A tablet to replace it ALL: how, which one, which apps?

[Lake-Effect]

Ford doesn't seem to fear open-sourcing an API.

[hellosailor]

Lake, the difference is that you can't use the Ford API without buying their product first. With marine instrumentation SYSTEMS, I'm sure the makers would embrace an open API if you made the same purchase: A whole system, ALL the hardware that they wanted to sell you, up front in one purchase.

If Ford withholds the API, there's no benefit. If Raymarine or Garmin withholds it, they get to capture the market for the rest of the system.

That's why fruit stores sell grapes by the bunch, and apples singly.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by hellosailor

Lake, the difference is that you can't use the Ford API without buying their product first

Hi HS,

I haven't checked every detail of the Ford offering but I believe it follows the path of a genuinely open standard:
- all the details are freely available
- there's a published API
- there's probably some tools and/or a simulator supplied to enable developers to work and test without needing a Ford in their driveway

The potential win for Ford?
- exposure, publicity, leadership position
- a horde of volunteer testers and app developers
- hopefully a whole suite of 3rd-party apps leveraging the system

The win for everyone?
- by publishing the API, Ford has advanced everyone's capabilities in this area. It could become a de facto industry standard if Ford agrees to either let it be freely used, or to grant licence for a reasonable fee.
- even if Ford doesn't allow other mfrs to use it, it will provide a baseline and model for other mfrs, or for a next-generation industry standard.
- an open API releases innovation. Anyone can play. New ideas don't have to cough up for access or information.

These are some of the boats that NMEA missed by not making N2K an open standard. This guy highlights the issues.

To Dave's point about incompetents controlling an autopilot, or about safety/reliability... 99.99% of the desire for access to N2K is simply to read that data and use it in new and novel ways. Same as is being done with NMEA0183. So, there's no convincing argument for not releasing just the data part.

Making N2K closed, obfuscated and proprietary was a poor decision. Whether or not you're an 'open' zealot like me, the very tepid adoption of this 13-year old standard should convince anyone that NMEA (or their members) were off the mark in some fashion.

[hellosailor]

Lake, I only disagree with you as to whether the Ford API is at all analagous to what you want from the instruments. I don't think it is. Ford is saying that they'll provide a neat hook that streams the end data out of the car--but not the data between and among the various compoments, or the ECU itself. That's gross data that programmers probably could pick up from the OBD2 port already, hardly proprietary stuff, and there's obviously an advantage to Ford because it makes their proprietary Sync display hotter. You'll notice they don't allow you to order a car without Sync, and install your own competitive product. That's analagous to what the marine industry wants to do, they'd love to find a way to sell you a new boat with a proprietary display in the dash already.<G>

Buy a Ford with a GPS/nav in the dash, it'll cost you a thousand dollars and map updates may run another $200-300 per year. Open standard? No, but for $300 you can buy a similar large display from Garmin or TomTom with lifetime updates included. Hmmm....No closed standard leveraging closed sales there, is there?

NMEA had an open standard with 18x. They helixed the pooch with the NMEA2000 nonsense, which as you may notice hasn't quite taken over the world. Sure, NMEA18x has limits but for practical jobs like autohelming a sailboat? Take a GPS, send the 18x serial strings out over the wireless bridge of your choice, available off the shelf, and the autopilot and nav computer can both access it and do what they need to.

The new sexy stuff? Hey, Ford isn't going to let you replace their electronics with a $50 product from Shenzhen. Raymarine and all are only doing the same thing, ensuring they don't simply give away the family jewels. I can see that. I don't see it as a problem, or a difference from how anyone else is operating.

[Lake-Effect]

All good points. Thanks.

Originally Posted by hellosailor

The new sexy stuff? Hey, Ford isn't going to let you replace their electronics with a $50 product from Shenzhen. Raymarine and all are only doing the same thing, ensuring they don't simply give away the family jewels. I can see that. I don't see it as a problem, or a difference from how anyone else is operating.

Well, sure it's entirely the prerogative of NMEA members to have a closed shop. The trade-off is stifling innovation, impairing interoperability, and creating an opportunity for an upstart outsider (or a community) to establish a better, open system that makes NMEA irrelevant. NMEA's bet is that the marine electronics market isn't big enough for that to be a real possibility. I guess we'll see.

[goboatingnow]

OpenXC as ford is using is in effect a third party gateway.

o Dave's point about incompetents controlling an autopilot, or about safety/reliability... 99.99% of the desire for access to N2K is simply to read that data and use it in new and novel ways. Same as is being done with NMEA0183. So, there's no convincing argument for not releasing just the data part.

This is available today from several vendors of NMEA2k interfaces, like Actisense, Chesco, Digital Yacht. its also available from SImrad ( go free , tier 1), and is coming out from Garmin and Raymarine. So get with writing that app.

ALl require you to have a MFD in the system, Ford requires you to have a whole car in the system

OpenXC is predominantly a read only system, Thats not what is being debated here, whats being debated here is that you can buy the engine from Ford and the gearbox from GM etc.

