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today i'm honored to be chatting with

phil whitehurst

as ceo of activesense uh based in poole

dorset

uk uh phil started a company in 1997 and

now

has 30 employees and customers all over

the world

um so activesense does one thing it

sounds like you're in the middle in the

thick of things

integration is a big play of your

business and you can talk a little bit

about

that especially within the marine world

i know that you're in different

sectors as well but today we're going to

focus on the marine sector

um you've been getting a lot of awards

over the last few years

i've been personally using your products

on my own boat and other people's boats

for a long time now actually um we've

been

using those products and again

integration is such a big part of

navigation

systems now there's just no way around

it you know unless you buy

everything new at once uh and even then

you'd have to buy it all from one

supplier and that's probably not gonna

be enough so

um yeah we've done big boats small boats

we've done it all with active sense

right

in the middle so with that i want to

welcome you to

our first podcast dot talk

um here today and uh thanks for joining

us phil it's an honor truly an honor

it's an honor for me being on the first

one

excellent so with that let's start

with maybe the beginning a little bit uh

what drop drove you to start your

business

uh especially in the marine sector of

all the choices we have in life what

brought you to this sort of world

of marine and integration yeah well i

worked for a company called echo pilot

way back when i was their chief engineer

and

um i don't know if you remember it but

they had the uh their forward looking

sonar

product and um that product was

my design so that's one of the first

things i did after university was

uh do the research get the patents

together and

use the first uh small ledger marine

sonar system

so that's when i was a full-time

engineer

nice and now your company um

one of your chief engineers or your

chief engineer is now the chairman

of the i think enemy 2000

yeah yeah so so that's a pretty that's a

big news to be part of that

that's very neat yeah well andy was my

first employee back in

well i started the business in 1997

and uh i employed him in 1998.

so he's been with us a long time um

and basically him and i worked together

on the first sort of draft of enemy

a2000 so we

we got a copy of anime 2000 before it

became a standard

and we were with a number of other um

marine electronic companies to make some

of their products so

we uh we helped amr we helped maratron

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well we worked with um meritron so we

