At the risk of stirring the pot some more....

In Australia we have C-Tick. Any equipment coming into the country with
active electronics must be C-Tick compliant. This requires at a minimum
compliance with the CE EMC standards. FCC standards are not recognized
as they are too lenient. It is amazing how many manufacturers (US and
Taiwan based) do not have CE approval for their products when to export
them to any decent sized market outside the US this is a firm
requirement.

As to bluetooth that may work but I would prefer to see standarization
using the ethernet cabling standards. These are well developed, very
inexpensive and well understood in the computing sector. There is
industrialised E/N and now even power over E/N. This is mass produced
technology with standard low priced connectors and a price tag to match.

The marine environment is bad but I have no trouble seeing how to
improve this connection technology in our 'beneign' world;-)

John VK3JP
S/V Chagall

--
John VK3JP

"John Proctor" wrote in message
...
At the risk of stirring the pot some more....

In Australia we have C-Tick. Any equipment coming into the country with
active electronics must be C-Tick compliant.

I thought that the C-Tick is just the mark of compliance; the system is
called the Framework, and it is to that which you must be compliant.

This requires at a minimum
compliance with the CE EMC standards. FCC standards are not recognized
as they are too lenient. It is amazing how many manufacturers (US and
Taiwan based) do not have CE approval for their products when to export
them to any decent sized market outside the US this is a firm
requirement.

I also find it amazing that an Australian may export freely into the USA
market by simply technically complying with the FCC regulations, but an
American has to hire an Aussie or Kiwi as a local agent to "handle" his
paperwork. Amazing, isn't it?

BTW, does China recognize the C-Tick?

Ed

"Meindert Sprang" wrote in message
...
"Meindert Sprang" wrote in message
...
"Larry W4CSC" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 30 Jan 2004 15:30:30 +0100, "Meindert Sprang"
wrote:

Thanks, but the keywords I see are RESIDENTIAL. They are
"encouraged", but not "required" to do so in an industrial
environment, same as computers.

In section 15.103 sub (a) it says that devices operating exclusively in
any
transportation vehicle (including motor vehicles and aircraft) are
exempted.
Now according to my dictionary, a vehicle usually has wheel and mover over
land. What about boats?

Meindert



Meindert has beaten me to the quote, citing the correct subsection which
exempts electronics used in ANY US vehicle. This is simply an exclusion
granted by the FCC, other groups and agencies may have regulatory compliance
requirements for vehicles under their control or authority. For instance,
the FAA will not allow any random electronics installation in an aircraft.
Auto manufacturers place stringent compliance requirements on their vendors,
but after the sale, the manufacturer has no control over the vehicle
(although theoretically, some electronic aftermarket additions might void
the manufacturer's warranty).

In Europe, the automakers have pulled a sneaky exclusion, for automotive
products from the EMC Directive, that will last about 10 more years. They
have a parallel, but not harmonized compliance structure, and thus an EN
marking and a Declaration of Conformity for goods going into European autos
is not required. (No Directive, so nothing to conform to, so no way to
declare conformity!)

I can't recall what they formally call the automotive system; maybe it is
the Automotive Directive. Naah, too simple!

Ed

"Meindert Sprang" wrote in message
...
"Larry W4CSC" wrote in message
...
The radiation from the unshielded wires, with many of them sucking
noise from inside the shielded pair because you must hook one side
(NMEA B) to many grounds creating a giant HF antenna out of your
carefully shielded cabling, is the problem on the HF receivers......

Agreed. It is therefore very important to have RF filtering in a device on
the terminals, to prevent any RF from leaking out over wires.

Let's just dump all this NMEA crap from 1970 and build Bluetooth
compatibility into every new marine electronic gadget. No need for
multiplexers for ancient technology mistakes, wires radiating crap to
all the radios, wires picking up the 150 watt SSB transmitter and
trashing all the NMEA crap it's hooked to.

