Should Mp3car have a boats section? - Page 3

riddle14 · 04-29-2006, 06:55 PM

Sure why, not...but i can see in the near future a section for every type of vehicle, whether it be a boat, 4-wheeler, bike, motorcycle, RV, and so on, so why not.....

romul · 04-29-2006, 07:49 PM

its mp3car but i mean ne method of transportation can be hooked up with a computer maybe get an "other vehicules" section

as the boats go i love boats most of them being made out of a fiberglass shell would prolly make a prettty sweet installation. EVen if you dont like boats you might want to do the same principal in your car (build a system that is very similar besides the waterproof speakers

)

go for it ; my 2 cents

Quote: Originally Posted by Fiberoptic

I am getting a list goign of Marine specific issues:

Brightness (look at your monitor on deck)
Ultra low power (for sailing across an ocean and only having wind electricity generation)
Dual monitors (Charting/Mapping/Productivity all on one computer)
Shock - High speed boats
Salt water corrosion problems
Marine Navigation/Charting Software

dont forget other inputs such as depth finders and the boat radios (forget hte name)

scott_fx · 04-30-2006, 01:08 AM

wow, i cant even imagine a harddrive withstanding all that shock. I think someone here will design a great shock absorber that doesnt introduce oscilation...i'm thinking gyro!

TheLlama · 04-30-2006, 03:21 AM

Yeah, we should rename the site transportationcar.com... erm, mp3transportaiondevice.com. mp3movingthings.com?

lifeboat · 04-30-2006, 11:32 AM

There are a lot of challenges to computing in a marine environment and there is a lot of interesting technology in use generally. Aside from the corrosion and vibration issues, reliability is key. If you lose your electronics, GPS and maps in a car you aren't going to have a collision or run off the road, but on a vessel you very well could. I think it would be very interesting to see some boat installs here, there are bound to be some ideas that have crossover application for our cars. Check out http://www.panbo.com/ for some marine electronics gadgetry.

avengerki · 04-30-2006, 11:19 PM

Speaking of cross overs I was thinking of the same application that would go torwards a boat would work with offroad vehicles. And I mean that as in you actually take your offroad vehicle offroad and bounce it off rocks, crawl through mud, and hydrolock.... I mean water crossings.

TheLlama · 04-30-2006, 11:36 PM

In spirit of my other Family Guy troll-posts.

"Hey Peter! Where's your boat!??!"

scott_fx · 04-30-2006, 11:51 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by TheLlama

In spirit of my other Family Guy troll-posts.

"Hey Peter! Where's your boat!??!"

haha.. you are now my favorite mp3car.com member!!!

Quote: Originally Posted by lifeboat

If you lose your electronics, GPS and maps in a car you aren't going to have a collision or run off the road, but on a vessel you very well could.

heh...i think your biggest concern should be why you are driving your boat on the road in the first place

Rafster · 05-01-2006, 01:36 AM

Haha... Now the site will have to be renamed....

mp3vehicles.com anyone?

Voted (B)

Peace,

Rafster

TMH · 05-01-2006, 05:47 PM

I have done several computers in boats, Custom cases, laptops, & shuttle's. They are great. I typically install one pc with dual monitor capability. One goes to small touchscreen for control and one to a lcd tv. For navigation I have been using Navsim (navsim.com), it has autopilot add on software. I use western digital drives. Most installs are usually in offshore race/poker run boats. Two have been around florida for while.

For navigation reliability, I dont think it is much different then a installed gps. The gps has just as good of a chance of failing. Also most still have a good ole fashion compass for backup. Basically if you lose all electronics your not moving anyway.

As far as corrosion, I don't really think there are issues. Although if you mount the pc out in the cockpit and mount the monitor on a un-protected dash you would be asking for trouble. The only time you may see this is with direct salt water spray. I have yet to see any corrosion problems with smart installs.

