By Russ, on July 9th, 2008
Having written already on the subject of fuel consumption and even carrying a picture of a friend’s power boat on this blog..I thought I would continue this worrying trend by writing about Garmin’s nice little flow meter – the GFS 10
This not only displays the current fuel level (based on initial reading less flow) but comes up with a single “Economy” reading (in nm/gal) that will have power boat skippers skipping with delight. This help a skipper see his nm/gal consumption automatically therefore taking into account current sea conditions, power applied, and speed over the ground. You can then have a good stab at optimising throttle position to give the best fuel economy. You can also connect up one sensor per engine.
So if you have the GMI 10 marine instrument display then you can connect up the GFS 10 fuel sensor using NMEA2000 – other GPSMAP 4xx and 5xx series units require Garmin’s own CANet™ connection.
Specs for the fuel sensor:
Maximum flow rate: up to 50 GPH per engine
Minimum flow rate: 2 GPH
Maximum back pressure: 0.5 PSI at 20 GPH/1.0 PSI at 40 GPH
By Russ, on June 16th, 2008
After the last post I had a few emails asking me what PRN 32 means so I thought I would list a few terms that you may come across if you start looking into the GPS system..
SV – Space Vehicle
PRN – Pseudo Random Noise
NANU – Notice Advisory to Navstar Users – there is a free mail list service run by the US Coast Guard to send GPS watchers an automatic status report.
For the latest nanus see the US Coast guard site here.
BTW its called Navstar because that is the correct title of the US military GPS system
By Russ, on June 2nd, 2008
I wrote about Mobile XT previously. My comment was not that you couldn’t get chartplotting software on a smartphone, because patently you can – the comment I made was that you couldn’t get Bluechart marine charts to be read by Garmin Mobile XT on a smartphone. After making that post Bob left a comment that he had managed to get his Garmin Mobile XT to read Bluechart charts on his phone – even though this feature was not documented!…
Just to recap,Mobile XT is Garmin’s new GPS app that will be used in the expected Mobile 10/GPS 10X and Mobile 20/GPS 20SM products.
Garmin will also be releasing Mobile XT as an update for the ageing “Que” Pocket PC software that is included with the GPS 10 Bluetooth Receiver package.
Mobile XT is a newer version of the “Que Nav” application that comes with the iQue M3 and iQue M4 Pocket PC devices.
The software is sold on microSD cards that you insert into a smartphone which has built in GPS – you can of course use a miniSD or standardSD converter to house the card if necessary, for example in a PDA.
If your smartphone also has GPRS (data service) then the software will access “Garmin Online”. This gives access to a wide range of services such as traffic, weather, hotel rates and more. It give real-time traffic information from traffic.com about traffic tie-ups and road construction that lie ahead on your route. Hotel rates, ratings and availability information comes from hotels.com. There is a good article here about the use of XT on a smartphone
So all the elements are there for using your smartphone as a handheld marine chart plotter on board your boat, and saving yourself £200 to £300 for a dedicated marine plotter.
… I haven’t tested this theory, but now I am sorely tempted, having just changed phone to the Samsung i780 that has built in GPS…but then there is Active Captain too …
By Russ, on May 19th, 2008
Garmin is the mystery bidder behind a takeover approach for Britain’s Raymarine Plc. Garmin’s approach could be worth as much as 200 million pounds ($389 million)
Raymarine Plc has two sites in Portsmouth, Hampshire. Corporate headquarters are based in Anchorage Park, and house the Factory service and Repair facility. Quay Point is the engineering and design headquarters. Raymarine floated on the London Stock Exchange on 6 December 2004, and was a landmark event in the long and successful history of Raymarine.
A number of private equity companies are also thought to be eyeing Raymarine, officials at Raymarine were not immediately available to comment.
By Russ, on April 2nd, 2008
I have had emails from number of people saying that there are heaps of mobile chart plotters out there – but I beg to differ!
There are heaps of mobile chart plotters for the Land but not the Sea 
For example even Garmin only cover the Land ….Garmin Mobile XT transforms your GPS-enabled smartphone into a full-featured street navigator. Routing software and detailed mapping are preloaded on a microSD card – just plug it into your phone and you’re ready to navigate – on foot or in your car. With no subscription fee or additional equipment required, Mobile XT works anywhere, even outside your phone’s network coverage area.
Minimum requirements for Windows Mobile®, Palm® and Symbian® devices: 16MB program memory, 128MB storage card minimum (256MB or more recommended), 2GB storage card for full coverage
You get :
- City Navigator® NT street maps …one of:-
- Garmin Mobile™ XT North America
- Garmin Mobile XT,Europe
- Garmin Mobile XT,UK & Ireland
- Garmin Mobile XT navigation software
- miniSD and SD adapters
…so when will the Sea version come out – well …never me-thinks – why should they when they have so many solid and reliable handheld plotters already. It is the new entrants into the market that may be motivated to creep in via the backdoor of the smartphone devices. Not the incumbents like Raymarine or Garmin.
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