helped mr design

some of the products through formertron

and

um veria um instruments so there's some

other

gauges and things the first enemy a 2004

forays for our design

at the core so we help quite a few

people uh get into the nema 2000

kit um right from the start and

uh way back then we were actually making

nemo and a3 multiplexes so that was our

first

product was uh b183 interfaces

yeah and yeah so andy andy obviously has

got a lot of knowledge going back

right to the first version of nmea which

was like virtual naught point something

not even one of the nema 2000 standards

so

he and i both both know that standard

pretty much inside and out

as we do hema183 so he was it was a kind

of a logical thing

for um him to step up and

do something with the nema 2000

committee beyond what he was doing

already so he's already

he's been a member of the army 2000

committee since

oh i don't want to get this wrong

actually but it was probably over ten

years he's been in the enemy 2000

committee

itself so he's not not a stranger to it

before he stepped up into the

command boots if you like yeah

for those of us that are listening in a

little bit of context nmea

is an acronym it's a national marine

electronics association

it's where all the electronics

manufacturers

get together and try to play nice

knowing very well that

doing it on your own is hard and you

can't do everything by yourself

the reality you can you can pretend to

but there's always going to be another

product that might not even be in your

suite

and um they've been doing it for a while

zero one eight three

is still around uh we still deal with it

on a

daily basis it's going to be here for a

few more years to come

enemy a2000 which is can bus base

allows again different manufacturers to

sort of exchange information

and this could be for voters out there

it could be something as simple as

your depth could be enemy 2000 and you

could be sharing it with

different devices it could be sharing

engine data that's a big play around

these days is

uh integrating sort of having engine

data show up on your chart plotter

and even having those alarms it's

happened to me before you know low oral

alarms came up on the chart plotter was

impossible not to notice even if you

weren't looking at your engine screen

you know screen was flashing it was you

know grab your attention

fuel tanks i mean the list is there's

probably hundreds of different sensors

nowadays

um and so that's where all the

manufacturers are playing nice and the

enemy 2000 is really now

at the forefront of integration between

different manufacturers so it's

i don't think anybody can doubt if it's

a good thing or not and

it's what it enables all of us and it's

funny i was thinking about this too phil

i was reading your website

and in your tagline you know you have

maybe i don't know

20 30 words to describe your purpose and

in there you have the word

safe and reliable and on our side

you know we're thinking about what we do

and clearly we've got like eight words

of what we do and safe and reliable is

in there too

right and because that's reliable is

something that's isn't it

often too overlooked at the expense of

uh

maybe getting it done to me it sounds

like a lot of people are like oh it

worked

you know i'm perfect you know i'm like

well yeah it worked now but is it gonna

keep working

so tell me a little bit about why you

know safe and reliable

is also sort of in your company's

description

um what does that mean to you and why is

it important

in your mind for voters well

it's an interesting one because the the

reliable is very important for boaters

clearly because

you could be miles offshore you could be

in a situation where you're really

relying on your

navigation kit um you're relying on an

awful lot of

different systems to work together and

keep working together

to get you from a to b otherwise you can

be in a situation where you're in a lot

of danger

on a boat even though you might feel

like you're in a safer environment

you just have to have a boat break down

miles from shore and you find out what a

headache that is

but so safety and reliability go

together really so

something that's reliable will help you

be more safe

and reliability isn't just that the

product itself

um not failing is the product itself

doing the job it's supposed to do

and doing it without any glitches so

there's a couple of

there's a couple of things couple of

sides to the safe and reliable

issue and and also we were we were not

just targeting the boat owner themselves

we're targeting the

expert installer that might come along

and fit some kit to your boat because

you know so some of these guys are not

working on the dock that you're on there

they're having to travel

quite a long distance to come and work

on your boat

then they've got to go all the way back

to their office um and so

clearly for them if something keeps

failing it's a real headache

cost them a lot of extra money so

although some of our products probably

are not not as low cost as some other

products i think

we become very well known in the market

for extremely low failure rates

so i think that that really is one of

those things that

you just can't quantify what the real

cost is

yeah so you know it's funny when when i

started i see a lot of people

doing stuff on boats and i'm like you

know having trust in your vessel

um is so important and if it's not

important to you it's probably going to

be very important to someone else on the

boat

um you might be one of the few people

you know

people might be oh it doesn't matter

it's working now don't worry about it

but you know especially when you're out

truly boating not you know there's a lot

of dock queens nothing

wrong with the doctrine but if you're

going out there and you're actually in

the open water

and you're pushing your boundaries and

you're going further

you know having things work and not work

or work randomly um is really

disconcerting

i think as a voter um and i could see

yeah the reliabilities

gives you trust right when it's sort of

rock solid you hear those terms all the

time you're like

yeah it's reliable it works you know

it's always there

and having something not magically come

on and come off

or act um sort of randomly because

obviously there's a pattern we just

don't understand it there's a reason but

to all of us you know it's too

complicated and so

yeah i think that's really big um we

always

and it's funny when we when i remember

even installing this is when i used to

do my own work

now i just you know do a lot of typing

and talking

i remember putting in those axes all

those multiplexers

at the gateways and it was the attention

to detail you know

um taking the time to do diagrams

even if you're doing it for your own

boat and you're you're an engineer and

you think you know it all write it down

i

i've i've surprised myself even

for getting things on my own boat you

know thinking how could i forget

something about my own boat it's

it's you know she's so special how could

i ever forget what i've done on it

we always now we've learned the hard way

you know you got a diagram diagram

especially i think

with your product line especially since

you're at the heart of all of it

and there's no more there's no real

manuals from the manufacturers

other than yours that ties it together

right everyone

always talks about their own ecosystem

and they're talking about what you can

do within their product categories

but you're coming in with your products

and you're in the middle of that

and you might work you know like for

example typical one might be

i don't know it could be like that emu

that engine gateway

you know um again that that's not

super trivial to install but you gotta

you gotta take the time to write it down

put it on paper even if it's a rough

sketch how do you

how does your team educate voters

uh to do it right the first time like

how do you go about doing that so that

they don't blame the product but they

really take

the time to i guess figure out how to do

it properly

um well we're trying to put as much

detail into our manuals as possible

so when we deliver it with the manual

we've got everything that you need in

there at least as much as we can

um there's quite a lot of information on

our website and that's a growing

resource now

of uh what ifs in the knowledge base

because

these are all the questions that have

come in over years of old tech support

so

there's quite a big tech support

knowledge base that we've got that

knowledge base is going up onto our

website as a searchable resource

so particularly with things like the emu

there's so many edge cases

so we we can we can design the emu we've

got all of the preset gauges from

some of the major manufacturers so you

know we've we've got the us marine we've

got the volvo

we've got the vdo type gauges and things

like that

and those you can just drop down list

and if you've got standard kind of kit

on your boat that's easy just connect it

up and

drop down this say what range it is and

it should just work as long as you've

connected it according to the manual

but there's so many edge cases

particularly with the emu

but because because analog an analog

world is is

is completely variable it's a lot easier

with any of your 2000s as long as people

have followed the standard to the letter

then everything should work as it should

work

but with the analog world we found so

many x cases it's uh

it's one of those products we thought

that would be a good idea to do

and then you kind of look back and think

well i kind of regret we did that but in

some ways we've learned a lot

so actually it's become quite a popular

product now because it does do a good

job

but it it's been a learning experience

it's probably our

one of the products that caused the most

tech support over the year because there

is

yeah there is that edge so many little

edge cases so many little things that

people don't realize like um

just small things like well why don't

the two gauges match from the two

engines

um yeah there's one now so why don't the

two

why don't the two gauges match from the

two engines well what most people don't

realize is those thermistors they're on

the

on the um the temperature output from

the engines

at best they're five percent accurate

and

the uh the emu is converting those

voltages coming from those gauges uh

gauge outputs at

better than one percent accuracy so

it's doing its best to tell you these

two voltages are these two temperatures

when you actually go back to uh to the

customer and they say well

one engine is showing this temperature

one energy is showing that temperature

what they don't realize is kind of quite

often is that

actually the emu is being very accurate

so so some of those feedback things are

going back into the emu now so that we

we will be adding some features to the

emu to uh allow you to tweak

them so that they they both match but

i i guess those little edge cases don't

come up you

you design something on the bench and

you test it against the best gear that

you've got

and when it goes out to the field it

doesn't always get that it gets

sometimes gets a 20 year old boat with

30 year old gauges still being used on

it because the engine has been upgraded

so many times

so you find all these little edge cases

that you learn so much about

yeah the it's funny for for the

listeners out there

um a lot of the press you know for mfds

and me 2000 is

seeing your engine gauges you see that

it's one of the

marketing ploys out there right it's

sort of

what see your engine gauges for most of

us

that is you know i would say you know in

our market here

in british columbia and washington state

too

in on the west side of north america i

would say not even

90 i'd say less than five percent of

voters

have an enemy a 2000 torque

on their boat because you know you have

to have a relatively new

uh engine and so most of us if we want

to have that benefit of having

these gauges engine gauges show up on

our char plotter

and there's reasons for that like for a

sailboat for example is a prime example

sail boaters don't have engine gauges

front and center on their boat they just

don't

you know your your engine gauges might

be actually down below

they might be off to the side or

starboard on the cockpit combing

and you've got to actually look to see

what's going on

and the advantage of having your gauges

show up on your sharp water means that

maybe now if you have two helms

maybe an inside helm or outside helm now

you can have gauges at both helms

magically appear right you can start

having that you can see that information

anywhere else you could even so show it

not even on mfd you could show it on an

instrument like

it could be anything it could be a

triton display from

bng it could be uh i don't know or

garmin gmi 20. so you can start seeing

all that information and i think what i

remember

talking people about that because

they're buying all this gear fill and

they're saying okay jeff now i want my

engine gauges i'm like

yeah okay sure you want that but know

that the journey to get there is not

going to be plug-and-play right so what

i always say is

you know do you really need it if you do

and there's a good reason for it then

you're probably going to be willing to

spend the money to buy the hardware

and then depending on your time and

budget either delegate that task to

a pro to do it or take it on yourself

and just what i tell them is just be

patient you know there's going to be a

lot of fine tweaking

in putting that conversion right going

from analog

senders to digital the other thing too

you're right

it's about the expectation when people

see a number they think it's black and

white you know it's a little bit like

fuel

fuel is a perfect example on the boat or

uh tank levels

people see 192 liters and they think

there's 192 liters in the tank

and in the past the tanks would just

give you quarter

you know fifth eighths three quarters

and they give you a little bit of

precision but it wouldn't give you

to the leader so i think you're right

setting the expectations of people that

it's not

about having this super precise you

can't go from

imprecise to precise via conversion

like the the the tank level senders

are simply not going to give you that

level of precision probably like you're

saying when you're marrying two engines

same engines different outputs yeah

they're both running at the same rpm

that must drive a lot of people crazy

and it's about setting the expectations

i think

for people yeah yeah yeah i think that's

a good case in point is tank level

centers because a lot of them are just

resistor ladders inside a little magnet

going

up and down the tube and and they can be

only you know one in ten

accurate see you can go from 192 liters

straight down to 180 liters the next

minute

yeah how do you explain to someone it

just switched how where did where did

that

that load of liters go well actually

it's only accurate to that so

it will just go up and down a scale and

lose 19 liters each time

so it's uh it drives people crazy

um it's that i think it's it's the

illusion of precision

uh is disappointing to them right they

at first think oh great i know exactly

to you'd almost think that at one point

they'd almost want decimals of liters

you know it'd be like 192.3 liters

you're like you'll never have that level

of precision

not now not yet um so

where where does your company see sort

of the trends

on the integration play right now what

is it that especially on enemy 2000

what are the things in the marine world

where

you're seeing either people catching up

or going to what's the

big things especially vis-a-vis 2000

what are things that are in the pipeline

or things that

if they don't have them already what

what should people be on the lookout for

um i think nema 2000 itself is kind of

reaching the limit of what it can

it can actually hold in terms of um

most medium-sized to large boats

the smaller boats it's fine um you know

they're sending more and more different

types of data over the

nema 2000 like um you know even things

like playlists and things over here to

your fusion radio or whatever you've got

you can

you can send various bits of data around

the bus um

but the big problem actually is when

you've got a large boat and you start to

have too many nodes on there

and then you've got too much of the

bandwidth being used up

manufacturers have got a little bit more

smart about how they're using that

bandwidth now so

you haven't got mfds continuously

churning information on the bus like you

used to

that's what used to happen um so we have

connectfest where we

feed back information back and say you

know this isn't

this isn't working that well can you

reprogram your mfds to do

different things so so but we asked i

didn't get to the point where there's

more and more sensors running on the

nema 2000 bus so

nema 2000's um

best option obviously is one net in the

long run and and

i did watch your great video on that

that i gave you oh one minute

yeah yeah mark's gonna be joining us as

well uh

the chairman of uh nmea for a future

podcast i think it's gonna be just

not so far from i was talking to mark

about it actually yeah yeah

so onenet will actually pick up where

enemy 2000

leaves off and it will also add some of

the things that you can't do on the

e2000 like radar

and sending chart plotter images and

things like that so anything that's

image based webcam type stuff so cameras

around the boat stuff like that

you can't do that with amino 2000 it was

always intended to be

a very very high reliability bus to

share

navigation core navigation data

engine data and things like that so from

the start of nemo 2000

did all of that and it's doing all that

really well now

everything is very compatible and as you

said engine data is the most popular

thing and that was

the one big gap that was neo183's

achilles heel it did not really have

anything other than

rpm on there so that's the only thing

that really nemo 183 was covering

which is useless from an engineering

manufacturer's point of view because you

just can't put that data onto an mfd

yeah so i i think nema 2000 is probably

um going to keep growing

in the sense that it gets more and more

things added

as certain things pop up so you're going

to have some extra pgns for

the things that are low bandwidth like

um

lifts and um actuators

and all of these things are coming out

now they're improving a lot of

things for things like um

[Music]

messages for emergency and ais

extending all sorts of things so yeah so

over time they're they're improving

standards so that it works better and

better

and that that's based on an issue list

of things coming back

um you know how can they improve things

things

going forward so they added things like

labels a little while ago

so it's possible now to label switches

and things on the network so that you

know what what what is this switch what

is that actuator whatever

that's useful yeah so so it's a lot of

it is functional improvements that are

getting done to new 2000 to make it

work better but it is only really

suitable for things like

the fairly low bandwidth like you might

switch something on and off once or

you know once a minute or once every few

seconds but the things which are very

high bandwidth like what we're doing now

talking on a webcam link then

that that's never going to work it's

always going to be one net or a variant

of that

yeah let me talk let me just weigh in a

little bit on this

just again for context for the listeners

um so basically you've got

three sort of different uh protocols or

ways of sharing information

so we start with zero and eight three

which is really

uh point to multi-point or

point-to-point

um the challenge with zero and eight

three in layman's terms

is that talkers only can talk to

listeners

and if you want to have someone

or a device talk to something else you

have to have multiple

i guess i'm going to call them channels

or and the wiring gets a little mental

to be honest especially i mean it's one

thing to integrate a vhf

radio for example to a chart plotter or

an autopilot to a chart plotter you know

an autopilot the chart plotter

might be bi-directional communication so

your autopilot is going to be sending

you know heading information to your

chart plotter which is really useful

uh so they can actually start

calculating drift because they know

where your boat's pointing and they know

where your boat is going and they can

do a delta between that which is great

so they can show you a force vector

of what's happening to your boat uh

that's good and then the

you know sharp water can send

information to the autopilot so that was

you know good the other big one which

was surprisingly

and it's funny it's so true you know

they had a research from the states

about how many people integrated their

vhf radios

with their chart plotter for gps

position and

i would say in our market it's got to be

less than five percent

you know it's just too hard you know the

wires look too tiny

uh it's just you know a talker talks to

a listener and then you gotta make sure

you have the right polarity on the wires

it's really it feels like electronics

you know

it's not the familiarity of you know if

you think about for me i think about usb

as a little bit as can bus you know at

least you're not

it's a little bit easier right you're

actually screwing in terminals right

um you can fast you've got to know of

course your design

and me 2000 does everything that 0183

did and then

some right much easier uh can handle

larger vessels

i don't know off the top of my head how

many endpoints you can have but

you know a sailboat or a powerboat under

60 or 70 feet i think it'd be really

hard for them to

get to a point where they saturate enemy

2000 network

for most people of course there's always

exceptions yeah

they would recommend about 50 about 15

nodes is recommended but

actually about 50 is recommended in the

nema 2000 spec

but um but the system itself can cope

with up to 251 different nodes

actually on the system so if you have

nodes which are not

drawing too much power from there in

theory you can have 251

different devices talking some of some

of them

are virtual devices so some things like

mfds can have more than one

nema 2000 connection inside

um right but generally speaking

it's around about 50 nodes um

but that's a lot of that's a lot of

devices compared to you know when you

just had a situation where you had a

multiplexer and you you know you

connected it to

the four devices and then connected that

to your mfd it's a whole different story

so

and you can imagine the complexity of

managing 50 different

nema 183 connections you just couldn't

do it it would just

the expertise required to actually get

that system to work properly would be

next level really oh it's mental i

remember we did uh

we did a huge job um on about uh

let's say i call it a 30 or 35 meter

vessel and i think their enemy 0183 they

must have had

probably 20 endpoints i mean we were

using your buffers the multiplex i mean

there was ais going through there's

everything it was sort of again

you know a refit of a big boat uh again

the owner i mean this is

multi-million dollar refit uh you know

there is

you know this is massive amount of work

and even on that boat even after they

spend millions of dollars on refit they

didn't rip all the nava

and it's that's encouraging i think for

all boaters is even even people that

have deep pockets

nobody rips it all out they just don't

you know we get invited on boats

you know and we're doing massive

navigation systems you know

it could be five six seven eight screens

two radars like you're just and yet

still on the boat

maybe the autopilot is great it's a good

autopilot they're not gonna change it

out

so there's you know it's funny i always

tell people it's pretty hard not to have

an integration plate

it's really you know you're gonna have

you're gonna be forgetting not even one

out of 100

to not have an integration to not use

anything existing on the boat and to not

go

all new is very rare and that's where i

think your product lines

really fit in into the real world where

you're just gonna have to marry old to

you right yeah

and you've gotta have something in the

middle that makes everything work

together

so yeah and then one net let's talk

about onenet again for contact so zero

one eight three

uh point to point or point to multipoint

uh enemy 2000 any to any effectively

right it's a bus

topology and then onenet is

basically something that a lot of people

are talking about

um it's not going to happen today or

tomorrow

it's in the on the horizon and that's

really exactly what you're saying is

like radar imaging

right something that has a lot of data

sounder imaging

cameras um you know potentially i guess

on the dream list of course one day i

don't know if that's probably elusive is

chart plotter to chart water from

different manufacturers

i i you know i'm not gonna hold my

breath uh to see that happening

it's hard i guess for manufacturers to

believe that there's a benefit to them

you know

to start sharing information between

different sharp waters of different

makes

um so on your side for your products

what are sort of the popular products

um not for the geeky sort of voters like

myself

but every day what are the sort of the

fast-moving products

that you think maybe voters aren't aware

of

uh that could be useful or yeah that

should be deplored or could be deployed

uh on both from activism yeah well

i guess um the nema 2000's

easiest the easiest thing about nemo

2000 is the way that you connect it

together so as long as you're using

certified products and you plan the

network

according to a couple of the guides and

we've got some

free training up on our website that you

can go to and you can learn

more about b1a3 and nima 2000 but

even for the the basic guys who who

don't really understand the nitty-gritty

of it you're not

you're not holding two wires and going

well which color

color code from this manufacturer is

different to the color code from this

manufacturer which

which color codes to go to now you just

you've got a simple connector

it plugs into a t piece and t piece is

plugged together and backbones plug to

backbones and as long as you get the

terminators at the end right

um that is about all you really need to

do correctly is

just just have a look at the basic

design of nema 2000

and say okay even somebody with

relatively little knowledge they

they could mess it up really badly and

we have seen some cases where even the

installers have messed it up really

badly where they put too many

terminators in

by accident but if you plan it and you

you follow the simple guide

then you know using our our antisense

cables and connectors is

clearly quite easy to do and and we've

got some nice little products like that

to

you that you can put at the end of the

network and that can tell you the

voltage is still correct i love that one

yeah the end of the network and you can

terminate them so you know even at the

very end

the voltage is holding up to the right

level it's more than the nine

volts that you need what's that product

called bill

that's called the uh a2k-2

it's like a universal terminal um and

try to maybe put that up

um and a little bit of note um

so you're right the it's funny how even

simple things can be messed up

the the the solution to not mess it up

regardless of how smart anyone is

i tell this all the time you know

greatness is rarely

haphazard and just it's a coincidence

especially for buildings architecture

anything

nobody builds a building without a plan

and so i tell people

and we see some installations that are

just dramatically sad

it's just how could this happen i've

seen installations with i don't know

how many t's you have no ideas it's sort

of like almost like a cascade

and you know i mean all of us could

succeed if we drew it out

because you know they met they're all

saying the same thing they're saying it

can only be

two resistors you gotta have a backbone

again that makes sense i always think

about you know like

uh i don't know a centipede or something

like that you know it's

it's one long backbone and then you have

individual drops

and if you draw it out on a piece of

paper it could be a napkin it doesn't

matter it could be on crayons

you draw it out and you build what you

draw you're not going to mess it up

but i've seen so many people that just

build as they go

and that's where they probably start

installing multiple resistors

or people that think another challenge

too that's hard is you know you've got

that one of your products is they think

that

any open cable point should have a cap

and they think that the resistor is a

cap

i've seen that i've seen people put

resistors

to um what they think is plugging a hole

right so that's one of the products you

have too i noticed is you've got end

caps for anybody 2000 i think

yeah yeah yeah um

so that and resistor tell me so it's got

it

it tells it's not the end resistor i

misspoke but it tells the voltage

of the bus and where do you install that

uh well you install it at the end of the

bus so it has the resistor built in

so it is a terminator and it has a

little voltage detector circuit here

that will show the led

so either there'll be no led if there's

no power at all it'll be red

if it's too low or it'll be green if

it's if it's perfect

so if it's above the nine volts level

which is all the nine and a half volts

or so that

uh enemy a2000 should have a minimum

then the light will be green so then you

know

and and because the voltage from the

middle you power the bus generally in

the middle

or as close to the middle as you can and

that goes to the fuse board

and then the power is getting uh

distributed along the line so

as more and more products get added

along that line you'll find that the

voltage starts to go down as you go

along the line because

things are using a little bit of current

as they go and because the line has

resistance then

the voltage droops for every little

thing that you add to that line so

the perfect place to place the voltage

detector is where the terminator is

right at the end

customer if the terminator has green

light then you know that the rest of it

should be powered up i'm big fan kudos

you know and easy diagnostic is

everything

you know most boaters are going out

there just to both you know and when

they have a problem

yeah they have a problem and they might

be a little bit helpless or they

certainly feel that way

i can i feel that all the time but the

the one thing is easy diagnostic would

be great for

even having someone maybe in an

anchorage that can come and help

you know say oh i've got these resistors

it shows you know

it's good then at least you know your

bus is healthy

a good point too on this concept i want

to i get this a lot on the youtube

channel people are thinking that enemy

2000 can power anything

well it can power a lot of things small

sensors like

fuel for example garmin makes a a gfs

a garmin fuel sensor yeah that's powered

uh

by you know um enemy 2000

but you're not going to be powering an

mfd with enemy 2000 you might be

powering an instrument

right i think it's maximum of 20 land

and the len is one fifth

one twentieth of an amp is that right

phil that's right it's 50 milliamps per

lens so yeah i recommend the maximum

but then the the whole thing is if

you're using enemy a micro cable

the whole thing per side of that bus so

great

limb you have three amps so

obviously if you've got one thing using

one amp then

that's that's quite high it is but there

aren't many devices that use as much as

one and

i think a lot of the devices that you

see are generally in the

1 to 10 len

that sort of region most of our products

most of our little converters and things

are using one lem really so that they

are using 50 milliamps or less

a couple of them are using up to len

so but that that is depending on how you

use it so we kind of say to

but generally it's one so for instance

in ngw if you fully load it

um on the nemo na3 side and put loads of

listeners on then it may take a bit more

current

generally a lot of our products are one

length um

yeah that's good yeah so something like

the w2k is a wi-fi device that's using

two lens

because it's using a little more power

but generally we have

pretty low blend products

so there are some products that use a

little more current like our emu and

they have a separate power tap

as well so the nemo nema 2000 connection

is not powered from that

it's powered from its separate power

connection and that's the case with most

mfds as well because those are really

power hungry

having um big screens and things but

yeah there's there's a w-2k now so

that's that's giving a wi-fi to

enemy 18000 interface and clearly that

needs a small amount more power but it's

still only about 2

from the bus that data logger is very

cool

i have to say i tell people that was one

of the reasons why i was also a big fan

i remember of enemy 2000 in the late

2000s

you know the ability of being able to

log

changes and to see trends and to either

see when something changed or something

drop

is extremely powerful for

troubleshooting you know

it's one thing for something to be

broken or something and

misbehave but when did it start being

able to go back in time

see trends has it been progressively

getting worse

does it get progressively worn as soon

as you start the

enemy 2000 breaker and you turn that

breaker on and everything's fine for a

while

and then you start seeing problems um

that's really useful so now this product

when you were

designing your team was designing this

product what were you trying to achieve

and what was the need of the market

because to me it sounds like a pretty

people want to have information anywhere

on a boat so tell me about

this wi-fi play for enemy 2000 and

what you what are some of the you know

the good applications of this product

in the marine in the voting world yeah

well i guess

um when when we came into the this

this market we were probably a little

bit later entry than a couple of other

people because we there

there were some other um 2000 to wi-fi

devices out there

and we kind of saw that market start to

expand so we thought

well hey let's let's let's do that and

make a device which has got a few extra

features that

people could really utilize because

um the w2k itself

can work with all of these pieces of

software that you've got

there on the screen so we can stream up

to three separate streams over

the wi-fi um to various apps

pc applications all sorts of things so

essentially we're streaming either full

bandwidth nema 2000

or we're converting it to nem183 um

within the w2k and then streaming that

to various

apps and um and programs that can use

that data

but like you said we're also able to

data log inside there so we

we're actually able to download um

all of the data from the bus down to

every single cam packet that's on that

bus

so we can full speed data log even on a

bus that's 100 percent loaded

so so the future of that actually is

about the

analysis of that data so the moment

we're still in the early

stages but we're we're just working on

um

a website so you can be able to upload

some of the

the the w2k files to it you'll be able

to analyze what's going on on your boat

that's gold that's gold you know

because some boaters out there and

that's the one thing i didn't

i took for granted not everybody has an

affliction for voting

like i do but they l and also live in a

boating sort of

uh you know destination like vancouver

or miami or it could be anywhere around

the world let's say

another place i you know i don't know

europe that much but like croatia has

tons of boats obviously italy

you know there's voters out there it's

funny you know i get emails from boaters

where

even on the great lakes here in north

america and they have the money

they would pay for a service but there's

just nobody out there

you know they've got the affliction of

voting like we many of us do but they

don't have the support

it's not it's not that they're cheaping

out and they don't they don't want to

spend their money to get the pros

there's just simply no pros in around

their boat

and so they they're relying on

themselves i see this all the time i've

boat builders from everywhere around the

world i've got

people in indonesia people in the

philippines

they're everywhere and they're like

they're tackling these projects and a

lot of them have to do it on their own

i mean they might have clearly set of

hands that are helping them

but they've got to figure it on their

own and something like this is going to

be

for diagnostics especially if you're not

a pro and you're you know your first

time doing it

i think that's that's a really useful

uh tool for the everyday boarder that

wants to make sure that they've got a

reliable bus

enemy 2000 bus that's cool very cool

i mean one thing most people don't

realize and i guess it becomes obvious

when you try it is that

um when you use our enemy and reader

software that you just showed there for

instance you can

do a refresh on the network and you can

see everything that's on the network

so you can see a list of all the

manufacturers all the serial numbers

everything about every single product

that's on that network

so if you are logging that data at the

time you essentially have a manifest of

every nemo 2000 devices that's switched

on on that network so

over time you can then use that data to

actually see if something's gone offline

has something disappeared um are you

because the never 2000 can tell you what

software version what firmware version

all of those things in those different

devices you can actually see

you know does it need some um doesn't

are there any recommendations in terms

of software that needs updating things

like that so

you can see that over time there will be

various services offered

within within the cloud that could

could work as advice or

installers and for boaters out there to

to see oh yeah i i can see that i need

to

upgrade this software or i can see that

this gps is intermittent because

sometimes it's there and sometimes it's

not so then

you know it's more specifically what to

talk to your

installer about if if you don't want to

do the installation yourself you can say

okay

i know this gps has got a problem

because i can see my diagnostic software

is telling me that

so i think that's that's gold um i'm

just thinking about it i'm thinking

that could be especially when you know

you think about the the amount of money

that a typical navigation system costs

nowadays you know you can easily spend

you know 10 000 usd just on hardware

alone

easily easy you know 10 15

uh 20 000 these are i mean you know i

bought a car

used car for that amount of money years

ago still driving

and so it's it's a huge financial sort

of

step but to have one of those little

devices

on your enemy 2000 um is probably

an inconsequential purchase to do in the

grand scheme of what you're doing

and yet it would reap so much benefits

over time

especially even if you can pull that

data send it to someone send it to your

technician who might not be on board you

might be

cruising far away and you might have a

trusted circle of you know people who

are supporting you on your journey

realizing your dreams as i say having

something like that would really

take away the well i can't help you i'm

not there

you know what can i possibly do remotely

without being on board and then it needs

to the boat needs to go into port

you know and then you got to have access

to the boat it's it's

not all boats are always in port where

they can be serviced and something like

that i

think would be really useful for boaters

that have problems on their navigation

system but need to rely on remote

support

um over email or phone you know and then

they can start

for themselves figuring out yeah you're

right what what disappeared off the

network

what's yeah that's the thing two things

when they disappear they don't

necessarily want

right this is not star trek some things

drop

off the network and um they're just

simply gone

you don't know why that happened it

could be an accident we see this all the

time

people drilling in a boat accidentally

especially in arches

or radars or masks you know they'll

they'll basically nick the cable putting

something else in

and then they're going to lose maybe

their wind

right at the top of the mast and they

don't know why so

yeah yeah you would instantly see that

if you were looking at the logs

so you know it was working and now you

know it's not working so you know you've

done something

or something that's happened to it or

it's gone faulty well you know

something's gone wrong and you know

specifically where it's gone wrong so

you're not hunting around too much it

saves you a lot of time

saves you a lot of cost um and it makes

it easier for the installer as well

because he knows exactly what

he's hit to go out to someone's boat

with so if someone's saying i've got a

specific problem with the gps

he can have a couple of spare ones in

his kit bag at least he knows if you

can't fix it on the spot you can say

well basically i think you need a new

one

because you know you can see it's full

of water or something

so at least he can he can be prepared

with the right

um the right products to uh replace it

if required

so it can it could save a lot of time

both the installer and for the customer

so that that could be quite powerful and

as we're showing there we've got some pc

software that does various things

and analyzes these uh analyzes what's on

your boat connects to the things on the

boat and can show you

diagrams of it but i think what what

will happen with nema 2000

and obviously with onenet is that a lot

of this stuff will

end up on cloud platforms or apps

that either ourselves or other

manufacturers will be producing

apps and things that will help you

quickly diagnose problems on your boat

and that will work in conjunction with

some of these devices like the w2k

but they're able to sit there and

log the data so that you can see over

time what happened when it happened

so that all of that stuff will really

help

the boat to really understand more about

what's going on on the boat and

how to the um

changing gears a little bit i want to

talk a little bit about integration uh

we've used this product quite a lot

and some voters out there again are not

doing

deploying you know completely new

systems and that's normal what

i see the refresh for navigation systems

to be around

15 years is generally what i see 10 is

probably

early in our sort of demographic and

area here

most people would probably have a nap

system for at least 10 years on average

they might be adding parts to it over

time of course and they might be adding

features but a complete refresh where

they're ripping out a radar ripping out

sharp plotters

you know ripping out autopilots ripping

out sounders sounder boxes ais

you know that's maybe you know around

here maybe

probably 10 is probably on the low end

in terms of

that would be a fast refresh most people

will probably do around 15

some 20 some 25 years actually depending

again on their budget right and how much

they can uh save up or decide to

allocate

funds to uh this incredible hobby and

passion of many of us

but talk to me about um a little bit

something easy i'm thinking about for

boaters that have a vhf radio

and that's an older vhf radio that's not

an ea 2000 and they want

to have the gps come from their chop

water to the vhf i think you guys

have actually sense has a product you

have that 0183 to 2000 gateway correct

yeah yeah one of our most popular

products yeah tell us a little bit about

that because i think that's accessible

to everyone and everyone here by the way

if you're listening

and you turn on your vhf radio and if

you don't see a little

uh satellite icon somewhere or you don't

see

uh the latin long uh and literally with

your gps coordinates

on the radio itself and

probably 95 of you that are listening do

not have that feature

um they just don't that i mean it's or

call it 90

so that's only one out of 10. when you

press the dsc function off of your vhf

radio

you literally are not going to be making

use of one of the great benefits of it

is know exactly where you are because

it's one thing for the coast guard or

wherever the

marine rescue operation is in your

country

they need to know where you are to come

and rescue there is you know saying that

you're five miles off of something

it's not a very specific answer and so

i think this product that you have would

allow them area of an old vhf radio

or maybe even a new one that you didn't

know when you were buying to look for

enemy 2004 compatibility and then you

can go it's got zero and eight three

your chart plotter is enemy 2000 and how

to make or vice versa and how do you

make the two of them talk

to have something as important as gps

information

being uh relayed to a vhf radio so

talked about that product

um yeah yeah well that's that's a common

use

a very common use for our nema 183

turning the 2000 gateway

um and it is certainly one of the

one of the major things that people buy

one for because they they will upgrade

to

nema 2000 mfd gps and a couple of other

things

and then find out that the vhf radio

that they love

needs to name 183 so clearly you need to

need to get that position that lat long

into that radio

and using the ngw one that we've got

that product is perfect for that

and that will just take the nema 2000

feed and then spit out nemo 183

and it will also take any information

from the radio so if the radio is

outputting the dfc

sentence it will convert that onto the

nema 2000 so that the mfd

can show dsc messages coming from other

boats that may have sent and loaded out

so so that you can receive those

messages

in return and get a position on your on

your mfd

as long as that person is connected by

direction

and you're right that's a really useful

i mean the other tool other very popular

use for the ngw is in auto pilots

because auto pilots tend to be

you know really long lasting devices

tend to be very reliable robust things

and

people tend to love their autopilot and

learn how it responds and so on so

that's the one thing that often people

want to keep is the autopilot

you may need to change the hydraulics

every few years but apart from that with

a bit of tinkering you can keep these

things going for

30 years sometimes still keep giving you

good service

but the one thing you you'll lose is the

nema 183 connection that's telling you

you know what the rated turn and various

other devices that you need for that

autopilot to work properly

fast heading input is one of the most

common things so connecting up the ngw

to that will allow you to pull the data

from the nema 2000 bus

and keep that investment in that

autopilot you like so much

and uh you can keep it and it's also an

expensive piece of kit to replace

very complicated and often you know

quite uh

quite a tricky thing to replace on most

boats as well so a lot of installers

tend to

want to say well you can keep the

autopilot

because it's a real hassle changing huge

cost

huge cost yeah yeah install hardware

um you know and i don't think there's

there

i i would say i'm just top of mind i

don't think there's a single thing

on the nav system that is as expensive

to both

uh i mean obviously a 24 inch screen is

gonna be a lot of money but to put in an

autopilot

when you factor in the labor to put it

in you know either depends on the drive

system

in your drive uh hydraulic pump like you

mentioned

and you talk about the drive system

putting that in

and then on top of it all the

electronics associated with it you know

there might be multiple control heads

multiple basically that means interface

points how do you interface

it's like a keyboard and a mouse but in

an instrument that even shows you a

little bit where you're going

you know yeah all that tuning yeah yeah

huge barriers and you're right you know

it's funny i've done navigation system

on our team literally

you know the owners are literally no

joke spending 100 150

000 dollars on an axis i mean these are

big boats right

um they're 30 meter 40 meters and it

looks like star trek and it's certainly

an honor to work on those

sort of boats and the geek inside of me

really sort of

comes alive and oddly enough you're

right the auto you're changing

everything on those boats but not the

autopilot

the autopilot is like the one thing the

owner tells himself you know what i'm

gonna wait on that

it's been working good it's been

reliable right back to that reliable

word again

it's been reliable uh and i'm gonna save

ten thousand dollars or maybe something

like that

to not have to change the whole

autopilot but i want that old autopilot

to be able to integrate

and share information and receive

information from my

navigation system and you're right

that's where that gateway

i we must have installed hundreds of

those gateways

on boats to marry old to new yeah vhf

radios and autopilots are probably

i think they're probably my two biggest

use cases for that product

yeah yeah yeah

gyro compasses and things like that

they're also common things

yeah it worked well why would you need

to change it you don't need to change it

you can keep it

yeah so um

and i mean we're gonna a little bit

wrapping up here and i want to thank you

for your time

is there anything in closing that you

want to say uh

about your company about where you're

going for the listeners out there

obviously uh we're gonna put a link to

your website so that

people can come and see the whole suite

of products that you have at your

company

i'm going to leave you last words to you

phil anything on your side that you want

to share with the audience listening

and trying to geeking out here on the

marine electronics

well i think as you said we're trying to

un-geek it if possible

so i i guess over the years we we create

a

range of very uh very specialist

niche products that allow people to

convert one thing into another thing so

we we've become the specialists and um

and we're working with the nemo

183 and nema 2000 standards heavily to

try and promote standardization in the

marine market because

that makes it better for everybody in

the boating industry having standard

products so

getting all the manufacturers to play

with the nema 2000 and the 103 standards

properly

and make sure that they that they made

their products as compatible as possible

is

it it's got a maximum benefit to every

boat because you can then

mix and match products and get the best

performing boat that you could possibly

get

so our or that that is that is our ethos

really is to play

with all of the manufacturers and not

try and be

this specialist company that

locks you into our products now we say

you know this this is our products and

this is what they do and if they don't

do what you need them to do then

we're not the right person for you but

generally we hope we are the right

person for most people in terms of

converting things

um of data to another so that's our

specialism

and we also try to do it as safely and

reliably

as we possibly can as i already

mentioned you know we do have very

reliable

instruments and so these are little

things that

kind of hide behind the uh the dashboard

or inside the

inside the side panels in your boat so

active sense products are never there on

show when you go on a boat but

they're always there they're working in

the behind the scenes and that's why you

want them to keep working

for as long as possible and we've got

some products out there that were

we created back in 1998 and they've

still not come back

so either they both got destroyed

or the product has never failed so yeah

that says a lot and you're right i mean

in closing when i see something like

this i

i can't you know people even again

you know nor there's people of us some

of us have normal budgets some people

have high budgets

or big budget all of us i see that

you know dealing with voters is they

like spending money a little bit of the

time

you know and the more that we make it

easy for people to buy

one thing at a time people will reward

themselves

i see this at you know on boxing day i

get lots of emails on boxing day after

christmas

after people have taken care of their

loved ones they're like okay my turn

boxing day is one of my biggest days for

emails you know people are like okay now

my turn

and they're gonna buy one thing you know

and and however we make it easy for

people to

not have to voters to not have to do a

whole same

whole change right to be able to say

okay

let's just choose one product and and

that

goes back to where your team is doing on

the access it's the ability

to integrate and to play nice between

old and new

that way someone might be visible just

change the chart water and not have to

do a wholesale change and keep the

autopilot

keep an instrument how often again have

i kept instruments

on the bulkhead on this elbow raymarine

uh you know st 60 you know we're talking

early 2000's working great working

reliably

converting that information from c-talk

to basically c-talk ng and then

converting it from c-talk and g

with that pigtail adapter to me 2000.

and now you're literally

able to utilize everything on board and

not have to go to the expense of

changing again all your sensors

so yeah it's uh i i think i

in closing i think it is getting better

in terms of the trends

it is certainly less proprietary and

i think the manufacturers are realizing

that playing nice benefits not only the

voters but it benefits them too

everybody eventually ends up wanting to

spend money on their votes

you just got to make it easy for them to

not have to bring out a huge

whack load of cash to change the

navigation system

right well yeah i think you made the

best point with you know the the this

churn in uh people changing things on

their boat

things last a long time on boats they're

not tended to be

used as much as cars so things last

longer as long as you look after them

keep them dry generally

yeah the the electronics will keep going

for a long long time

but um i guess the manufacturers have

kind of realized that

it's not just about what they can sell

to the boat builders because

in the past they've always wanted to

just sell one massive system into a boat

builder and that's fair enough

that's a good market the oem market but

the

retrofit market is far bigger than the

brand new market there's a lot of

installed boats out there all

working perfectly well and the boats are

made of plastic nowadays so they just

last forever as you keep saying

as they keep saying is in the news

plastic lasts for half a million

years so most of these boats will be

around for a long time yet

maybe with definitely not with the same

engines and definitely not with the same

mount gear but

the basic holes will just keep going and

going so

that there will be a an ongoing market

that just keeps coming and coming for

manufacturers that realize that actually

i can sell one mfd into there somebody

wants one char plot and that's

that's the budget they've got so exactly

yeah yeah the nema 2000 makes us so much

easier once you put in a good quality

backbone

that backbone can last you know 30 40

years

um yeah as long as the sea water stays

out of it

so and it doesn't it is all good

put the caps on and everything just keep

those connectors nice and they will just

keep going and going forever really

so and then it's so much easier just to

plug and play new stuff in you don't

need to rip out all the wiring you just

take the

take the tail in and then plug it into

your new device so it's an investment to

start with but actually nema 2000 is

you know is is going to make it so much

better

next time around we do the same thing

fell

we when even if i'm going if i'm

installing a transducer and an engine

room

and that transducer is proprietary right

now it's not a

2000 and i'm going all the way to the

helm i'm going to be running an mba 2000

backbone

from the engine that is unterminated

well it's going to be terminated there's

going to be no loads there i'm like yeah

no loads today

there might be something you're going to

think about next year or the year after

that or five years from now or 10 years

from now

and so whenever we start you know

opening up a boat and we go from

you know the you know from anywhere from

one helm to another helm or from

uh up from one top helm all the way down

to the engine room

if we're running cables back and forth

i'm going to take the chance for sure to

run those enemy 2000 cables

telling them you know next time you

don't know what you want but later on

you're never you're not going to have to

run cables again um

and that that makes it really easy for

boaters i think

it's going to take a while to get the

benefit but when you realize that you're

in the engine room and suddenly you can

plug in a fuel sensor

or let's say fire alarm or something and

you're like you don't have to run the

wires all the way back to the helm

you're like oh that's a win that's a

hell of a win

it's a great win you know you feel you

can feel good about it right you're like

you know you're like wow that was easy

and easy on a boat doesn't happen too

often

but any 8000 is definitely doing that

play so anyways

phil with that i want to say thank you

for joining us on doc talk

i really appreciate what you're doing

and your company's doing for the

industry

uh it's honestly it's a pleasure

chatting with you i think this is so

exciting um

passion for boating and doing it safe

and reliable so thanks again phil for

your time here

thank you all right thank you thank you

you

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