Yes and no. I will have a Bluetooth mulitplexer soon, but the problem with
Bluetooth is that it allows either data over a 'serial profile', which is
a
point to point connection between two devices only (which my BT
multiplexer
will be: mux - PDA or computer) or you can have a piconet, which creates
an RF network with a limit of 8 devices. I wonder though what an average
BT
device does when 150 W of RF is emitted in the near vincinity....
One think is for su BT or any RF datalink is far away from any approval
needed for commercial vessels.

Meindert


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.

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.

Ed

On Sat, 31 Jan 2004 08:17:16 +0100, "Meindert Sprang"
wrote:


Yes and no. I will have a Bluetooth mulitplexer soon, but the problem with
Bluetooth is that it allows either data over a 'serial profile', which is a
point to point connection between two devices only (which my BT multiplexer
will be: mux - PDA or computer) or you can have a piconet, which creates
an RF network with a limit of 8 devices. I wonder though what an average BT
device does when 150 W of RF is emitted in the near vincinity....
One think is for su BT or any RF datalink is far away from any approval
needed for commercial vessels.

Meindert

Bluetooth is unaffected by a 1,500 watt HF ham radio station operating
with a vertical antenna virtually on top of the system. I have a
9-band Butternut vertical mounted right over the station on my sheet
metal roof (ground plane) I prefer to the beam. Amp is an old Drake
L4B with a pair of 3-500ZG graphite plate monsters that will run the
legal limit on RTTY and the digital modes. Doesn't bother Bluetooth a
bit as Bluetooth is just too high in freq and its antennas are way too
small to acquire any kind of RF from a transmitter under 30 Mhz.



Larry W4CSC

No, no, Scotty! I said, "Beam me a wrench.", not a WENCH!
Kirk Out.....

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.....

On Sat, 31 Jan 2004 09:44:15 GMT, John Proctor
wrote:

At the risk of stirring the pot some more....

In Australia we have C-Tick. Any equipment coming into the country with
active electronics must be C-Tick compliant. This requires at a minimum
compliance with the CE EMC standards. FCC standards are not recognized
as they are too lenient. It is amazing how many manufacturers (US and
Taiwan based) do not have CE approval for their products when to export
them to any decent sized market outside the US this is a firm
requirement.

Thanks for the information, John. I'll research C-Tick further.

As to bluetooth that may work but I would prefer to see standarization
using the ethernet cabling standards. These are well developed, very
inexpensive and well understood in the computing sector. There is
industrialised E/N and now even power over E/N. This is mass produced
technology with standard low priced connectors and a price tag to match.

Bluetooth would BE a standardization, which is why it will never
happen. I'm for Ethernet, too, but many boats I work on just don't
have the cable run room for a centralized LAN installation. The
router would have to sit "someplace" and wherever it is installed
would have to have room for an ethernet cable from each device. This
would create quite a bundle of cables to that central point. Boaters,
unlike hackers I know, are a funny lot and wouldn't want me to duct
tape a bunch of cat5 cables to the bulkhead walls of the main salon,
like the hackers I know do...(c;

Look around your yacht and try to picture a hidden place, WITH AC
POWER AT SEA, and room for 8 CAT-5 cables in the wireways to your
various instruments. Remember, EACH instrument would have to have its
own CAT-5 ethernet cable to that LAN router. You can't just hook the
computer's ethernet to a printer, another computer, a plotter, a
scanner....which is why computers don't use ethernet to hook up to
external devices. Ethernet requires a router and ethernet hubs to
connect devices.

USB, on the other hand, WOULD let the GPS talk directly to the chart
plotter. But, USB wouldn't work well in a broadcast situation because
it only allows two devices to talk to each other. It's not a network
protocol, which is what we need for the whole boat, with MULTIPLE
TALKERS servicing multiple listeners (which is why Meindert must make
multiplexers to make the idiotic NMEA0183 work). So, USB isn't much
of an option, either. We need a LAN controlled by a router.....one
wire to each instrument, not 8 USB ports and a cabling nightmare!

