With apologies to Steve Martin and The Jerk, Garmin's new 2006 lineup of chartplotters, fishfinders, and BlueChart g2 cartography hits stores worldwide today -- nearly 20 units in all.  Our new line of chartplotters feature pre-loaded charts of the entire U.S. coastal waters (like the GPSMAP 492), or thousands of inland lake maps (like the GPSMAP 392).  We're also offering pre-loaded units that are compatible with the Garmin Marine Network, like the GPSMAP 3210.  Our new chartplotter lineup features an in-unit version of g2 charts... with all the award-winning detail of our traditional BlueChart, plus 3D perspective and richer detail and content.  Our new digital sonar (see the Fishfinder 340C) has new CANet capability, allowing boaters to read sonar data on compatible Garmin chartplotters elsewhere in the boat.

Visit your nearest marine electronics dealer to see the lineup for yourself!

Comments

[Pascal]

Thanks for your response. I called the 3xxx AIS support as "basic" because the mannual says it gives only a few fields of data available in AIVDM message, like mmsi,position, speed and course. There are other very important data available in AIVDM, like ships'name, length, type, destination, callsign, status etc. I think that the detailed information on the ship should include these information as well. Aditionally, the BRG, RNG, CPA and TCPA could be calculated and displayed for the 10 nearests ships for example.

There are dozens of softwares packages for PC's supporting AIS and several running on PDA's.

There are many users interested in AIS, as you can see giving an AIS search in "rec.boats. eletronics" for example and in the Panbo's Web Blog.

My point is that, many Garmin users are requesting this function, mostly mariners, but even for landlubers, today is a nice passtime, to see the ships trafic moving in the screen and discovering the data they are broadcasting. One site wich is almost dedicated to this passtime is of the "shipploter" software.

Thus, I think that giving a good AIS support to the Garmin "portables" would return in greather user satisfaction and improovment in Garmin sales and not only in the mariner market.

Best regards

[Garmin]

Pascal:
The data will be sent to the GPS (X9X and 3XXX units) from the AIS receiver, the information will be basic and, of course, updated as the AIS receiver receives the data, then sends it to the GPS. There will not be data fields for CPA or TCPA. Only units that will interface to the Radar (3XXX series) will be capable of CPA and TCPA since it is part of the MARPA function.
Thanks!

[Pascal]

I have donloaded today the updated mannuals of GpsMap3005/3010/3205/498
and the AIS support is there.

It seems prety basic yet: there is a new option in the NMEA IN/OUT for
High Speed (38400) and an AIS Tab in Map Page to select the zoom
scale to wich AIS targets appears. The mannual says it diplays MMSI,
ships position, course and speed . I have not seen any option to set
alarms, nor CPA/TCPA options, but seems that we can set the heading
line of the sips (?) on time or distance.

Where I can found more details of this support? When this support would be implemented in the GpsMap276C/376/378/478?

Thanks

Pascal