Welcome to next generation navigation from Digital Yacht
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Some books you just cannot put down and we are hoping that our new Signal K App for the Kindle will have the same effect. With their perfect sunlight readability, low price and extremely large user base, we thought an Amazon Kindle would make a great low power instrument display for a boat.
Every Kindle has an “Experimental Web Browser”, which although pretty poor for normal web browsing, does support Javascript which is the language that most modern HTML5 web pages use. After some positive initial tests to see if it would be good enough for our needs, Digital Yacht developed a simple Instrument Display Web App that would read Signal K data from our new iKommunicate gateway and display it on your Kindle.
Every second, the App “grabs” the latest instrument data from iKommunicate, which is connected to the boat’s NMEA2000 or NMEA0183 networks and displays it as either individual “jumbo” displays or a dual line or quad view (see image) display.
In keeping with the “Open Source” nature of Signal K and to encourage other developers to take what we have done and expand on it, we are releasing the source code of the Kindle Web App on our iKommunicate GitHub pages. For existing iKommunicate users, who would like to use this new Kindle App, you can download the new SD Card image and install it following the instructions here.
NOTE – By default a Kindle will check the wireless network it is connected to see if it has an internet connection and if it does not, it will disconnect from the wireless network. This is not great behaviour on a boat that may or may not be connected to the internet and so a little tweak needs to be made to the Kindle to disable this internet check.
Simply connect your Kindle to your computer using a Micro USB Cable and it will appear as a USB Disk Drive (mass storage device). Then you need to create a file in the USB root folder called WIFI_NO_NET_PROBE which does not need a file extension and can be a completely empty file, it just needs to be in this folder, as shown below.
Once you have copied the file on to your Kindle, restart the device and it will now connect to your wireless network even if there is no internet connection.
When we updated our Android Apps listing last month, we were given some advanced information that SailRacer the popular tactical yacht racing app, was soon to be getting a major upgrade to support navigational charts. True to their word, this week new Android and iOS versions of SailRacer will be released that allow users to overlay all of their race marks, layline and wind information on a navigational chart.
Of particular interest is the new chart upload feature that allows you to scan or take a photo of a paper chart of the race location and to then quickly align the chart with your precise race marks using the powerful “map center” feature. Traditionally SailRacer has plotted the racing marks on a blank track plotter type screen, but now with the addition of nautical charts, a whole new layer of essential local geographical detail is available to give you the edge in your tactical decision making.
The new Apps will be available from the Google Play or the Apple App Store later this week or you can visit http://www.sailracer.net to learn more. An interesting video to show how you upload your own charts to Sail Racer can be seen here.
Both apps are compatible with Digital Yacht’s wireless NMEA servers.
It was great to meet JC and Ric from RaceGeek yesterday at the Southampton Boat Show. Tucked away on stand J328, behind the Furuno Stand, this was their first time at Southampton and they were showing off their brand new D10 Mast display for racing yachts. What makes this new product of particular interest to Digital Yacht, is that the team at RaceGeek have made their D10 display Signal K compatible, making it the perfect display for connecting to our own iKommunicate.
Whether you are an out and out yacht racer or just a cruising yachtsman who likes to sail in the most efficient and effective way, a clear mast display like the D10 is an important tool and connected to our iKommunicate, providing NMEA0183 and NMEA2000 data via the new open source Signal K data format, it is a winning combination.
