"Todd" wrote in message Meindart,

Indeed, the soekris is a great unit and embedded linux was a natural
choice.

And a good one too! Glad you didn't opt for a M$ product ;-)

Our thinking regarding no real NMEA inputs/outputs was that we want to
support seatalk networks, seatalk/nmea networks, and straight nmea so
going with an external multiplexer (e.g. Noland, Brookhouse, Raymarine
NMEA bride, etc...) makes a lot more sense and quite frankly is a lot
easier at this early stage.

I would eventually like to integrate something like the Brookhouse
unit which does both NMEA and Seatalk and ultimately get the cost down
more but that only happens when you can start buying in some
significant volume.

Mmm, might want to discuss this with you directly.

I think you're oversimplifying regarding $200 for the soekris since
that's only a part of the equation. There's also 200mW senoa wireless
card, external antenna, internal storage, 12 volt connection wiring,
virtual serial port software, nmea navigation embedded server
software, a web based administration interface, etc... We're making
nowhere near the 4 times profit you suggest on this unit so it's not
as nice a piece of marketing as you give me credit for, although I
wish it were ;-)

Ok, I was a bit overreacting :-) Indeed it takes a lot of effort to make it
a complete product. I remember when I had the first prototype of my
multiplexers ready and how long it took before it was a sellable product.
that took longer than to develop the first proto.

Thanks for your feedback, it really is a big help to see which areas
folks are critical of so I can work on sorting those out for when we
begin actually selling the product to end users!

You're welcome :-)

Cheer,
Meindert