December 24, 2015 Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Yacht Devices Ltd sincerely wishes you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We wish you good luck, happy voyages And to reach your goals in 2016!
Thank you for your confidence! Stay tuned on our website or our Facebook page.
October 28, 2015 New software and firmware for Voyage Recorder
We are glad to present new PC software for our Voyage Recorder. Now with auto generation of logbooks, support of OpenSkipper XML and CanBoat / Signal K LOG formats, the new version has tons of great improvements. A new non-critical firmware update is released also.
Log book generation was the Easter egg of the PC software, and now we are glad to present it! Yes, now you can get a real multi-page, editable and printable logbook of your voyage with just a few mouse clicks.
The log book is generated by a template, you modify the template supplied with the program in Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Write in Windows, Linux or Mac OS X. Or you can create your own template with any modern text processor. Some fields on the screenshot above are empty because the test boat has no corresponding NMEA sensors. But it is not a problem to connect engine, tanks and batteries to a NMEA 2000 network.
The next new feature is OpenSkipper support. This product can "replay" NMEA 2000 recordings. We are not sure how much fun it is, to see your instruments (compass, wind, engine, tanks, etc) on your PC desktop, but this product has an excellent log viewer.
If you need to research N2K equipment problems, you may load YDVR data to OpenSkipper and decode all N2K messages. ActiSense have a similar EBL Reader product, but it can show only the standard set of NMEA messages and the PGNs database is hardcoded. With OpenSkipper, you can edit an XML file with PGNs, and marine electronics professionals can add definitions for proprietary messages.
The third new big feature is the support of CanBoat and Signal K. Do you like new technologies? You love this! Signal K is developing a new open standard for marine data exchange, based on JSON. It is easiest to explain with an example.
This is a set of NMEA 2000 data (hex values), here is what the data looks like in the chartplotter's diagnostic window:
09 F1 12 03 FF A5 9C FF 7F FF 7F FD 09 F8 01 05 E3 71 64 20 FD 1E 34 0B
And this is a presentation of this data in JSON of Signal K:
{"navigation":{
"headingMagnetic":{
"value":229.8,"source":{
"label":"","type":"NMEA2000","pgn":127250,"src":3
}
}
}
}
{"navigation":{
"position":{
"longitude":18.7965181,"latitude":54.3453667,"source":{
"label":"","type":"NMEA2000","pgn":129025,"src":5
}
}
}
}
Seems more readable, right? But what is the difference for machines and software? At first, it is open and free to use. So anyone can create software and hardware based on it. Second, it allows mixing of different data sources (NMEA 0183, NMEA 2000 and anything else) and even mixing streams from multiple boats to one data stream. Third, while humans create hardware and software, unified and readable data format can speed-up new product development. So, it is cool, and we are ready to support it.
Signal K consumer software is under development now, but computer specialists can play with map tracker and instrument panel web applications.
New PC software also has some fixes and a lot of improvements. It works on Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. You are welcome to download and test it (archive with program contains test data also, so you don't need to buy Voyage Recorder to get familiar with PC software): http://yachtd.com/downloads/.
We are also released new version of YDVR firmware. Non-critical bug (no impact on data recording) with time zone handling is fixed. This bug may cause incorrect file creation date/time on SD card in some specific cases. This update (v1.02) is recommended to all users and is available at downloads page: http://yachtd.com/downloads/.
To learn more about Voyage Recorder see: www.yachtd.com/products/recorder.html
September 10, 2015 We are glad to present Voyage Recorder
Did you accidentally erase your track from the plotter? Are you writing about a storm that you were caught in? Do you rent out your yacht? There are times when having a Voyage Recorder makes all the difference.
The Voyage Recorder is intended for storing data from the onboard network of the vessel on a MicroSD memory card. The software that comes with the Recorder is installed on a personal computer and allows GPX and CSV files to be generated with the vessel's track and extensive information about the sailing conditions, including weather, depth, engine, and even tracks of nearby vessels with AIS.
