Expensive and tired old technology?

[Graham W]

Anyone who has struggled with fishfinder plug and socket corrosion misery must have wondered if there is a better way.  The answer surely lies in wireless technology and pulling data together on to one device and screen.  Wired NMEA is supposed to achieve this and probably succeeds for those who can afford it.  But what about small boat owners who don’t have the space or cash for the cabling and dedicated electronic gizmos that NMEA requires?

We all have smartphones or tablets of one kind or another.  Some of us have spent extra on waterproof cases and have nautical GPS navigation apps like Navionics or iNavX already installed.  What we also need is wireless access to what is going on under the boat and up in the air.  Preferably from one waterproof electronic receiver processing the data from multiple sensors and then broadcasting it to whoever wants to receive it on their smart device.

A company called Vexilar moved in the right direction on fishfinder data in 2014, with a 12V fishfinder transducer and wifi transmitter which can display depth graphics on several smart devices at the same time.  It can even share a split screen with the Navionics app.  However, the hardware has received mixed reviews on reliability and the transmitter isn’t properly waterproof, which (given its target user) seems like a mistake.  Perhaps for these reasons, it hasn’t really taken off.

Raymarine bought wireless instrument company Tacktick in 2011 but other than changing the logo, they have done very little with it.  Tacktick’s expensive solar-powered wind transducer and wireless displays were great back in the day (I still use mine a lot) but surely the technology exists to send that wind data directly to a smartphone?  If Raymarine weren’t jealously guarding the market share of their expensive wired NMEA boxes, they might have developed this branch of their technology.  Other companies like Nasa and Garmin are finally pursuing wireless paths but most of it is much too expensive.

Netatmo have developed relatively low cost home weather devices that display a large range of variables on smart devices via WiFi but only by storing data on their remote internet servers.  Boating needs someone to do something similar but without the need for internet servers - pull disparate wireless data together on the spot so that the whole lot can be displayed on one screen. My elderly iPad’s screen is already quite a bit larger than those of most proprietary free-standing fishfinders, so I would like to use that.  I can only see two potential problems: keeping the smart device charged in the damp; and stopping touchscreens from having a nervous breakdown when they get wet, which can happen quite a lot on boats like ours.

At the moment it feels like we’re in the technology silo era of Betamax vs VHS, with companies slugging it out over their proprietary technologies, only to be overwhelmed by digital streaming.  As I try to nurse my wired Garmin GPS/fishfinder back to life, the move to wireless can’t come soon enough for me.

[Graham W]

I found this smart device-enabled wind instrument, which has been on the market for about a year and costs €500 plus mounting https://www.openwind.de/.  There is an NMEA connector for €200 but it doesn’t yet integrate with anything else wirelessly.  However, there are hints that they are looking at this.

The associated app is free to download and gives some idea of its capabilities, including functions borrowed from the smart device’s own GPS capabilities, such as COG and SOG.  The iOS version of the app uses the views from Apple Maps, which is not exactly navigation friendly but perhaps better than nothing.

[Graham W]

Here’s another solar-powered wind transducer with Bluetooth connectivity, also for €500 and also with an NMEA connector (0183 only) https://calypsoinstruments.com/shop/product/ultrasonic-portable-7.  It’s been around since 2017 and what’s interesting about this one is that because it’s ultrasonic, it’s small and has no moving parts.  The free to download app looks different to Openwind’s but functionally is much the same, as are the hints at future integration.  An added benefit is that it could easily be put up somewhere in the garden without attracting attention when not on the boat.

[Sea Simon]

Another interesting post GW, thanks.

As a clanky old Mechanical Engineer, i am instinctively sceptical of such black magic!

We did however have a full TakTik suite on a large open day boat (40ft, no power) that I raced quite a few years ago. It was eye-wateringly expensive, but excellent kit. Disappointed that it seems to have neither evolved nor been discounted significantly as time has passed? Seems a bit over-kill for my BRe useage?

At the same time, i bought a TakTik race compass for my dinghy, which was quite useful (but did not prove to be indispensable to me). The battery in it is dead, and I'm not willing to pay for an exchange unit. The issue seems to be that the unit is sealed, with no "user serviceable parts". There are various work-arounds on the net, but lack of a roundtoit here....

Watching your finds with interest....

[Graham W]

Here’s yet another Bluetooth wind instrument at €500 https://wi-rb.com/product/rb/.  This one has been around since at least 2015 and has been panned in the past for being big and ugly and (like Tacktick, as Simon mentions) having batteries that are very difficult to replace.  At least they’ve dealt with the last criticism but to me it’s still seriously big and ugly.  It weighs nearly 700g, compared to 135g for the Calypso.  That’s quite a weight to stick on your small boat masthead - perhaps it’s aimed at owners of Thames barges?  Having been around for longer, its integration with various apps is better than the others, even including some with marine charts, and it also has NMEA capabilities at extra cost.

