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Originally Posted by David M  I think you also have to take into consideration that marine electronics manufacturers who manufacture integrated systems, such as Raymarine or Furuno, have no financial incentive to make their electronics compatible with their competitors electronics. I think that waiting for any sort of standardization that would increase interoperability would be pointless.
I think the best that can be done is to buy the integrated system and then buy a very basic standalone backup system in case the integrated system fails. This though could be an expensive option. |
Well, screw them. But that was not even the point of my complaint. They don't even make their components compatible with their OWN systems. If you want to change one element of the system, even using the same manufacturer, you have to change the entire system. That sucks.
I've got backup of everything anyway. I have several GPS receivers and I don't go anywhere without paper charts. I sailed for decades without chart plotters and do not feel dependent on them. The only thing not backed up is radar.
With a laptop system, if you get GPS data from a redundant source (which is not expensive or difficult), maybe heading data as well (more expensive and difficult but maybe worth it), you've got a fully redundant electronic chart system to your main chart plotter. I like that. I think I'll run AIS through a laptop without trying to integrate it with my chart plotter. The Simrad AIS device outputs NMEA 2000 data -- so there is some hope that some future chart plotter will be able to accept the data and overlay it, but no need to worry about it now.