Mike - thanks for sharing your approach to navigation electronics on your boat. It's a great topic for the forum, and I'm glad to see it.

I have two concerns about marine electronics today, one general and one specific. In general, I see more and more people spending more and more time focused on their gauges and screens, and less time looking at the real world around them. There is an insidious tendency to forget that these tools are all AIDS to navigation, rather than navigation itself. Being able to use a chartplotter in any form doesn't automatically make one a navigator, and slavish reliance on it - as so many seem to have - is absolutely dangerous. Likewise with other electronic instruments - they should supplement and not replace our five senses and other analog instruments, with the additional risk that over-relying on electronics seems to drown out the critical sixth sense, an instinct for what is going on.

The result of this general concern is that I witness a dramatic lack of basic pilotage skills among many sailors, especially along the more well-trod routes.

My specific concern in regard to the rise of home brewed navigation electronics using office equipment is that this hardware is absolutely not designed or built to marine standards. There seems to be a lot of emphasis on ducking the high costs of marinized equipment; the pushback is that office equipment is cheap and thus it's possible to afford multiple laptops, tablets, phones, etc. Please recall your infrastructure gear may not be marinized either, so there's a common point of failure there. And, corrosion in a salt water atmosphere is partly a function of elapsed time - there is a very real risk of all these bits of kit failing in quick succession at some point. 

Putting these two concerns together - I see some people shortcutting truly learning to navigate and also hoping to save money on electronics with office equipment potentially putting themselves out on a limb which the challenging environment onboard could saw off from under them.  It was the statement that all these electronics made you ready to go sea again that really triggered this rant - in my mind electronics have very little to do with going to sea. I think if you're not ready to go to sea without that kit, then I'd say you're not ready to go to sea with it either. This is absolutely not a personal attack - it's a point of view from somebody who first sailed and navigated long distances with the basics - clock, compass, log & sextant - before the age of GPS. I'm not saying all people should be restricted to such basics, I'll use all the tools - I love my chartplotter. But if it all goes dark I'm not missing a beat - which I think is an important though increasingly rare skill set.

Hi David,
Acknowledge your self-confessed rant.  Suffice to say that most who know me, my attitude to safety and my attitude to technology tell me I am extremely safety conscious.  As far as being "ready to go to sea again" that was a statement after four years gradually refitting Zen Again to continue blue water cruising.  Our blog details that work.
Mike.

I have just recently come across mention of Signal K being transformational for the yachting industry and looked it up. Someone described it as NMEA on steroids.  I must say, it's way beyond my paygrade but, if I understand it correctly, it's a portal to the Internet of Things (IoT) for mariners? What I was looking at it for was how it would affect development of apps, like the one OCC has just introduced. Am I correct in thinking that it could open up automated connectivity between apps and devices? 

Vice Commodore, OCC 

+x

 

Daria Blackwell - 26 Mar 2021

I have just recently come across mention of Signal K being transformational for the yachting industry and looked it up. Someone described it as NMEA on steroids.  I must say, it's way beyond my paygrade but, if I understand it correctly, it's a portal to the Internet of Things (IoT) for mariners? What I was looking at it for was how it would affect development of apps, like the one OCC has just introduced. Am I correct in thinking that it could open up automated connectivity between apps and devices? 

"NMEA on steroids" might be a fair representation. After a few years working with and programming devices to support SignalK, I think SignalK was developed for a few reasons:
1. Frustration by developers, particularly smaller companies and hobbyist programmers, that NMEA2000 is closed and requires a license fee and the signing of an NDA.
2. The need for something that better supported more readily available technology, such as WiFi, Ethernet, Bluetooth, etc. both at the physical level (connectors, etc.) and the network level (TCP and UDP, primarily). Yes, I know that there are wireless adaptations of NMEA200 and NMEA0183, but neither of those technologies were originally designed for wireless.
3. The lack of marine technologies that easily support higher level network communications technologies that allow interfacing with open source applications, database technologies, etc.

A good real-world illustration of this is OpenCPN. While many would argue that it is a robust, offshore-ready piece of software, albeit free , it has never and *will* never support NMEA2000 due to point 1 above. It does, however, support SignalK.

While support and embracing of Internet-of-things technologies is certainly a big part of SignalK, it's probably more a case of a number of technologies coming together at the same time. Small, relatively easy to program devices like ESP32 micro-controllers are available for under $10 USD, and provide a great platform for SignalK sensors, displays, and that sort of thing. Put them in a marinized waterproof case with appropriate electrical protection and you have a device that does the same thing as a commercial sensor that costs many times the price.  Bring the data into a $45 Raspberry Pi (similarly marinized), and you have a high function system for monitoring just about anything on your boat.

I see SignalK as a means for the smaller guys like Quark-Elec (although they don't have any SignalK equipment yet), Digital Yacht, etc. to get into the game. Already some of the larger guys like Victron Energy are providing SIgnalK support.