I have posted previously one shot from the Axis camera system on board. Yesterday I got to use them while driving the boat for my first time! We had a pretty extensive sea trial to accomplish. I found it quite useful to have a nice large display of what is behind us, while running. Here I'm driving through the Montlake cut. Very cool! That's Steve D'Antonio (www.stevedmarineconsulting.com). He is conducting one of his reviews on our boat. I'll have more about that in upcoming posts. The two ER cameras were really helpful doing our various tests. Steve would tell me certain things to do with the boat, and observe in the ER. We had a little signal system. Worked great and saved a lot of time. Both side decks are monitored as well. Using the Axis software on the PC, these cameras can record basically anything. And you can even set up zones, for example outline the side deck area, and it will record if there is movement there, but not people walking by on the dock. Ladies and gentleman, yours truly docked Mahalo for the very first time!
(Well, with some expert help from Robert Fiala of HYG.) As I slowly thrustered onto the dock, the port side deck camera was amazingly helpful. We could really see exactly where I needed to be. Most of the time on Hamptons you would do this from the cockpit driving station. But when you are back that far you lose sense of where the bow is. Perhaps with the camera we can do more docking from the pilothouse. Although I didn't show it, you can display any of the cameras together on the screen in basically infinite ways. It was a great first day!
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I now have access to the boat's camera system, from my phone! So while sitting in my home office, I selected the PTZ in the cockpit, rotated it to look at this area, while watching live video. Then snapped this picture.
Technology is cool, eh? The display area of the helm is installed! As I said in a previous post, we have two Garmin MFD (multi function displays) in the middle, with room on the outside for two 19" computer monitors. Here one of the Garmin guys is wiring up the MFDs. Very exciting. Flybridge MFD up and running! Right now the only things on the mast are the radars. We have a big 6' open array traditional magnetron radar. The radar in the 24" dome is one of the new digital doppler radars that use very low power and have incredible target resolution. The low power requirement means we can run it from the inverter, thus using the "guard zone" and other features when at anchor. One of the coolest features is its new MARPA technology. As it acquires targets (i.e. other vessels) it computes their courses and speeds, comparing them to Mahalo's. Targets that have a potential for collision are shown in red, those with no potential are green. Boating is getting safer all the time. Here's the Garmin web page on the radar if you are interested. Well, they didn't get a nice shot of both MFD's displaying their data. But we get a little peekaboo shot here. Going to be awesome seeing Puget Sound displayed.
Following yesterday's post about the pilot house helm, today we will head upstairs to the flybridge. All in all, here in the Pacific Northwest, I think use of the flybridge while underway is kind of spotty. Some people totally enclose their flybridge so they can keep it warm. I feel we already have a great helm in the pilot house that is enclosed, with everything we need. Flybridges are awesome when anchored or docked though. We have had several memorable dinners at anchorages in the B.C. and the San Juans. So with that in mind I went for kind of a minimalist approach with electronics and controls. I used the same approach of keeping the left hand side mostly open. I spec'd only one Garmin MFD. For how often we will drive from here, I think that is sufficient. We can bring up a tablet and remote any of the screens from below over WIFI. The Garmin displays are about $7,000 apiece, so I can't see filling up the helm with them just for the sake of it.
The color CAT engine displays I showed in yesterday's post are also shockingly expensive. One display can do split screen and show data for two engines, so that's what I opted for up here in the flybridge. Seeing this picture I am lamenting the fact that I didn't have them do a remote drawer for the keys like I did in the pilot house. I think that's the first thing I have seen where I say "hmmm, should have put more thought into that one." Wont' be the last, right? A lot of trawler owners call the engine room "the holy place." I'm hoping the engines and and all the components in that room hum along happily for many, many, years. I'll give them the care they require, but there are other places I'd rather be. Like the helm, exploring the beautiful PNW! 20 years ago a yacht helm was incredibly cluttered with so much equipment and gauges. Nowadays with electronic displays, much less. This shot is from an existing Hampton Endurance 658. The heart of today's helm are the displays. They display the charting, radar, sonar, cameras mounted around the boat, monitoring systems and even more. I want four of them, two Garmin MFD's (Multi Function Displays) and two displays driven by a PC for cameras, monitoring the boat's systems, and a backup charting software that isn't dependent on the Garmin electronics. So that meant relocating all of the units you see on the upper portion of this display, besides the three monitors. As far as the horizontal area, pretty much most builders take the remaining components and space them out equally around the area available. I however wanted some flat space that wasn't used up. Sometimes you have to eat while driving, would be nice to have a place to set a plate down. Or put a laptop or tablet. Many people are doing a lot of their charting on tablets these days (or as a backup to the other systems). Or maybe down the road you want to add a new component, and you don't want to have to redo the entire helm area. Also, having two computer displays means you'll want at least a mouse, sometimes even a small keyboard. So they can be placed here too. Hull #11 (which was available for us to view while we were in Shanghai) has one foot more beam than Mahalo. They made the helm area wider. I used a picture of that helm, and it's components, and built my own mockup in PowerPoint, which you see above. Subsequent to this design, we relocated the "ship's lights" and "tank tender" monitors to the electrical panel area to the right of the helm (not shown). We also specified moving the switch/USB charger (under the port CAT display) to the side of the display panel area. Then Scott Hauck of HYG printed my drawing to scale, and we placed it on the helm of one of the existing boats in Seattle. We "simulated" actually driving the boat, viewing the displays, and handling the controls. I was happy with the layout, and HYG in Shanghai turned my basic work into this scale drawing. One of the things I did was flip the location of engine controls and thrusters. (i.e. on Mahalo the thrusters are to the right.) My reasoning is that you spend much more time adjusting throttles/transmission than you do with thrusters, and I wanted them to just fall in to our hands as we hold the wheel. I ran this idea past a couple of other owners and they were favorable. We will have two VHF radios as in my mockup, although only one is shown in this drawing. I also felt that the engine start keys took up unnecessary room and are just used for a few seconds of any cruising day. (They are shown in the picture above to the left and right of the black horn button in the center.) HYG agreed to build a small drawer at the left and locate the keys there. That's right in front of where it says "14 7/8." So here we are as of today, March 23, 2018. She's looking good! It's pretty de-cluttered as boats go these days, yet the most important controls and information are readily available. (Note the binocular well to the right which was discussed in a previous blog post.) You can see the key drawer area, lower left. To comply with ABYC standards, engine kill switches must be readily available, so Hampton agreed to remote these to the top area. There's one in red you can see, and the other is under the tape. The black button to the right is the horn. These buttons are really out of the way, the wheel will be in front of them. The other items, roughly left to right are:
Speaking of the CAT engine displays, here is one powered up. Although you can see that the engine isn't running. But take a look there, how many old fashioned gauges would it take to display all this info? A ton! And this is just one page. You can configure any number of pages to display any amount of information.
We were fortunate that CAT came out with these color displays just in time for us to take advantage of them. I believe hull #11 (where I shot this picture) was the first one with the new color displays, previous to that they were very basic monochrome. Might sound like a bit of fluff, but just the idea that glancing down and seeing everything "green" means more time looking outside. If there's a problem, that part of the display will go red and there is an audible warning. Three months from now Mahalo's engine displays will be showing our purring CATs cruising Puget Sound! |
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