See more details at the product home page: www.yachtd.com/products/recorder.html
You may download PC software with test data which runs on Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS X to get acquainted with the software part of the product.
The product is in stock and ready for order.
September 9, 2015 Meet us at NMEA Conference in Baltimore
Meet Aleksandr Gorlach and Ekaterina Pigulevskaia at September 29-30 on the greatest event for marine electronics professionals.
The NMEA Conference & Expo is a once-a-year opportunity for training, face-to-face meetings of dealers
and manufacturers, networking, and making sure that your marine electronics business is prepared for growth. The conference will take place at
Sheraton Baltimore Inner Harbor Hotel (Baltimore, USA).
We'll glad to meet you at September 29 and September 30. Please, use contact form to schedule a meeting.
August 4, 2015 Review in #1 Marine Electronics Blog
Panbo, the #1 blog about marine electronics, published an independent review of our Digital Barometer and Digital Thermometer.
"You cannot only order the YD sensors with either a standard DeviceNet Micro C connector or the white STng spur connector, you can also specify that either style include a terminating resister. In some cases, then, you can swap one of the two terminating plugs at the ends of your NMEA 2000 or STng backbone with a Yacht Device, no new cable or tee needed. (The blue-based sensor above illustrates this concept because SeaTalkNG usefully differentiates backbone connectors from spur/drop connectors.) With free shipping worldwide, that means the total cost of a new YD temp or baro sensor might actually be $99!"
The complete review is available here. The review in this famous blog was a great surprise for us, and we thank Ben Ellison, editor and owner of Panbo, for it.
June 23, 2015 We are glad to announce Voyage Recorder: every millisecond memory of your voyages
Never forget exciting moments of your voyages, have proof of strong winds and great storms, accumulate data for future voyages, analyze your races, generate logbooks and diagnose problems.
With memory cards being so cheap, why not record all your boat data? Usually this includes vessel course, heading, speed and position, depth, wind speed and direction, log, water temperature, and AIS messages. In addition, it may contains engine data, state of batteries, data from the various sensors such as fuel or water levels, or even data from refrigerators and water makers.
In practice, useful network traffic on modern cruising boats is about 1000 bytes per second or 100 MB / day. Seems too much? A simple 16 GB microSD card is enough for 160 days of non-stop sailing: that's eight Atlantic crossings or five seasons of sailing for most boats.
So, take the Voyage Recorder, insert the card and forget about it until next year. But if you need the data later to determine true depth at anchorage, or to analyze your boat's behavior in specific conditions or even to get the GPX track to illustrate your memories from the sailing season, you'll have all the data on hand!
If you rent your boat, you'll have the data in case of any incident. Is the skipper running the engine on high revolution for the long time? Is the vessel drifting all night on anchor? What other vessels were near during the incident?
The Voyage Recorder will costs $189 and comes with free software to convert device data into GPX tracks with depth and weather conditions and to generate logbooks. In the future, we plan to add analysis capability to this software to diagnose improper configuration of devices and to build polar diagrams and wind roses. In addition to that, the data file format will be open, so you'll able to create your own applications.
The device is fully compatible with all NMEA 2000 networks, including Raymarine SeaTalk NG, Furuno CAN, Simrad SimNet and others. We expect to start sales of this product at the end of July.
March 20, 2015 Devices with NMEA 2000 Micro connector
We are glad to present our Digital Thermometer and Digital Barometer with the NMEA 2000 Micro Male connector. This connector is used in Garmin networks, and now you can connect our devices directly without any adaptor cables. Models with a built-in 120 Ohm terminator and without terminator are in stock and available to order.
March 18, 2015 Devices with Seatalkng connector on stock
Digital Thermometer and Digital Barometer with SeaTalk NG compatible connectors are on stock and ready for order. SeaTalk NG is a rebranded implementation of NMEA 2000 by Raymarine. Models with a built-in 120 Ohm terminator should be connected instead of network terminator to the blue connector of Seatalk NG, models without terminator should be connected to the white connector of Seatalk NG.