Speculations about a possible Garmin AIS entry:

This weekend is being a bit more windy, rainy and cold that I like, so
instead of go sailing, I stayed driving between home and the marina,
which lead me to think a little more about AIS.

Thus, I would like to post here, as a discussion theme, some thoughts
I had about this topic, and I will thanks any additions and comments,
specially from Meindert, Dave Baker and Glen Wilson.

A) Regarding a possible Garmin first entry in the AIS business, what
could be the most obvious alternatives? (if possible, vote a % of
probability for each alternative, which are not mutually exclusive)

1) Two new proprietary Garmin Network Sensors: one AIS Receiver and one
AIS Transponder for the 30xx family of MFD's ?
2) Two new proprietary Garmin integrated (standalone) Gps/Plotter/AIS,
one having a AIS receiver only and another having a AIS transponder?
3) Two new AIS black box, using standard NMEA specifications, one being
receiver only and the other a full transponder, target to be selled on
the general market?
4) As above, but using a third part OEM made, and which would be
marketed with the Garmin logo?
5) Garmin will enter the market of marine radios, competing with ICOM
and others, and will launch a new line of VHF/DSC/AIS radio models,
which will interface with all the current Garmin gps/plotters.

B) Considering that, with exception of A2 hypothesis, the alternatives
above probably implies that the line of the high end marine plotters
(Garmin Network MFD's 3010, 3006 and 3005) would be the first to
have the software upgraded to support AIS, what could be the AIS
alternatives to rest of the Garmin line of portables, multi ways,
marine gps/plotters, like the GpsMap 276C/296C?

1) These units will be probably discontinued and/or will not have any
AIS support.
2) These are good sellers, and so, Garmin will made an effort to
introduce a limited entry to AIS in these portable units

C) If the second alternative is selected, how AIS will be implemented
on these portable gps/plotters?

1) Allowing the option A3 and A4 (new NMEA based) AIS receivers only
to be supported by the firmware , probably making use of the second
serial port (COM2) as NMEA 183-HS at 38,400 bps?
2) Allowing the new proprietary Garmin Sensors AIS receivers (option
A1) to communicate with the gps/plotters using the USB port and a
proprietary direct binary GARMIN/GARMIN type protocol, ignoring the
NMEA standard.

Thanks all and best regards

Pascal

Well, giving the first shot, my opinion is:

A1: 70
A2: 50
A3: 30
A4: 20
A5: 10
B1: 30
B2: 70
C1: 30
C2: 70

Thus, my overall winer is: A1/B2/C2

AIS may be a nice feature but in real life it looks useless ..

I was told that only the big ships will actually transmit their
location, the little ones wont ... Depending wehre you boat there is no
point for that as you see the big ones anyways and the small ones
too...

Also large boats will usually have a radar already. So unless you have
a large boat or go by night a lot I see no point for AIS UNTIL its as
common as VHF.

It could be worse to rely on AIS and get nailed but non AIS boats..

Where I am from DSC seems to be a rare thing . let alone AIS

Matt

On 4 Jun 2005 16:59:36 -0700, "Pascal" wrote:

Speculations about a possible Garmin AIS entry:

I certainly have no feedback from Garmin, but I do use AIS extensively, and
here are a couple of thoughts:

An AIS unit has a couple of functions
- to display AIS info for own & other boats.
- to pass that information onto other devices - radar, chart plotter, etc.

If the unit is an "end-unit" - i.e. to display the AIS info only, it needs to
be a BIG display, otherwise it's just a waste of time. I regularly use
Nauticast AIS units here & they have a display that is twice as big as a 276C
display, but is still basically hopeless for displaying meaningful AIS info.
To be any good at all as an AIS display, one is going to need a 12" display
minimum.

So, if the unit isn't going to be primarily a display, then it needs to be a
system of passing on info to other units - radars or chart plotters or PCs.
In this case, there isn't really any relation to GPS apart from a US$5
chipset. However, there is a LOT of radio equipment. So, I can't see Garmin
getting all excited about making an AIS transceiver or receiver with a small
display or no display, primarily for passing on data to other equipment.

Basically AIS is a radio (receiver or transceiver), a GPS & a display or
connection to a display. The radios are VERY specialized.

So, personally I doubt that Garmin would come out with an AIS unit as it's
too far away from their core technology. If they do produce an AIS unit I
predict it will have a BIG display. I'm not really into the leisure boat
scene, so I don't know if Garmin presently has any products with large (12"
or so) screens, maybe as combination GPS/fishfinder displays?

