In article ,
(NIFFOCBT) wrote:

It's a PCI board that is used with the Transas Navisailor Software (Navisailor
3000, 2500, 2400, Navifisher etc..) It is takes the video from your radar
(adaptable to many types and brands) and overlays it on top of the Transas
software.

Very expensive and geared toward the Mega yacht and shipping industry.
However Nobeltec has a less expensive box that does the same thing with there
software. Check it out

Regrds,
Brian


Nobeltec is reselling a Xenex (www.xenex.com) box which is
a combination "black box radar" control head and video digitizer
which feeds the stream into the PC for the overlay.

given that the original Xenex products were the "CAN-3000"
PCI interfaces it wouldn't surprise me a bit to find that
Transas was OEMing the CAN-3000 card. the original designer
of the CAN-3000 system was a German outfit that got bought along
the way in creating Xenex.

Note that unlike Nobeltec, Transas makes a real IMO-qualified
ECDIS and their "lower-end" ECD and "yacht" software is derived
from that technology. while the ECDIS systems are by definition
vector-based, their ECD-based systems support both vector and raster
cartography. And given the competitive posture of Transas,
I suspect they won't allow Nobeltec to go unchallenged for very long.

One thing I personally like about the Transas software is that
the User Interface has been designed for operating the software
under operational conditions. Driving the MS Windoze UI requires
a lot of fine motor skills which can be more than tricky "in vivo".
As a planning tool, Nobeltec is quite nice, but as actual
operational software, it's not easy to use while driving a boat.
You want big targets and simple navigation - not nested menus.

at least that's what *I* want. (grin)

the good news is that we are finally starting to see some very
healthy competition on all the fronts, both software and cartography.
with the NOAA S-57 charts coming along for download, the prospects
for real Open Source navigation software improve dramatically,
as well as for integrated bridge and vessel management. (and the
fact that geeks have bought boats helps, too!)

cheers,
-mo

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Always do right. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
- Mark Twain