Hey all! I come in search of help with the hardware we plan on employing on my familys boat. First off, we are certainly planning on fitting a small Micro-Atx computer in a water-tight box for playing music and what not. But we also would like to expand it's capability's to some slightly more essential things for when we are out on the water. First of all (And some would argue the most important) is GPS. We are perfectly happy to get a run of the mill Garmin handheld unit, but we would much rather have something that we can have a big bright screen for on the boat. We are considering getting something like So. From what I can tell, we don't need to buy anything extra to get this to work. But then again, I might be wrong. Do we need some extra software to get this to work? Is there some stupid monthly tariff I have to sign up for like mobile company's make you? Secondly, we would quite like to somehow interface out speed log with the PC. It uses a regular UHF/RF socket to plug into our display we already have on our boat. However, we are wondering whether there would be a way to somehow interface this with a Serial port in a true Modding fashion and log our speeds as we travel throughout the day. Is there anyway to go about this? So that's what we are interested in so far. Any ideas anyone? *edit* I also just remembered! We would quite like to have something that would control when out lights come on, on the boat. Obviously we could just make a simple timing circuit to turn them on, but where's the fun in that?
How big is the boat? (Also, what kind of boat is it?) TBH, boats and computers don't really mix. And as far as GPS goes, get a decent boat GPS, including charts etc. They're expensive, but they're worth it - dependable and good to use in all environments. All of the stuff that you're planning just sounds like stuff that's going to break pretty quickly - boats are damp places to be at the best of times.
It's a Halcyen 23ft offshore sail cruiser. It's a nice boat It is an option, but this is one we would far rather investigate
Wow, small boat (not that I have a boat - but still ) . What do you do for power? All the pics I can see of the Halcyon 23ft show that it has an outboard engine.
It's a good size for what we really do. Not as fast as we like though... 9Knots... Not too fantastic but fun all the same When we bought it, it had a brand new Perkin's put in it. I can't remember the specs, but it's a bloody good engine. And stupidly reliable.
Tbh mate, I'd echo the above. Try an mATX entertainment PC by all means, but please, please get yourself a decent Marine-GPS unit with all the proper charts and guidance etc if you'll be on the sea.
I was in a boat one night and the guy had a gps hooked to his laptop. moving map and everything which was great. till it started to rain and we found out his boat was no longer rain proof. water all over the electronics which shorted it out and kept resetting his laptop. And it was night, and he didn't have an actual map. and it was shallow water with reefs and we had to sit and wait for the rain to stop. He went out the next day(on his own), same thing, it started to rain, but he just kept going and lost his prop when he hit ground. Good times...
