a whole new world of social & connected boating....

[SassyRed]

Kev & I went to the Seattle boat show yesterday ~ great to see several of our Ranger Tug & Cutwater friends there. We're seriously considering a larger Cutwater tho' that 31 RT CB is mighty enticing as well!!  While walking upstairs through all the vendors' booths - saw something that fascinated us.  iKommunicate is an intelligent gateway device that allows traditional boat navigation systems to be part of the “Internet of Things”. By taking data from the “closed” industry standard networks found on most boats and converting it to an “open” HTML5 based internet ready data format, a whole new world of social and connected boating will now be possible. AMAZING!!!
Do you use a PC, MAC or iPad on your boat?
This company offers a gateway that can provide all of your boat data to your WiFi enabled device.  They take NMEA 2000, NMEA 0183 and make that data available on your boat's local WiFi.
They support UDP, TCP and Signal K protocols over Ethernet or WiFi.  This allows virtually all navigation software to work with the iKommunicate. My husband (retired Microsoft geek extraordinaire) freaking loves the technology behind this & said it's brilliant. http://ikommunicate.com/
We're purchasing one tomorrow when we're back at the show. And, we thought y'all might be interested. The seller, Steve Olsson, promised he'll provide a special deal  (only $260) to any Ranger Tug and Cutwater owners who mention our boat's name - SassyRed ~ to him. Steve is there through Saturday.
if you can't make it to the boat show - email him & he'll still give you our negotiated discount!!!! 
Contact Steve@Camanolight.com

 

[Cutwater28GG]

I believe this is a commercial offering based on the open source project Signal K.

it really is the future for people who want to tinker and customise.

 

[Scuffy]

We use a PC running nav software from Rose Point. The software is called Coastal Explorer and sells for about 400 dollars. We use a simple USB puck velcroed on the dash near the mates front window. So the PC is a stand alone GPS system.They provide all coastal charts and updates charts for free. You can view charts in a raster format or in a vector format. Routes can be saved as window files in your documents. It allows for a private and public blogs. Photos and Active Captain is embedded so you can see reviews about anchorages, marina's fuel prices etc. crowd sourced obstruction and other right now marine information. Active Captain by itself is free and available as a stand alone app. Active Captain also has E-boat cards and a number of other social features that I don't bother with a whole lot. We use a chart plotter to display for radar, depth, fuel usage.
But we use Coastal Explorer software on a PC for navigation. Good people and great service from the northwest.
http://www.coastalexplorer.net or http://www.rosepoint.com

 

[Cutwater28GG]

With signal k you can connect all the nmea data into the rose point software.

 

[Brian B]

WiFi, NMEA 2000, NMEA 0183, UDP, TCP, Signal K, Ethernet, iKommunicate = Igotaheadache. :roll: :roll: