Marine electronics - unreasonably expensive?
- Thread starter AngusMcDoon
- Start date
lw395
Well-Known Member
I apologise for the tone of my post, but my point remains. Multi-tasking, sorry!
I spend most of my time working for military customers at the moment, those guys know how to charge a good price.
The price of a Raymarine log probably buys you an interface cable or a few grommets!
[70521]
Well-Known Member
Its the usual, speed, cost, quality triangle. You can have two out of the three attributes.
nimbusgb
Well-Known Member
Gerry99
A lot of the challenges you mention could be addressed by a more open architecture.
1 - NMEA ( not NEMA ) is a closed standard and the body controlling it tries to keep it proprietary and charges considerable money for looking at the documents that define the standards. In spite of this, in fact probably because of this, the standard NMEA 0182/0183 became fragmented and diluted over the years. Manufacturers wanted to develop add ons and hardware so they hacked the basic standard and launched stuff anyway. The market took up the products because they worked albeit sometimes with difficulty. The standards became worthless after a time. Will NMEA 2000 be any different? I really strongly believe not. The same scenario will play out and the standard will dilute ..... again. Trying to lock down a 'standard' by making it a 'private club' is self defeating.
Remember Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results!
2 - The hardware. in order to save yourself integration time and money it usually ends up more economical to go all with one company as you have said. Raymarine, B&G, Garmin etc. The manufacturers carry little forward/reverse compatibility with kit and I suspect that most middle aged vessels have had at least one major instrument refit in their lives and may have a second coming up. Contrary to the original suppliers expectations i think a lot of people change suppliers when undergoing a refit. Simply because they are tired of the 'lock in' being foisted on them. The situation does not change but at least one feels a bit better when forking out a sizeable wad of folding stuff.
The problem with this is that you invariably end up with a dissatisfied customer somewhere along the line. Why? Your particular brand may not have the right colour cases, might not make a suitable transducer or a hundred other small reasons.
It's a bit like your local supermarket saying if you buy our food you must buy our cutlery and crockery too!
How cool would it be to have your Multi Function Display act not only as a chartplotter and radar but as an email terminal and a central control unit for all the internal lighting and the transom passerelle? Hmm problem is your supplier doesn't build the interfaces for those functions. Bt you can do those things with a tablet or PC/Laptop.
But if the manufacturers had made the workings of their systems available then someone would come up with an add on to do each operation.
The manufacturer still sells his MFD and in fact when it comes time to change the owner sticks with the same company!
A lot of the challenges you mention could be addressed by a more open architecture.
1 - NMEA ( not NEMA ) is a closed standard and the body controlling it tries to keep it proprietary and charges considerable money for looking at the documents that define the standards. In spite of this, in fact probably because of this, the standard NMEA 0182/0183 became fragmented and diluted over the years. Manufacturers wanted to develop add ons and hardware so they hacked the basic standard and launched stuff anyway. The market took up the products because they worked albeit sometimes with difficulty. The standards became worthless after a time. Will NMEA 2000 be any different? I really strongly believe not. The same scenario will play out and the standard will dilute ..... again. Trying to lock down a 'standard' by making it a 'private club' is self defeating.
Remember Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results!
2 - The hardware. in order to save yourself integration time and money it usually ends up more economical to go all with one company as you have said. Raymarine, B&G, Garmin etc. The manufacturers carry little forward/reverse compatibility with kit and I suspect that most middle aged vessels have had at least one major instrument refit in their lives and may have a second coming up. Contrary to the original suppliers expectations i think a lot of people change suppliers when undergoing a refit. Simply because they are tired of the 'lock in' being foisted on them. The situation does not change but at least one feels a bit better when forking out a sizeable wad of folding stuff.
The problem with this is that you invariably end up with a dissatisfied customer somewhere along the line. Why? Your particular brand may not have the right colour cases, might not make a suitable transducer or a hundred other small reasons.
It's a bit like your local supermarket saying if you buy our food you must buy our cutlery and crockery too!
