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Bought cool new digital charger....$89? WalMart?!!
On Sat, 31 Jan 2004 03:47:00 -0800, "Ed Price"
wrote: I would much prefer fiberoptic in a commercial or military vessel. It's much more secure and robust in the presence of a hostile RF environment. And in a commercial vessel, it shouldn't be a hardship to route sufficient fiberoptic cabling. Fiber sounds great until you have to install it. Fiber requires amazingly expensive equipment to splice and connector to it and specialized training to do it right, things pleasure boaters will simply not pay for. It's not an option when a large corporation or the government bureaucrats aren't paying the bills. True, I can see certain advantages in having a roving port with an RF link to the ship's systems, and if you really feel you need this in a personal watercraft environment, then Bluetooth looks like the way to go. But RF data links are a "complicating" option, and you should always try to make systems as "simple" as possible. I have a Netgear wireless router under its own LAN DHCP server connecting to a serial to ethernet device that configures from the DHCP the Netgear provides. The serial port is connected to the Noland NMEA multiplexer's serial port. In the computer, a "virtual serial port" driver fools The Cap'n into thinking it's talking to a real serial port, when, in fact, the driver has it talking to the wireless router and serial-to-ethernet box via the notebook's 802.11b wireless card. The Cap'n operates fine, even from the other end of E-dock where the signal from the little antenna on the Netgear starts to peter out. You can lay on a beanbag behind the anchor windlass and navigate the boat....(c; 802.11b would be better than Bluetooth to replace the NMEA stupidity we use now, but Bluetooth is SO easy to configure and operate and is supported by all the computer manufacturers and PDA manufacturers, already. It simply configures itself and everybody can talk to everybody else. Imagine a complex NMEA system with NO WIRES and NO SIGNAL INTRUSION and NO CORRODED TERMINALS. I'm just dreaming. We all know marine electronics is a hodge-podge of proprietary crap to try to force us to buy one brand of equipment. Seatalk, H-1000 bus, Garmin, etc. What a stupid mess it all is. Larry W4CSC No, no, Scotty! I said, "Beam me a wrench.", not a WENCH! Kirk Out..... |
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