Raymarine, Navico and some other plotter OS are Linux based, as Android. UI is
design with Qt Project.
Pierre Tremblay
Avalanche
C&C38-3
________________________________
De : Stevan Plavsa <stevanpla...@gmail.com>
À : "cnc-list@cnc-list.com" <cnc-list@cnc-list.com>
Envoyé le : mercredi 19 février 2014 21h06
Objet : Stus-List Marine systems
Do you guys know what OS Raymarine, Garmin et al use? I'm sure they're
different but I'm guessing they are all proprietary to their brand. Is that
correct? If it is, that would mean that they have a whole team of people
developing their OS, right?
Why?
A thought: why don't they simply license Android, fire their software
department (or re-orient them to create amazing Raymarine/Garmin, whatever apps
for Android) and make more money? We the consumer get a platform that's much
more flexible than what those devices are currently running plus access to all
these wonderful apps, which would only get better and better if there was a
hardware environment for them more suitable to the marine environment than
tablets. The fact that Raymarine now has apps for those devices is telling,
people are clearly using tablets on their boats. I think they have it
backwards. Don't bring raymarine to the android device. Bring Android to the
raymarine device. The marine tech companies are in the hardware business first,
software is secondary. They should stick to their core competency and let the
big guys do the software part. More frequent updates and bug fixes, a standard
user experience regardless of manufacturer. The
freedom and ability to run all kinds of apps on your boat computer (because
that's what a chart plotter is). Etc. There's already a software environment
which means there is demand in the market (navionics, mx mariner, opencpn,
etc). My feeling is that the software companies are going to be able to provide
much better apps for us than what raymarine and garmin are currently giving us.
Imagine a raymarine computer at your helm, just like their top of the line
plotter but you can install whatever you want on it and do whatever you can
currently do with your android device (because it runs android). If they wanted
to, they could port their chart software to android and sell it as an app or
provide coupon codes to download it free with the purchase of their hardware.
Why is Raymarine developing music playing apps and weather apps for their
proprietary platform? That costs money! and this stuff already exists.
Think blackberry. They got it all wrong. Along came Samsung and took the entire
market (Apple too, but Samsung is #1). If blackberry licensed Android before
the whole end game thing happened I think they'd still be around, and
profitable. People liked their platform, sure, but what they really liked was
their hardware. I've played around with the chart plotters at the boat show and
the chandleries. I wasn't really impressed with any of the interfaces. They
should continue to build amazing marine grade HARDWARE and let the people that
know software handle that part.
Someone is going to come along and do this. Personally, I would buy a "Marine
Tough" android device for the helm before I purchased any purpose built
plotter. It would do everything that a plotter does plus so much more (for
those times when you're alongside a dock and want to watch a movie in the
cockpit or some other frivolous thing like facebook or the C&C mailing list ;)
). Hell, install a display down below.
"Computer. Play movie. Terminator 2."
And so on. Science fiction had it all figured out with Hal. One central
computer.
One computer to rule them all and in the dorkness bind them.
I wish I was capable of starting a business like this, I'de do it myself.
Most people have MULTIPLE computers on board. The VHF these days is a computer,
the laptop at the nav station, the chart plotter, the instrument displays ..
why?!!! Just give me one CPU running a commonly used platform and let the
software companies duke it out. Plug in a bunch of dumb displays or interactive
displays, whatever your budget allows. Hook up all your transducers and sensors
and you're off to the races. Focus on making amazing marine hardware and
continue to charge marine prices for it. Stop spending money on coders to
maintain your proprietary system and MAKE MORE MONEY. Or like I said before,
turn them into an App department and port what they've already got as apps ..
FOR SALE!
Rambling thoughts on a wednesday night.
Someone's going to owe me a beer if this happens.
Steve
Suhana, C&C 32
Toronto
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