Dave

The email address used for sending these postings is not valid.
All replies to the group please.

With a view to the U.S. Coast Guard Plans for
Universal AIS

http://www.icanmarine.com/downloads/ais-article.pdf

and imminent approval of the AIS standard and adoption of carriage
requirements by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), I
wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see any company with the
experience and success of Garmin diversifying and intoducing more
integration into the commercial marine electronics marketplace.

Having said that, I'd expect they'd do an initial flop or 2 on the
radio side of things, just like Trimble and others have done in other
related market segments, because radio data comms transmission &
control is a whole lot more complicated than most wired system
programmers can understand.

- Tom

Happy Trails To You

Happy Trails wrote:

With a view to the U.S. Coast Guard Plans for
Universal AIS

http://www.icanmarine.com/downloads/ais-article.pdf

and imminent approval of the AIS standard and adoption of carriage
requirements by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), I
wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see any company with the
experience and success of Garmin diversifying and intoducing more
integration into the commercial marine electronics marketplace.

Having said that, I'd expect they'd do an initial flop or 2 on the
radio side of things, just like Trimble and others have done in other
related market segments, because radio data comms transmission &
control is a whole lot more complicated than most wired system
programmers can understand.

Of course Garmin has already had several marine VHF products such as the
VHF720 &725 as well as the GPSCOM 170 that combined VHF with a GPS receiver.

Garmin already had one or two models of celular/gps/ploters, some time
ago, and yet has the Rino, both systems designed to send user position
to other similar equipment an receive others position and ploting on
the map. Thus, Garmin recognized for long time the need and advantage
of this type of communication, this in a simple consumer market
equipment, imagine now that AIS is official and being accepted
worldwide at an incredible fast path?

And Garmin already has demonsntrated equipment for the similar AIS
function for general aviation ( I do not remember now the name, see it
in the garmin Web page, Aviation) wich is much more complex. Besides
this, Garmin has excelent gps/ploters, good cartography, a new fast 100
MB/s network arquiteture (Garmin Network), wich interfaces with the
recently announced Garmin radar, etc.

I have no doubt that Garmin will enter the AIS very soon, I believe
that it has not yet released the support for AIS in the actual Chart
Ploters (Garmin Network at last) only because they want to support
theyr own AIS receiver and transponder. My doubt is only with regard
the AIS in the lower end of ploters like my GpsMap 276C, but I hope it
will have AIS, soon or later.

The aviations system is named ADS-B, see the link below:

http://www.garmin.com/aviation/adsb.html

Please, I am focused here in the HOW this will be done, not in the IF,
since my initial question assumed that Garmin will unveil soon a
compreensive solution on AIS, probally launching new "sensors": an
AIS transponder Class B, wich specification as not yet finished by
IMO/ITU, and a more simple receiver, that would be supported on its
line of Gps Chart Ploters, or pheraps, others AIS standalone units.

So am asking that We return to the How side of the question, thanks.

Besides the VHF radios with Gps and maps, Garmin already had one or two
models of cellular having gps receiver and maps, some time
ago, and yet has the Rino, both systems designed to send user position

to other similar equipment an receive others position and plotting on
the map. Thus, Garmin recognized for long time the need and advantage

of this type of communication, this in a simple consumer market
equipment, imagine now that AIS is official and being accepted
worldwide at an incredible fast path?

And Garmin already has demonstrated equipment for the similar AIS
function for general aviation (ADS-B see it in the link below) l
which is much more complex. Besides this, Garmin has excellent
gps/plotters, good cartography, a new fast 100 MB/s network arquiteture
(Garmin Network), which interfaces with the recently announced Garmin
radar, etc. http://www.garmin.com/aviation=AC/adsb.htm

I have no doubt that Garmin will enter the AIS very soon; I believe
that it has not yet released the support for AIS in the actual Chart
Plotters (Garmin Network at last) only because they want to support
their own AIS receiver and transponder. My doubt is only with regard
the AIS in the lower end of plotters like my GpsMap 276C, but I hope it

will have AIS, soon or later.