Vibration, has not been much of an issue either. My boat is a 30' offshore 97mph and run in lake MI (ruff) the first pc was a viewsonic tablet pc built into a wall in the cabin. The latest that survived last years beating is a epox motherboard from a shuttle pc. It has the audio and nvidia dual monitor video built in. It is in a custom aluminum case mounted in the cabin. I have a 10.4 ts mounted in the cabin door.

Biggest problem is seeing the monitor if mounted on or in the dash is readability. Most people don't want to spend the money a nice monitor so we put them in the cabin. Some have a second on the dash but are only used at night. Although one of my installs has the monitor on the dash and always defaults to a music control scene after a few minutes. It has the screen divided in 4, volume up down & next and previous song. That way you dont have to see the screen when in the cockpit.

I have been following the panel upgrade thread and will try that solution if the screen shots look good.

Todd

vxcarpc · 05-01-2006, 08:44 PM

I'd like to see your dvd-rom working in tghe rough seas.. lol..

I'd be interested to see any mp3 boat setups though.. Something new

TMH · 05-01-2006, 09:32 PM

You got me there! The dvd/cd drive don't work in the ruff. But then again we mostly use harddrive based media. I also use a usb cam to grab running videos.

Todd

wkearney99 · 05-02-2006, 08:35 AM

The bumpiness of the ride in a boat varies quite a lot depending on the boat and conditions. Putting a PC into a 20' runabout is quite a bit different than a 37' express cruiser, sailboat, trawler or sport boat.

If anything use laptop drives as they're rated to withstand greater G forces. Set 'em up in a software mirror so you don't have to worry about losing the whole thing if one of the drives packs up. Using an actual laptop as the basis of the system also buys you some benefits in dealing with interrmittent power or low voltage situations.

A boat sitting all day rafted up running off batteries is quite common and most boats have more than one battery (mine has three) to make sure you still have juice to start the engines.

Boat instrumentation systems have two standards and a whole slew of proprietary setups. The most common standard are NMEA-0183 and NMEA-2000. The former is a basically an RS-422 network running at 4800 baud and is really only designed to have a scant few devices talking on it. NMEA-2000 is relatively new and is designed for much faster performance and multiple talkers. Other systems use ethernet, often with UDP packets, but don't document their protocols. Just about everyone's got a way to bridge their networks to an RS-232 setup for a chartplotter on a PC.

I've currenly got my Raymarine E-80 set up bridged to a laptop running Coastal Explorer. At some point I plan on leaving a laptop permanently wired into the boat, doing the NMEA interfacing and acting as a WiFi access point. That'll let me use the laptop onboard without any wires.

ketilmorstoel · 05-02-2006, 04:04 PM

Count me in.
I've allready build one system with an Epia 5000 as a basis, and it all works fine. No need to worry about Hi-G's since my system dosen't have a HD but runs OS and apps from an CF card. Many thanks to SFiorito for doing the writeup about how to make that magic happen

http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=38484

Ofcourse the biggest obstacle is LCD visibility, espesially in direct sunlight and I guess we all are longing for an cheap and easy solution... The numerous LCD enhancements threads have been monitored closely, but they all seems to involve mechanics quite close to rocket sience

As for navigation software I have choosen to use SOB which uses vectorized charts from C-map, and it has a fairly good implementation of other sources than GPS. (Radar, Sonar, AIS, temp etc, etc.)

Best regards, Ketil.

wkearney99 · 05-03-2006, 06:48 AM

For anyone thinking about CF cards (microdrives work nicely) they do make IDE to CF adapters. Thus you only have to use the IDE interface, plug in the adapter and then the CF card.

As for boating software, I greatly prefer Coastal Explorer from Rosepoint. It's private-labelled from Maptech as Chart Navigator Pro and comes with a huge set of DVD charts covering the entire US waters. Or you can use the free NOAA raster charts (your tax dollars already paid for them). The Maptech stuff comes with raster, vector, contour and photographs.