Transcript is auto-generated.
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
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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
English (auto-generated)
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