I am focused here in the HOW this will be done, not in the IF,
as my initial question assumed that Garmin will unveil soon a
comprehensive solution on AIS, probably launching new "sensors": an
AIS transponder Class B, which specification as not yet finished by
IMO/ITU, and a more simple receiver, that would be supported on its
line of Gps Chart Plotters, or perhaps, others AIS standalone units.
Regarding the "timing" of the release of the several pieces of
the Garmin AIS "solution", I think that it should unveil very soon
an AIS Receiver, as the first step, since this does not depends of
IMO/ITU standards and approval, and which would be target to the small
and medium commercial crafts and to the leisure crafts market.

Why? Because I believe there is an avid market full of anxious prospect
buyers for AIS, as have been proved by the success of the NASA AIS
black Box and AIS radar, and other relatively low price products. Today
there are already many PC and at last a Mac software that already have
AIS support, including one freeware (Sea Clear), and practically all of
the first line navigation software (Nobeltec, MaxSea, SeaPro, Tsunami
etc) now have AIS support.

And finally, there is at last one large maker of marine equipment
(Si-Tex) supporting AIS on its new line of color chart plotters, which
includes several units with 5.5 inches to 11 inches diagonal color TFT
screens, Cmap-Max cartography based, 18 channel gps receiver and
network radar, using the NASA black box product, and reselling the
stand alone NASA AIS Radar under their own logo.

If somebody call this type of solution as a toy, I would say that
several Garmin handhelds gps/plotters like the Map76C and Map60C have
several games included, but the gps and chart plotter functions
continues to be very useful. And anyway, what really are our leisure
fiberglass sailboats, not a kind of toy too?

So am asking that we return to the HOW side of the question now,
thanks.

Besides the VHF radios with Gps and maps, Garmin already had one or two
models of cellular having gps receiver and maps, some time
ago, and yet has the Rino, both systems designed to send user position

to other similar equipment an receive others position and plotting on
the map. Thus, Garmin recognized for long time the need and advantage

of this type of communication, this in a simple consumer market
equipment, imagine now that AIS is official and being accepted
worldwide at an incredible fast path?
And Garmin already has demonstrated equipment for the similar AIS
function for general aviation (ADS-B see it in the link below) l
which is much more complex. Besides this, Garmin has excellent
gps/plotters, good cartography, a new fast 100 MB/s network arquiteture
(Garmin Network), which interfaces with the recently announced Garmin
radar, etc.
http://www.garmin.com/aviation=AC/adsb.htm
I have no doubt that Garmin will enter the AIS very soon; I believe
that it has not yet released the support for AIS in the actual Chart
Plotters (Garmin Network at last) only because they want to support
their own AIS receiver and transponder. My doubt is only with regard
the AIS in the lower end of plotters like my GpsMap 276C, but I hope it

will have AIS, soon or later.
I am focused here in the HOW this will be done, not in the IF,
as my initial question assumed that Garmin will unveil soon a
comprehensive solution on AIS, probably launching new "sensors": an
AIS transponder Class B, which specification as not yet finished by
IMO/ITU, and a more simple receiver, that would be supported on its
line of Gps Chart Plotters, or perhaps, others AIS standalone units.
Regarding the "timing" of the release of the several pieces of
the Garmin AIS "solution", I think that it should unveil very soon
an AIS Receiver, as the first step, since this does not depends of
IMO/ITU standards and approval, and which would be target to the small
commercial and the leisure crafts market.

Why? Because I believe there is an avid market full of anxious prospect
buyers for AIS, as have been proved by the success of the NASA AIS
black Box and AIS radar, and other relatively low price products. Today
there are already many PC and at last a Mac software that already have
AIS support, including one freeware (Sea Clear), another shareware
(ShipPlotter) and today, practically all of the first line navigation
software (Nobeltec, MaxSea, SeaPro, Tsunami etc) now have AIS support.

And finally, there is at last one large maker of marine equipment
(Si-Tex) supporting AIS on its new line of color chart plotters, which
includes several units with 5.5 inches to 11 inches diagonal color TFT
screens, Cmap-Max cartography based, 18 channel gps receiver and
network radar, using the NASA black box product, and reselling the
stand alone NASA AIS Radar under their own logo.

If somebody call this type of solution as a toy, I would say that
several Garmin handhelds gps/plotters like the Map 76C and Map 60C have
several games included, but the gps and chart plotter functions
continues to be very useful. And anyway, what really are our
leisure fiberglass sailboats, not a kind of toy too?

So am asking that we return to the HOW side of the question now,
thanks.