[Sea Simon]

If lockdown continues all season, then i may just get around to repairing my TakTik racing compass? Finally?
Looks like I can get the parts needed for £20ish. Have also seen a really good "how to" video.

I would love the integrated suite, as the vmg functions, with speed over ground and speed thru water too was so useful. Tbh, couldn't face the cabling for a similar"wired" set up, regardless of cost of instruments.
But..See previous post about pensions!  :-(

[Graham W]

In 2004, a friend took delivery of a Dufour 42 with a complete set of (new to the market?) Tacktick instruments.  From what I remember of the delivery voyage, they kept going wrong and quite a lot of time was spent scratching heads and looking at instruction manuals. 

On the other hand, I've had my Tacktick wind system since 2011 and it's been faultless, apart from when I backed the anemometer into a brick wall.  In the absence of a decent integrated iPhone system, I'd like to connect the Tacktick to my Garmin 557xs using NMEA 0183.  However, that depends on first getting the Garmin to work and then finding a cheap second hand Tacktick NMEA wireless interface.  If I succeeded, I could allegedly end up with an extra screen on the Garmin looking something like the attached.

[Graham W]

A quote from a contributor to the Gear Anarchy forum in November 2015: “Imagine a world where you had wind, depth/speed, compass and gps sensors running off Bluetooth, Processed by iphone/android, and repeated by some nice daylight readable Bluetooth screens. Ooh, it's a simplicity nirvana!”

We’re still waiting.....

[Bill Rollo]

Graham
if you have not seen it before you might be interested in the Sailtimer wind instrument - SailTimerInc.com. It's been around sufficiently long for them to have ironed at least some of the bugs.
Bill

[Graham W]

Thanks Bill.  Although it's not obvious (as it doesn't mention the word SailTimer anywhere), I covered that one in this post https://www.swallowyachtsassociation.org/smf/index.php/topic,2005.msg13265.html#msg13265.  I've looked at a couple of videos of it since then and it's much larger than the others.  They have a new model designated RB, which stands for Removeable Battery.

Hopefully the competitors will soon catch up in terms of app functionality.  I particularly like the Spanish ultrasonic one, although I'm not in the market myself.

[Bill Rollo]

thanks - in the absence of a Thames barge in the family fleet I'll have a look at the Spanish one!

[Graham W]

Bill,

I see that the Spanish are quite far ahead in having third party apps talking to their ultrasonic devices and I’m sure that there are more to come https://calypsoinstruments.com/page/developers.  Calypso’s open technology approach is very encouraging and is already bringing down the cost of having instruments on small boats like ours.

[Matthew P]

Easy to use integrated software and sensor technology are essential components of a good solution. 

The other essential component for use in open cockpits is display hardware that is:

a) Waterproof - can operate after being dunked in water, not just splash-proof.

b) Easy to operate with wet cold fingers in gloves.

c) Bright and clear enough to read in strong sunshine.

d) Displayed big and clear enough to read with misted-up glasses.

e) Robust (including cable terminations)

f) Equipped with an operating system to use with Android or Apple Apps

g) Self contained with 8 hour minimum battery life and re-chargeable.

iPads and smart phones in plastic cases meet some of these criteria but fail on b) - easy to use with wet fingers and c) clear in bright sunlight.  These are more important than long internal battery life.

Aside from £500-ish for marine chart-plotters (that mostly fail g) ) does a good hardware solution exist?

Matthew
BR20 Gladys   

[Graham W]

Matthew,

My old iPhone 6, encased in a Lifeproof Nuud, is definitely a) waterproof.  I wash it under the tap when I come back from my weekly expedition to Sainsbury’s.  However, being small it fails completely on b) and partly on c) and d).

Apparently it’s possible to put some tablets into rain mode, where they only respond to a special stylus and ignore water streaming down the screen.  I’m sure that the military have rugged tablets but they’ll come at a cost. Lifeproof do a waterproof case for iPads but mine has fallen apart for the second time in four years, which hardly counts as rugged.

[Bill Rollo]

Graham

thanks very much. I wonder where the money is here to pay the developers and produce the hardware at a sensible price. Outside the military, where painting it green and putting it in a heavy metal box always seems to add several orders of magnitude to the cost of old technology, which commercial sectors really need what we want?

Bill