Some of you know that I have a small PC on my bridge. I got the components from mini-box.com and basically have a board mounted under the helm holding everything:
It's tied to touchscreen daylight viewable monitor on the hardtop electronics box.
This was my second attempt at this type of system on this boat and I put it in back in 2006. The first one I did back in 2003 looked like something w!ngless would put on a boat (except I didn't use wire nuts).
Anyway, the thing serves as a complete and separate navigation system. I like to think of it as a Sea Ray Navigator done better and one that I have control over. It's tied to a Airmar PB100 weather station/gps, WxWorx with XM weather, Rose Point's Coastal Explorer, Internet stuff, a Brookhouse NMEA multiplexer and a few other PC goodies. The thing is more of a hobby as I don't think I would want to rely on Bill Gates for my nav system. Saying that... it's been remarkably reliable.. probably more so than my Raymarine system...
Last week I decided to pull the thing out and "upgrade" it. The motherboard is an old ITX system (SBC68807) with 1GB RAM running at 400 MHz and a Pentium M processor... 2004 technology...
The one thing I've always wondered is how this thing would hold up in fairly harsh environment on the bridge. So I pulled out the case and took it apart and surprisingly, the thing is in great shape. No dust... No corrosion on any of the electronics and connectors that I could see...
There was a little corrosion starting on the case around some screws on one of the cooling fans:
But the fan was fine. Here's some pictures of the back connectors:
and a closeup of some of the motherboard electronics:
There was no coating applied to this thing (like BOEshield) and it even had a regular hard drive (not SSD). There were no shock mounts on it either.
Anyhoo... Both my dogs had to have surgery last week so I'm stuck in the house keeping them doped up and this is a good weekend project. I have a new Zotac ITX motherboard going in with 8 GB RAM and a 3.1 GHz Intel core i3 CPU. Going to update the whole mounting board with some new accessories (Icom AIS receiver) and put in a SSD drive. Also going to Windows 7, upgrade WxWorx and Coastal Explorer and tie it into the new AV system and Internet network on the boat... and I'm going to publish all the NMEA data from the helm to the boat computer network via an Aaxeon RS422 to Ethernet gateway so all the iPads, iPhones, etc. can run navigation apps and see the data from the helm via the wifi system... Also have a higher res touchscreen to put in.
I'll post more pictures as I put it in over the next few days.
It's tied to touchscreen daylight viewable monitor on the hardtop electronics box.
This was my second attempt at this type of system on this boat and I put it in back in 2006. The first one I did back in 2003 looked like something w!ngless would put on a boat (except I didn't use wire nuts).
Anyway, the thing serves as a complete and separate navigation system. I like to think of it as a Sea Ray Navigator done better and one that I have control over. It's tied to a Airmar PB100 weather station/gps, WxWorx with XM weather, Rose Point's Coastal Explorer, Internet stuff, a Brookhouse NMEA multiplexer and a few other PC goodies. The thing is more of a hobby as I don't think I would want to rely on Bill Gates for my nav system. Saying that... it's been remarkably reliable.. probably more so than my Raymarine system...
Last week I decided to pull the thing out and "upgrade" it. The motherboard is an old ITX system (SBC68807) with 1GB RAM running at 400 MHz and a Pentium M processor... 2004 technology...
The one thing I've always wondered is how this thing would hold up in fairly harsh environment on the bridge. So I pulled out the case and took it apart and surprisingly, the thing is in great shape. No dust... No corrosion on any of the electronics and connectors that I could see...
There was a little corrosion starting on the case around some screws on one of the cooling fans:
But the fan was fine. Here's some pictures of the back connectors:
and a closeup of some of the motherboard electronics:
There was no coating applied to this thing (like BOEshield) and it even had a regular hard drive (not SSD). There were no shock mounts on it either.
Anyhoo... Both my dogs had to have surgery last week so I'm stuck in the house keeping them doped up and this is a good weekend project. I have a new Zotac ITX motherboard going in with 8 GB RAM and a 3.1 GHz Intel core i3 CPU. Going to update the whole mounting board with some new accessories (Icom AIS receiver) and put in a SSD drive. Also going to Windows 7, upgrade WxWorx and Coastal Explorer and tie it into the new AV system and Internet network on the boat... and I'm going to publish all the NMEA data from the helm to the boat computer network via an Aaxeon RS422 to Ethernet gateway so all the iPads, iPhones, etc. can run navigation apps and see the data from the helm via the wifi system... Also have a higher res touchscreen to put in.
I'll post more pictures as I put it in over the next few days.
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