navico dealers confrence 2016

[chocolatemoose]

Gday all. i arrived back in cool and rainy melbourne last night "oh how good it is to be home!" after spending a few days up on day dream island in the whitsundays for the 2016 navico dealers confrence

thought id put it out there with what interesting stuff was talked about "At least for consumers...and that we are allowed to discuss"

firstly though. huge thanks to the navico staff for putting on the event, great effort as usual. thanks for all the birthday love on the 17th

Vessel and unit registration improvements and growth.
a lot of this is to help us dealers and service techs treat problems when/if they arise with navico themselves.
registration and incident reports will soon be available do be lodged from the unit itself using the built in wifi "or wifi1" module attached.
this helps navico and dealers keep track of software versions. bugs. and data as well. parameters etc

The forecast for this is to have a total intergration system for users electronics, their local service centre and retailer and navico themselves. just like in the consumer electrical market where you are reminded that a new software version is out, and that it may even install itself . it will also go and look through the entire network either eithernet or nmea2k for other systems software and bugs "not 3rd parties obviously"."theres more.. read on". groovily, being able to link your system via ethernet into a PC and using some groovy free software "vlc" you can stream over teamviewer or skype to your tech and have them liase exactly how to fix issues. this is only going to grow!

navico has had a real heads down bums up 9 months in 2015 fixing bugs, it was very impressive to hear how commited they go to improving quality. they stopped most programs and put most of their techs on fixing bugs for 9 months. over 100 engineers and 20,000 issues across all 4 platforms "lowrance, simrad, simrad pro and b&g" had been fixed in that time frame, "which is why things were a bit slow and wonky for some of last year"
the result though is a very streamlined and focused company for 2016 it seems.

navicos parent company "altor holdings". has purchased Jeppesen CMAP from Boeing "pending approval" . this is big. cmap has always had a great product, just bad management etc. so to see them in the hands of a marine company should be good. its early days what this could mean. but very interesting.

Simrad GO xse range. already announced and available "kinda now?" was there for us to play with. interestingly was the groovy little 5" system which wont be available for a little while. using the new 9 pin sonar port. with CHIRP, multi-point touch screen. wifi. nmea2k. vessel integration. it is going to be a powerful little player.

but the go5xse was there highlighting the new Mercury Vessel view LINK. , mercury working close with navico for a while has redesigned their interface for its engine interfacing. it now looks very modern and sleep. touch on any of the gauge and dials for expanded information. access to smart troll. smart tow etc. the link is a small new module box replacing existing vessel view guages and interlink modules. for merc dealers this will be a godsend. the vesselview link system is also available for nss, nso evo2 systems and lowrance elite7 ti &HDS system.

new simrad autopilot computers. with the NAC1 outboard drive existing for a little while already, its nice to have a new NAC2 and NAC3 for higher power output pumps and parameter settings. it makes the line up so much easier to navigate through. not a huge hardware design change. but enough to make it noticeable. the NAC1s will soon also ship with the new PRECISION 9 compass

precision compass. P9. is replacing the very good but dated rs42 compass "Which they ship 10,000 a year!" with a sleeker "ufo?" designed solid state system for far easier installation and accuracy. it is only a fraction less accurate with its rate of turn to super powerful gyro systems. the p9 is expected to soon launch with auto calibration that can be turned on and off. and ... heave compensation. "somehow"

also on the autopilot range there are new recreational simrad controllers, guages. the ap44, is42 and op12. these are now the same slim 8mm glass bridge bonded glass full colour displays to compliment the NSS and NSO ranges. plus they look SCHMIK!

not a great deal of news from lowrance. it was a very big year in 2015 for them. it was good to see the elite 5TI in person. its a very solid great looking unit. with a widescreen format. it has really given the Helix 5si some challenge.
we found that the HOOK series does feature a fair bit of dumbing down over the older elite series but it should come down to price throughout the year

structure scan 3d will be coming out with a thruhull transducer shortly as well.

new software for the BSM3. a lot of bug fixes were added ,especially the power cycling issues.

new direction with the Xsonic 9 pin transducer connections, which will likely replace the older blue plug style in the next little while.


radar
lots of interesting stuff going on with radar as of miami 2016. the HALO is smashing the awards. but now raymarine have their quantum pulse compressed radar. as do both furuno and garmin. and garmin and furuno also offering doplar technology.
so the conference focused more of head to head comparisons with raymarine, simrad and garmin on everything from price. beam with. standby power. price etc. the halo came out very very favorably. however its early days still.