NMEA had an open standard with 18x. They helixed the pooch with the NMEA2000 nonsense, which as you may notice hasn't quite taken over the world. Sure, NMEA18x has limits but for practical jobs like autohelming a sailboat? Take a GPS, send the 18x serial strings out over the wireless bridge of your choice, available off the shelf, and the autopilot and nav computer can both access it and do what they need to.

Im no fan of NMEA, but 2K is far more established then 0183 ever was, ask Dockhead, S/V Jedi etc, today you can build networks that never could be put together with 0183. more and more PGN information is being documented every day, with companies like Airmar and Maretron leading the way.

Well, sure it's entirely the prerogative of NMEA members to have a closed shop. The trade-off is stifling innovation, impairing interoperability, and creating an opportunity for an upstart outsider (or a community) to establish a better, open system that makes NMEA irrelevant.

It is not a proprietary protocol, ( its J1939)

its not closed, anyone for a small fee can get the details, its not restricted to any predetermined group.

There is no requirement for mandatory certification, ( ask why Furuno no longer certify to the full spec) but certification is strongly encouraged and in my view is useful to ensure operating consistency. God knows we dont want Windows Marine!

Yes its not like an internet or w3C spec, but so what , its an industrial automation spec.

An upstart isnt going to do it better, cause an upstart would need to develop radars, transducers and a whole line of sensors etc. It not a software solution like Linux.


There is no evidence that NMEA2K is stiffling innovation, quite the contary , the place of development and new products in the marine sector is astonishing for such a smal market

Dave

[Pete the Cat]

Ok here is a question: I have the old Raymarine ST60 instruments and a 6001+ autopilot with a wireless remote. Since the autopilot remote functions as a repeater for all the instruments the signals are being broadcast on my boat, has anyone found an app that can put everything on my IPAD? Seems like it would be simple to do. Raymarine requires you to buy a MFD as does Garmin to get their IPAD app. Garmin did not learn from their mistakes in aviation (making folks buy humongusly expensive hardware) and a little IPAD software company called Foreflight is eating their lunch in what pilots use (approved by the FAA.). Hope someone will do the same for boaters.

BTW. There are several waterproof pouches for IPADs and a friend says the touch screen works fine. Folks have been using then for kayaking without problem according to him.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by Pete the Cat

Ok here is a question: I have the old Raymarine ST60 instruments and a 6001+ autopilot with a wireless remote. Since the autopilot remote functions as a repeater for all the instruments the signals are being broadcast on my boat, has anyone found an app that can put everything on my IPAD? Seems like it would be simple to do. Raymarine requires you to buy a MFD as does Garmin to get their IPAD app. Garmin did not learn from their mistakes in aviation (making folks buy humongusly expensive hardware) and a little IPAD software company called Foreflight is eating their lunch in what pilots use (approved by the FAA.). Hope someone will do the same for boaters.

BTW. There are several waterproof pouches for IPADs and a friend says the touch screen works fine. Folks have been using then for kayaking without problem according to him.

you need a seatalk to NMEA0183, and then a 0183 to Wifi ( Chetco, Digital Yacht and some others) which in effect act as a web sever ( or JSON) for these values. you will get typical parameters like depth, wind speed etc,

One of the issues is , is that Seatalk 1 was (is) a proprietary protocol and as such there is no documentation on what it handles. Ray have a convertor and one or two people have produced ones by reverse engineering.

Digital yacht and others have apps to do this , ie link to their wifi nmea server

its very much a roll your own Im afraid

DAve

[Lake-Effect]

Hi Dave,

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

[Data access] is available today from several vendors of NMEA2k interfaces, like Actisense, Chesco, Digital Yacht. its also available from SImrad ( go free , tier 1), and is coming out from Garmin and Raymarine. So get with writing that app.

I will look more closely at these; maybe it's not as walled-off as I thought. Can you recommend one as being the best overall for exposing data for 3rd-party development, with minimal bureaucratic (eg licencing/certification) or technical hurdles?

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

It is not a proprietary protocol, ( its J1939)

its not closed, anyone for a small fee can get the details, its not restricted to any predetermined group.

There is no requirement for mandatory certification, ( ask why Furuno no longer certify to the full spec) but certification is strongly encouraged and in my view is useful to ensure operating consistency. God knows we dont want Windows Marine!

Yes its not like an internet or w3C spec, but so what , its an industrial automation spec.

I understand that the physical and transport layers are J1939. And I appreciate that the barriers to commercial entry and certification are low. But I don't think you'll ever get me to call it 'open', until I can buy J1939 hardware and read data on the bus without spending another $1k. And especially without being able to share my work with others, and vice versa.

You mention 'Windows Marine'... to explore that analogy further, I'll point out that it took a strong commercial competitor (Apple) and an open source community (Linux etc) to provide competitive pressure on Windows, and that the majority of commercial and specialized OS markets (servers, embedded, devices etc) have gone for the open-sourced OS solution.

