"Larry" wrote in message
...
Shame they're still draggin' the wire around or some awful-priced custom
radio system. Wifi doesn't use any power and it all runs great off the
12V
battery system.

To say that Wifi does not use any power is a bit steep. For instance, the
Wifo module I'm planning to use in my Wifi mux uses 450mA at 3.3V. Compare
that to a BT module consuming 20mA.
And the RF circuits in the Tacktick units are even more low power, being
solar powered and able to run some 50-60 hours without charge. Their power
budged is so low that they had massive problems when they developed the big
displays with an LCD area compared to the large B&G instruments. Go figu
not enough power to drive the LCD!

I'm afraid BT might not have the range through the fiberglass and coring
materials to get through the whole boat. Wifi easily does and is CHEAPER!

Dunno, the BT we use is a class 1, with a range up to 200 meters. If you
stick a class 1 BT dongle in your laptop too, you'll have about the same
range as Wifi but on a much lower power budget.

A nice detail: the well known sailor Pete Goss used Tacktick on his last
Round Britain race and hooked it up to our BT mux to get the data on hus
ruggedized tablet PC while sitting on the outriggers of his trimaran. Lucky
for us, Tacktick's sales manager told him to use our thingy :-)

Meindert