GoFree

gofree and wifi is expanding faster and faster. the insight genesis mapping has had a lot of changes in the past little while. its now free. thats a big one, custom depth shading. new social coastal mapping. "And theres a lot of work being put in by commercial guys in that" one cray boat has done most of south east victoria just by themselves!
a few comps to win sounders for people uploading the most data
australia has gone from having 32,400acres mapped in 2014 to 616,000 in 2015, with an aim of 1.5million by the end of 2016. or 3.5 Singapore a year

biobase has grown to be a very competent commercial use of the insight genisis. with vegitation and hardness levels being able to be saved , reports made etc. its a comercial application for around 1250USD P/A but its looking the goods for fishery agencies etc.

GO FREE track. i think one of my more favorite pieces out of the conference. still in prototype stage. gofree track connects to your engine diagnostics and sends all sorts of parameters back to the internet or custom PC software. so you can see where a boat is. what its all doing. what the sonar logs look like. any onboard video footage. engine data. pretty much anything. so if you wanted to prove to somebody your engine was hiccuping at 4,500rpm but "couldn't be replicated" in a test tank. this will allow for it all to be logged. and sent anywhere in the world . still in its early days

other things
we saw the new dedicated simrad 16" radar and 16" sonar units. very nice and professional they felt.
there is a new sonichub2 out that usese lowrances new NMEA2K code , should open the doors for many other brands to create their own connections. "JL, WETSOUNDS, POLK" Etc

overall it was a groovy show. not a lot of new tech . but it they have managed to release a lot of new toys and given the engineers spending the majority of 2015 fixing problems. thats understable

my air conditioning didn't work. i had amazing cocktails. a bird was eating my tv remote and it was a bajillion percent humidity... good times were had by all

except that one guy Rex Hunt really got stuck into

Moose

[ranmar850]

The forecast for this is to have a total intergration system for users electronics, their local service centre and retailer and navico themselves. just like in the consumer electrical market where you are reminded that a new software version is out, and that it may even install itself . it will also go and look through the entire network either eithernet or nmea2k for other systems software and bugs "not 3rd parties obviously"."theres more.. read on". groovily, being able to link your system via ethernet into a PC and using some groovy free software "vlc" you can stream over teamviewer or skype to your tech and have them liase exactly how to fix issues. this is only going to grow!

And when Microsoft do this sort of thing with Windows 10, the paranoid scream " spyware" " tracking" "surveillance" and refuse to use it. Oh, and I am not one of those, for the record another step on the road to " the internet of things?"

[chocolatemoose]

oh look anything can be seen as good and bad.. phones.. phones make so much in life easier. but turn millenials into drones at home. so.. good and bad really

hopefully the uptake will be fast. australia/nz is a bit behind the world with some of the available services.

[scottar]

With that lot they will probably have the rest of 2016 off as well - bring out the Mortein.

[ozynorts]

a bird was eating my tv remote
Moose

Did someone leave the balcony door open Moose??

[chocolatemoose]

after 2am rum and cokes i thought i would be tired enough to sleep anywhere. sadly my air con still wasnt working so i had to bright idea "Remember the rum and cokes" to push my couch out onto the balcony. or partially anyway to try and sleep in the cool evening breeze,.. which didn't exist

[Khunaus]

pretty interested in the Simrad G07 XSE... are there any rumours of a G09 coming out?

The insight maps are interesting.. i had a look and play online but it seems more a its free for you to give them info rather than them give you something. I'm not sure if you can download anything without the premium? the video and the webpage were a bit conflicting.

Cheers

[chocolatemoose]

go7xse finally have arrived. im makign a video as we speak on them

no rumors of a GO9. it will prob happen but not for a while.