By Russ, on September 11th, 2008
The innovative Actisense USG-1-485 can be used to protect your laptop from sudden voltage spikes while connected to your boat’s serial wiring system. The traditional NMEA 0183 is often offered as a serial port connection when most modern PC’s and laptops only have USB nowadays.
Up till now all you had to do was buy a suitable Serial/USB convertor such as the one I reviewed here, or buy a multiplexor such as the one I reviewed here.
This device does it differently – light is used to transfer the data signals between the serial port and the USB. The device gets its own power from the laptop’s USB port. Installation is easy using the supplied CD that will create a “virtual serial port” on your laptop.
The only problem is the price …£80!
By Russ, on July 6th, 2008
My little venture into experimenting with mobile phones and their use on my boat has stirred up a lot of readers of this blog it appears see comments here
Questions include:
- Can I use my smartphone to connect my laptop to the internet?
- Can I use my phone as a chart plotter?
- Which software and maps can I use on my phone?
- How can I improve the interface on my phone? – I cant get to the Bluetooth and other settings easily because they buried under so many menu options…
- Can I get the Met Office weather forecast and barometric charts on my phone?
I had not realised that so many of you are as frustrated as I am in getting more out of my expensive smartphone when they seem to promise so much….
Just to make one point absolutely clear I am referring to the latest crop of smartphones “not the common or garden phones” – and I dont care if you have 3G, MP3, or any other acronym – I mean a phone that is running a real mini operating system such as Windows Mobile 6 or Symbian.
As a result of all this interest I have decide to create a whole new section dedicated to mobile phone use on boats – look across the tabs at the top of the page….and you will see a tab called “Phones”.
I have only just started, but please – come back and check because I will be trying to answer the questions raised as best as I can on this new section.
By Russ, on March 31st, 2008
Further to the post on the arrival of solid state computers in particular the HTC 7501 I see that HTC have got 2 new models…
The top of the range HTC 7510 now runs Windows Mobile 6, has a 16Gb flash drive for storage – more than enough for charts, tracks and waypoints – and as a mobile phone it will support :
o HSDPA/WCDMA: 2100 MHz for Europe
o 850/1900 MHz for USA,
o with up to 384 kbps upload and 1.8 Mbps download speeds
o GSM/GPRS/EDGE: Quad-band 850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz (The device will operate on any frequencies available from the cellular network.)Click here for a full specification
Using the internal GPS and you could have a very capable chartplotter / phone / email / camera / web browser that can work with your current phone provider or WiFi when you are in the marina or in a cafe using a WiFi hotspot. Of course you would also need chartplotter software that works under Windows Mobile 6 such as the Pathaway software from Muskoka. more on that here…
For pictures of this tiny unit see Endgadget
By Russ, on January 1st, 2008
Instead of connecting your phone to your laptop, you can more easily connect a dongle. These little devices are amazing bits of technology when you consider that simply plugging them in and waiting a few minutes gets you connected to mobile broadband far quicker and easier than either configuring your phone or indeed connecting your PC, router and ADSL modem to a wired connection.
In my experience the maximum speed you can expect to connect to the internet using a dongle is about 2Mb/sec if you happen to be in a 3G area. While cruising along the coast or sitting in most marinas I would anticipate speeds of around 1Mb/sec.
 |
| Make |
Ovation MC930D |
| Max speed achieved |
440k/sec |
| Average speed achieved in 3G area |
318k/sec |
| Average speed achieved out of 3G area |
348k/sec |
|
 |
| Make |
Huawei E169G |
| Max speed achieved |
2.6Mb/sec |
| Average speed achieved in 3G area |
1.6Mb/sec |
| Average speed achieved out of 3G area |
1.0Mb/sec |
|
 |
| Make |
Option Icon 225 |
| Max speed achieved |
1.3Mb/sec |
| Average speed achieved in 3G area |
650k/sec |
| Average speed achieved out of 3G area |
320k/sec |
|
 |
| Make |
Huawei E170 |
| Max speed achieved |
2.1Mb/sec |
| Average speed achieved in 3G area |
2Mb/sec |
| Average speed achieved out of 3G area |
964k/sec |
|
 |
| Make |
Huawei E172 |
| Max speed achieved |
1.9Mb/sec |
| Average speed achieved in 3G area |
1.3Mb/sec |
| Average speed achieved out of 3G area |
890k/sec |
|
So the installation is easy and the speeds are fine for down loading email, GRIB files, and even browsing the web – the real problem is the cost. Prices in the UK are coming down – you can get access for £10/month and you can get roaming across Europe for £10/day – elsewhere the prices are many times higher…well the Telecoms companies are so poor aren’t they?
By Russ, on January 1st, 2008
A number of people have written asking about errors connecting their brand new Nokia smartphones to their University WLAN.
If your University uses Eduroam then it will use a type of EAP (Extended access protocol) called EAP-TTLS PAP. other types of EAP are EAP-PEAP and EAP-MSCHAPv2 .
This is a problem with Symbian S60 phones including Nokia – they dont support the EAP-TTLS PAP protocol.
Another reason that I decided to get a Windows Mobile 6 Pro phone.
There is even a petition to try and force Nokia to support this protocol..
http://www.petitiononline.com/NokiaPAP/
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