For more information on the D10 mast display please visit http://racegeek.ie/
The Southampton Boatshow runs from 16-25th September and Digital Yacht will be exhibiting on stand J346 in the heart of the electronics area together with our reseller Cactus
We’ve our biggest ever selection of award winning AIS products with amazing deals – Class B transponders complete with all antennas for under £400 including VAT and a FREE AIS Lifeguard MOB alarm with our best selling AIT3000 Nucleus Class A AIS – that’s a saving of over £250
Plus there’s a great deal on our new WL70R hi power wifi system for reliable internet access afloat
There will also be new products too – like iKommunicate, our new next generation interface for ANY marine electronics system now commercially available following a successful Kickstarter crowd funded development project. Start connecting your boat to the internet of things and get easy access to NMEA 0183 and NMEA 2000 data thanks to the new Signal K open interfacing standard – you can find out more at http://www.ikommunicate.com
Finally we’ve some interesting instrument developments with our new wireless wind system, WindSense making its debut at the show and here’s a sneak peek of another development – instrument data on your Kindle. These low cost, high bright sunlight readable displays make a great read for any boater – and now with your real time boat data too! Find out more at the show…
Remember – Stand J346 – we look forward to seeing you there.
The Digital Yacht team
This morning we released a new firmware update and SD Card image for our successful iKommunicate product. One of the improvements in this update was NMEA2000 optimisation to pass the Certification Testing that all NMEA2000 certified products need to complete.
We really wanted to have iKommunicate certified in time for the 2016 NMEA Conference later this month in Naples FL (20-22 September), as it will be exactly one year since we showed our “Proof of Concept” at last year’s conference. We have come a long way, since then, with a successful Kickstarter funding campaign, over 1000 units shipped and now our fourth software revision.
iKommunicate really is the perfect accessory for any boat with an NMEA network onboard. Whether connected to a Raymarine, Garmin, Simrad, Furuno, etc. system, iKommunicate will convert the NMEA2000 or NMEA0183 data and make it accessible in your web browser, or mobile App. Already compatible with the most popular navigation software; MaxSea, RosePoint, Nobeltec, OpenCPN, etc. and mobile Apps; iNavX, iSailor, TimeZero, etc. via TCP/UDP data connection, iKommunicate will also power the next generation of Signal K apps; NMEARemote, ActiveCapt, OceanIX, etc.
Developers interested in supporting Signal K, should have a look at our iKommunicate SDK, to which we have now added some new example apps, with fully documented source code, to help you get up and running as quickly as possible.
Today Zapf Software, the developer of the very popular NMEA Remote App for Apple iOS devices, released an update that significantly improves support for our iKommunicate Signal K gateway.
As well as natively supporting the Signal K delta messages over a wireless high speed websocket connection, NMEA Remote now lists iKommunicate as one of the data sources. Select iKommunicate from the list, click enable and then the magic of Apple’s Bonjour Discovery service, finds iKommunicate on your network, connects to it automatically and starts displaying the data on a series of configurable digital and analogue displays.
NMEA Remote will not only display traditional instrument and GPS data, it will also display Engine data from one or more engines, assuming you have them connected to iKommunicate via the NMEA2000 network.
To show just how easy it is to setup NMEA Remote with iKommunicate, we have produced a short video which you can view by clicking here.
After a successful Kickstarter Campaign, iKommunicate is now available through our normal distribution and is priced at $299.95 USD, £220 GBP or €315 EURO (excluding local Taxes) and more information can be found at http://ikommunicate.com while NMEA Remote is available from the Apple App Store.
Getting a good long range Wi-Fi connection in a marina can be a challenge, particularly if you have not used the equipment for a while and cannot remember the steps involved.
To try and help make this a little easier, Digital Yacht have created a set of “How To” videos that explain how to connect to the two main types of wireless hotspots that you will come across on your travels; the “Open” captive portal type hotspot favoured by most marinas these days and the “encrypted” password protected hotspot that most bars and restaurants still operate.
At the same time we also created a third video that covers the important process of securing your boat’s wireless, by changing the default wireless network name and password, so that only the people you want to connect, can join your network.
We recommend watching them in the order shown below and simply click on the link to take you to the video on our YouTube channel…
IMPORTANT NOTE
After Apple changed the way their auto login feature of iOS and Safari behaved earlier this year, we now recommend installing the free Google Chrome web browser for maximum compatibility when connecting to hotspots, on your iPad or iPhone and this is also true on Windows PCs as Internet Explorer does not always seem to trigger the re-direct to the marina’s welcome/login page.
