february 201684
BOATS & GEARBRINGING it all TOGETHER
From charts and weather to entertainment and vessel control, marine electronics are converging at your fingertips.BY DAVID SCHMIDTA
sk six manufacturers
where marine elec-
tronics are headed,
and you’ll usually get six dif-
ferent answers. That wasn’t
the case last fall, however,
at the 2015 National Marine
Electronics Association Con-
ference and Expo, where
the industry buzzword was
straightforward: “integration.”
Not so long ago, the “wired”
sailboat might have sported
a GPS; instruments display-
ing wind, speed, depth and en-
gine data; a stereo; possibly an
AIS monitor; and maybe addi-
tional gear at the nav station
down below, all with their own
screens and knobs.
Today those stand-alone de-
vices are quickly disappearing,
and in their place, manufactur-
ers are rolling out networked
instrumentation packages
that can increasingly combinedata feeds and display the re-
sults on a variety of screens,
both on your boat and in your
pocket.
Typically these systems
employ sensors that talk to
dedicated black-box modules,
which are in turn networked
to share information with a
multifunction display that
now sits at the heart of the
network, disseminating that
information to other devices
as needed.
Examples of this integration
include performance-sailing
packages, cameras and other
video devices, and a growing
array of sounders. Together,
they can tell you where you’re
going and what the route
ahead and below looks like, as
well as keep you company in
the cockpit on a long night’s
watch.
The biggest development,aside from information-
sharing protocols like NMEA
0183 and NMEA 2000, has
taken place within the world
of MFDs, with both dramati-
cally improved user interfaces
and greater processing power.
In each case, MFDs have di-
rectly benefi ted from the
rise of high-end smartphones
and tablets in the consumer-
electronics market, which
use touch-screen interfac-
es and demand lightning-fast
processor chips. Moreover,
smartphones and tablets have
helped everyone quickly learn
about and feel at home with
touch-screen and app-based
software. The net result is that
today’s MFDs are far more ca-
pable than chart plotters and
displays from even fi ve years
ago.
“We’re seeing more fea-
tures that are built into MFDsas standard equipment,” says
Jim McGowan, the U.S. mar-
keting manager for FLIR and
Raymarine. “Years ago, this all
required individual modules,
which added to the costs.”
Now, he adds, this functional-
ity is integrated into the MFD.
“All the core features are there,
but they’re less expensive for
the customer.”
McGowan says this
cost-savings is the result of
higher manufacturing volume;
the infl ux of high-end, off-the-
shelf tablet and smartphone
processors; and the standard-
ization of MFD hardware. In
other words, the components
in various product lines are
identical, with different lev-
els of software providing in-
creased levels of functionality.
“MFDs are getting more
development than anything
else,” says McGowan. “TheyB&G’s SailSteer wind rose