 button doohickey that could be mounted next to the monitor. I think I would really only need command-tab, command-shift-tab, +, -, and mute.
I will eventually need all of the various and sundry other instruments and I am leaning toward using the micronet products from Tacktick products ( http://www.tacktick.com/products/mn100_index.asp ) because they are wireless and individually solar powered and as such I expect them to be easier to install. While Tacktick makes a multiplexer, I am wondering what wireless protocol they are using. It would be nice if it was bluetooth or, even better, 802.11 and there was some way to forgo the multiplexer and just have all of the wireless data feed into the mac without another device. Does anyone have any experience with Tacktick products or have any brands that should be avoided for Mac compatibility reasons?
I have picked my Mac, I am planning on installing a Mac Mini in the nav station. I found a site describing how to install a Mac Mini in a car which means there is a 12v power supply for it. This, along with a 17 or 19" LCD screen, will be mounted in a plexi enclosure that can be opened to insert CD/DVDs. The MacMini will have GPSNavX and (assuming I can figure out the best way to get it hooked up) Rusalka instruments. I will be using the blutooth keyboard and mouse so that when the water hits the keyboard it just kills the keyboard, not the whole computer.
The final piece of the plan is to be able to hook this machine up to a nice LCD TV screen (no bigger than 20") using the S-Video out and to a stereo. I have begun the process of converting my DVD library to H.264 encoded MP4 files and will be putting them, along with my iTunes library, onto a RAID 5 of 5 100GB notebook drives (total of 400GB storage) which will be bus powered. The final piece of the puzzle will be my EyeTV 500 which will allow me to watch HDTV broadcasts.
I hope to be able to (afford) install a daylight viewable (ideally transflective), marinized, touch screen (anyone know of one) 10-12" panel in the cockpit. It would be ideal of there were 4 or 5 programmable buttons on the screen but if no one offers that kind of functionality, it would be pretty easy to create some kind of 5 button doohickey that could be mounted next to the monitor. I think I would really only need command-tab, command-shift-tab, +, -, and mute.
I will eventually need all of the various and sundry other instruments and I am leaning toward using the micronet products from Tacktick products ( http://www.tacktick.com/products/mn100_index.asp ) because they are wireless and individually solar powered and as such I expect them to be easier to install. While Tacktick makes a multiplexer, I am wondering what wireless protocol they are using. It would be nice if it was bluetooth or, even better, 802.11 and there was some way to forgo the multiplexer and just have all of the wireless data feed into the mac without another device. Does anyone have any experience with Tacktick products or have any brands that should be avoided for Mac compatibility reasons?