More great products from GME/Garmin!

by Sardin media on 22 Nov 2007 GME and Garmin are well known for their huge range of marine entertainment and navigation products. With Christmas and the holiday season fast approaching we spoke to Matthew Heap, GME/Garmin’s Marine Product Manager, about their most popular products. In the lead up to Christmas they are selling a stack of digital EPIRBS, PLBs and some great on board entertainment systems; people are either buying products to keep their friends and family safe or to keep them entertained.

‘GME have looked quite heavily into marine entertainment systems on board boats’ explained Heap.

‘We’ve come up with a CD FM radio player which can be flush mounted or bracket mounted into smaller boats. That’s been very popular because they’re well priced…Until stocks last, we’ve got a bonus promotion where you get the CD player with a free set of speakers as well.’

GME have recognised that increasingly people are storing their music on digital formats so the CD unit is also an MP3 player and is compatible with SD and USB cards. (SD means secure digital: the SD card is a memory device about the size of a postage stamp.)

It’s a great way of getting your favourite music together for a day on the water without having to carry a stack of CDs or put up with a repetitive thrashing of the top ten on commercial radio.

‘So if you’ve got music on your computer at home, you can load them onto the USB card and just take that down to the boat. Plug it in and it will play your favourite tunes off the USB card. With the MP3 player, and a lot of people have music in that medium, they can just stick that into the CD slot and away they go.’

GME stock a nearly identical unit which has the benefit of also being a DVD. Heap reckons it’s a great way for families with young children to entertain them during the evenings of a boating trip. In the very near future GME will be offering a 17inch LCD monitor as well; if this doesn’t keep the kids quiet, nothing will.

The monitor’s circuit board is coated to help prevent damage caused by salt water but the unit itself is not waterproof. One of the points of difference between an entertainment unit that you would use in your home as opposed to on the boat is the type of coating that is used to protect circuitry.

‘It’s ideal for going inside a saloon or inside a cabin but shouldn’t really be out in the weather. Fully marinized screens are horrendously expensive whereas this is coming in at a very good price.’

On the safety front the digital revolution continues. Most boaties by now would have heard about the phasing out of the old analogue EPIRB monitoring system on 1st February 2009. After this date rescue authorities will no longer be listening for distress beacons on analogue channels so it is vital that boats with EPIRBS upgrade to a digital unit before then. The new digital 406 MHz beacons are reportedly more accurate, are detected more quickly and identify their owner (see http://beacons.amsa.gov.au for more details.)

‘We have available the MT400 which is a 406 MHz digital EPIRB…We’re generating a lot of interest in that now and we’ll be increasing production to meet demand. Next year it will become a lot more hectic as people change over. ’

‘We’d like people to be more aware of it so that what happens on the 30th January 2009 is that not everyone phones us up and asks for a unit because we’re not going to be able to supply all the boats in one hit…’

Personal Locator Beacons, or PLBs, work much the same as EPIRBs and although they are not specifically designed for maritime use increasing numbers of boaties are taking them on board. Heap stressed that it was important for sailors to understand that digital PLBs need to be manually operated and will not work if inverted or underwater.

‘A PLB can be used in the marine environment but if it goes in the water it can end up upside down, which means that its transmission is down to the bottom of the ocean and not upwards to the sky. Whereas an EPIRB is designed specifically to float pointing upwards so it will be transmitting directly to satellites.’

PLBs are very popular with bushwalkers or 4WD enthusiasts: ‘if someone falls over while they’re bushwalking and breaks their leg, they can activate the unit and hold it vertical and it will transmit.’

Garmin have just released a product that could make marine navigation a much easier and safer affair. It’s called G2Vision and it’s new charting software which goes into Garmin five, eight and twelve inch chartplotter/fishfinder units.

‘The unique thing about this cartography is that it has an auto guidance system. A lot of people have been asking for this for quite some time….If your boat is in Pittwater and you want to go around to Long Reef, you can’t go from A to B because of the land mass that is going to be in the way.’

‘What the auto guidance systems will do is safely navigate you through the waterways from A to B. You’ll pre set what sort of depth water you require for your boat and it will use the depth contour software within the cartography to map the best route for you to get from A to B.’

Rather than spitting out a series of waypoints for you to follow to your desired destination, the software draws a wide line for the helmsperson to follow. Heap said that it was particularly good for boaties navigating in unfamiliar waters or in areas where there are many sandbars. As an added bonus, Garmin chartplotters are able to interface with autopilot systems via NMEA protocols.

And if you really want the latest gear, Garmin produce an eight inch and a 12.1 inch touch screen unit which can be used to provide a complete navigation system with radar and fishfinder capabilities on a single screen. They have toughened screens to withstand the demands of the marine environment, good visibility in bright sunlight and multiple units can be networked which is great for larger vessels.

Heap said that the touch screens make navigating any software extremely easy:

‘It’s very simple to use because basically all you’re doing is touching on the screen what you what the unit to do, you’re not having to push buttons and so on.’

If you’re out and about this weekend, the GME/Garmin team is sponsoring the White Sands Game Fishing Tournament in Jervis Bay and they’re always happy to have a chat about their new systems and products.


Contact details for GME/Garmin:

Standard Communication Pty Ltd
6 Frank Street
Gladesville NSW 2111
Australia

Phone: (02) 9844 6666
Fax: (02) 9844 6600

marine@gme.net.au

http:// www.gme.net.au