An upstart isn't going to do it better, cause an upstart would need to develop radars, transducers and a whole line of sensors etc.

If a credible marine network alternative appeared (open source or not) and had traction, the current makers of radars, transducers, sensors, radios, etc - NMEA members or not - would have no choice but to support the new network as well.

Anyway, it's clear I still have much to learn, and you have much to teach, so I shouldn't really be wasting your time with this digression. I do appreciate your input on this topic. Thanks.

[catakate]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

God knows we dont want Windows Marine!
Dave

Amen to that!

[deepthought]

We sailed from Scotland to Caribbean using iPad and iPhone. Have gps/wind/depth/speed/ais/autopilot all in.

gps/wind/depth/speed/ais/autopilot all routed to a nmea plexer which is connected to a routerstation which is running debwrt which provides and gets the wireless onboard. It also does some wind calculations before feeding the nmea back for the autopilot.

on the iphone/ipad I use inavx and seaiq (cm93 charts). On day hops I will usually just leave my laptop open and use opencpn.

All devices can receive the information individually or separately.

Have remote to power and set autopilot but can set routing once its on.

I am using nmea 0183.

I have radar/chart plotter but its old and find it quite useless. Someday when $ permits I will upgrade and try to find one that can work over lan or such and bother getting it to work with opencpn.

As for the sun and screen I have a pilot house and dual stations usually depending I can mostly stay inside. But when I have to go out Ipad just drops into a water proof ziplock style case and has a spot behind the wheel.

If I am going into harbor/marina I just slap the iphone onto an water proof arm holder and it seems to work fine. Since I walk around on the deck a bit.

Since I have converted to full electric propulsion I some day plan to make that remotely controlled too from device. But thats for a later date.

the routerstation also comes in handy in marina or anchor as a wifi repeater and with a couple of webcams has become also a simple surveillance system when away. have 3g dongle if needed also for it.
While off shore it becomes additionally a media server for our 4yr to watch movies or to listen to music.

Just got a furuno fax30 which plan also to put into the system for weatherfax and navtex.

[goboatingnow]

I will look more closely at these; maybe it's not as walled-off as I thought. Can you recommend one as being the best overall for exposing data for 3rd-party development, with minimal bureaucratic (eg licencing/certification) or technical hurdles?

Its depends at what level you want to delve technically , Chetco and digital Yacht essentially implement a web server, that allows custom web pages to be built, inclsuing in some cases , Javascript, JSON, etc. No further licensing is required other then purchase, these solutions are in essence read only.

Actisense NGT, is a full NMEA2k to PC ( usb) interface, and supports reading and writing to the bus, but of course you have to roll your own as to how you encapsulate the nmea data into TCP/IP and what hardware you use to do it. NMEA is working on a NMEA2K to TCP/IP spec, so that should spur some gateways when its released, in the usual NMEA timescales.

Dave

[avazquez]

Originally Posted by deepthought

We sailed from Scotland to Caribbean using iPad and iPhone. Have gps/wind/depth/speed/ais/autopilot all in.

gps/wind/depth/speed/ais/autopilot all routed to a nmea plexer which is connected to a routerstation which is running debwrt which provides and gets the wireless onboard. It also does some wind calculations before feeding the nmea back for the autopilot.

on the iphone/ipad I use inavx and seaiq (cm93 charts). On day hops I will usually just leave my laptop open and use opencpn.

All devices can receive the information individually or separately.

Have remote to power and set autopilot but can set routing once its on.

I am using nmea 0183.

I have radar/chart plotter but its old and find it quite useless. Someday when $ permits I will upgrade and try to find one that can work over lan or such and bother getting it to work with opencpn.

As for the sun and screen I have a pilot house and dual stations usually depending I can mostly stay inside. But when I have to go out Ipad just drops into a water proof ziplock style case and has a spot behind the wheel.

If I am going into harbor/marina I just slap the iphone onto an water proof arm holder and it seems to work fine. Since I walk around on the deck a bit.

Since I have converted to full electric propulsion I some day plan to make that remotely controlled too from device. But thats for a later date.

the routerstation also comes in handy in marina or anchor as a wifi repeater and with a couple of webcams has become also a simple surveillance system when away. have 3g dongle if needed also for it.
While off shore it becomes additionally a media server for our 4yr to watch movies or to listen to music.

Just got a furuno fax30 which plan also to put into the system for weatherfax and navtex.

So you did it! See ! More details please...

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by avazquez

So you did it! See ! More details please...

No, he stll has all the sensors and uses a NMEA<>Ethernet gateway to get that data to the iPad, like discussed but mostly ignored earlier in the thread. Many use this.

[avazquez]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

No, he stll has all the sensors and uses a NMEA<>Ethernet gateway to get that data to the iPad, like discussed but mostly ignored earlier in the thread. Many use this.

Well I havent read all the threads but I think thats the best we can do for now. I want to do that.