"Meindert Sprang" wrote in
:

In the meantime, our local Raymarine distributor has performed this
test and confirmed what I have found. They're taking it up with
Raymarine now and promised to keep me informed.



Isn't it ironic we're still fighting RS-422 nonsense on one talker
serial buses in 2010 when the rest of the electronic world has forgotten
all this nonsense and moved on.

It's way past time when the boats should be totally wireless....not
proprietary wireless to keep your competitors' electronics off your
private little data system, but STANDARD wireless with every piece
aboard capable of communicating with every other piece aboard over as
many direct links as necessary at STANDARD 802.11b/g/n speeds.

We can lose this stupid TEXT sentence nonsense for some kind of
STANDARDIZED data set that doesn't take up so much bandwidth and doesn't
PLOD along like a snail all jammed up with buffered data that arrives
too late to make the autopilot tweak the course on time.

You simply connect the new GPS to DC power, its wireless chipset scans
the boat every time you turn it on and connects with every device that
uses GPS data and they all light up with the new GPS information pouring
out of them....like your laptop does when you turn it on in a new
restaurant with free wifi. NO WIRING, no poking one more cable between
the chart table and the helm console. No more having serial cables
hanging out of wherever you want your laptop to run the nav software.
You can lay in your V-berth with your laptop and see where we are and
what AIS targets are around.

It's WAY past time to make this happen.....leaving serial cables and
multiplexers and other overly complex pieces of 1985 behind.

As the boat approaches your slip, its wifi-connected marine electronics
connects to the marina wifi and announces to your select list of users
we have arrived, dumping all the pictures and the video from the mast-
mounted webcam so they can see us waving at them....like the big cruise
ships do now.

--
iPhone 4 is to cellular technology what the Titanic is to cruise ships.

Larry