Wireless, either 802.11-something ethernet or Bluetooth is the best
answer. Wireless uses no wireway space. Instruments can be placed
anywhere you can get DC to them. All the instruments at the helm
(wind, depth, compass, radar, GPS, scanning sonar, autopilot
controller, speed, log, etc.) could operate on a single DC cable to
the helm breaker or fuse panel. The only cabling to corrode would be
from the sensors to the instruments (which could also be wireless at
some point). The sensors could be self-contained and talk to any
number of display or reader devices. A Bluetooth display over the
captain's berth could read and display any parameter on the boat from
oil pressure to apparent wind to sonar depth if the sensors were also
transmitting. There wouldn't be a wire to corrode between the wind
sensor on the mast and the display at the helm.

That brings up another great point about wireless......NO TINY SIGNAL
WIRES TO CORRODE, no tiny connectors with 8 pins to not make contact,
solving another big "boat problem"......

I still think wireless is the way to go on boats not made of
metal.....

The marine environment is bad but I have no trouble seeing how to
improve this connection technology in our 'beneign' world;-)

John VK3JP
S/V Chagall

--
John VK3JP


Larry W4CSC

No, no, Scotty! I said, "Beam me a wrench.", not a WENCH!
Kirk Out.....

"Larry W4CSC" wrote in message
...

Ethernet requires a router and ethernet hubs to
connect devices.

No it does not. Ethernet over 10base-T (cat5 cable) requires a hub and a
cable to every device. The now almost obsolete thin ether net (10base-2, or
coax) would allow you to run a cable from device to device, using BNC T's at
every device.

USB, on the other hand, WOULD let the GPS talk directly to the chart
plotter.

No. USB works with one master and many slaves. Generally the computer is the
master an all other devices are slave. To make a GPS master, it would
require different USB hardware inside the GPS and quite some computing power
to behave as a USB master.

But, USB wouldn't work well in a broadcast situation because
it only allows two devices to talk to each other.

USB is master-slave. So only the master can initiate communications to a
slave, by asking if the slave has something to say. Slave can NEVER talk to
eachother.

NMEA2000 (CAN based) isn't all that bad, the problem is that it is not an
open protocol and you have to pay heavily to get your first NMEA2000
compliant device on the market. Buying the standard documents, test suite,
manufacturet and product ID for the first product costs about $10,000!

Like I have mentioned before, NMEA-0183 could well be upgraded to higher
speeds and a bidirectional bus (RS-485). Something like combining NMEA
(point to point, but RS-422) and Seatalk (broadcast but single wire) into
high speed RS-485. Still cheap to implement.

Wireless, either 802.11-something ethernet or Bluetooth is the best
answer. Wireless uses no wireway space. Instruments can be placed
anywhere you can get DC to them.

If you can get DC to an instrument, you can also get a twisted wire to that
instrument.

Wireless is too unreliable. When I walk away from my Bluetooth multiplexer
with my Palm in hand, I lose conact after one brick wall and 5 meters
distance. Even my WLAN stops at two concrete floors.

So imagine what happens in a metal hull.....

Meindert

"Ed Price" wrote in message
news:BzMSb.8390$fD.338@fed1read02...

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.

Especially with the cheap plastic fibre optic. of less than $1/m.

Meindert

Comments below:

"Larry W4CSC" wrote in message
...
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.

I'm not an expert in fibre in any way, but have been around television
technicians when they are working with it. Ten or more years ago when I
first saw it being installed they were using $10,000.00/$20,000.00
cutting/polishing/splicing/testing gear on terminations. More recently I've
seen them using "cam terminations"?? which the technician used to install
connectors onto bare, freshly cut fibre using simple hand tools. They
didn't even seem to test the terminations except to confirm the head end was
receiving a good signal at the other end many miles away. So it seems to me
fibre is becoming much more user friendly. Perhaps we will see it in
pleasure boater marine use sooner than you think as prices come down due to
increased use in commercial computer network wiring. I can certainly see
advantages with no RF interferance or emmissions and no corrosion of
connections, etc.

snipped bit was here

Larry W4CSC

No, no, Scotty! I said, "Beam me a wrench.", not a WENCH!
Kirk Out.....