How cool would it be to have your Multi Function Display act not only as a chartplotter and radar but as an email terminal and a central control unit for all the internal lighting and the transom passerelle? Hmm problem is your supplier doesn't build the interfaces for those functions. Bt you can do those things with a tablet or PC/Laptop.
But if the manufacturers had made the workings of their systems available then someone would come up with an add on to do each operation.
The manufacturer still sells his MFD and in fact when it comes time to change the owner sticks with the same company!
lw395
Well-Known Member
Far more to do with quantities than speed.
BrianH
Well-Known Member
But it is true. A perfect example is the AIS transponder I quoted in the other thread that I bought from an excellently constructed web site full of helpful articles and comments by other purchasers of that product. The cost of the article, efficiently transacted with my credit card, including shipping to Europe, plus my VAT added on arrival, came to a grand total of ca. $500. That converts to €366.64.
Going to the manufacturer's web site and trying to find a European distributor (of course none in Switzerland) I clicked on all of them but only one, after searching through their awful site, found deeply buried the price of my Amec Camino-101 - €650. And that was in Spain, I would have had to pay for shipping from there. Perhaps VAT too as the site gave no indication if that price was inclusive or not. All the other sites were so chaotic that on the two occasions I could locate the product, there was no pricing. I am convinced that none of them would have offered the ease of purchase or the low price of the the US one.
So if we calculate a similar courier cost - I have experienced little difference between shipping from the UK to CH as from the US - then we can compare the same product in Europe costing €700 compared to €366 - almost double. In view of the limited availability of the product and that I took advantage of a 'Black Friday' offer, the example may not be typical, however, the principle is clear and I rest my case.
AngusMcDoon
Well-Known Member
No problem. What would be a similar area of electronics devices to compare with? Aviation kit is understandably very expensive because of all the extra legislation. Military is hidden to most of us. Electronic musical instruments perhaps? Probably a similar number of sales to the kit we buy.
AngusMcDoon
Well-Known Member
I'm not disagreeing whether it's true or not; I just don't know why these differences exist for the same kit from different countries when it is so easy for anyone to buy from anywhere.
BrianH
Well-Known Member
My point was not meant to imply you were disagreeing with me, only using your comment as a springboard for my rant ...
Sorry if it came over as such.
westernman
Well-Known Member
Have any of you found a good 15 inch monitor to use for a chart plotter which is daylight viewable and has a knob to turn down the brightness for use at night or dusk?
I have, and the independent suppliers of such panel mount monitors are almost as expensive as the specialist kit from the major suppliers.
It is fustrating to see nice top quality monitors for use in the office which are 300 euros or less, but something which has 4 times the brightness to make it suitable for day light viewing and has a knob on it for brightness costs typically 2000 euros or more.
With N2K it is tempting to use a PC for a chart plotter as you can get all kinds of additional functionality easily and cheaply. But the screen is an expensive problem.
An iPad in the cockpit on a summers day is unreadable.
I have, and the independent suppliers of such panel mount monitors are almost as expensive as the specialist kit from the major suppliers.
It is fustrating to see nice top quality monitors for use in the office which are 300 euros or less, but something which has 4 times the brightness to make it suitable for day light viewing and has a knob on it for brightness costs typically 2000 euros or more.
With N2K it is tempting to use a PC for a chart plotter as you can get all kinds of additional functionality easily and cheaply. But the screen is an expensive problem.
An iPad in the cockpit on a summers day is unreadable.
JumbleDuck
Well-Known Member
It's licensed under GPL v2, so I don't think it would be a problem as long as the source code was made suitably available (clause 3, iirc).
JumbleDuck
Well-Known Member
In general people replace kit because the old stuff has stopped working or the new stuff performs better. Which is a problem, because if the stuff is well made it's likely to be replaced later and if it's badly made it won't attract repeat custom. People tend to replace their smartphones every couple of years, but I bet I am not the only person here with ancient (27 year old) B&G instruments which work perfectly.
JumbleDuck
Well-Known Member
What's the going rate for a top-of-the range B&G chartplotter these days?
JumbleDuck
Well-Known Member
My old materials lecturer used to say "There are only two fields in which materials cost is irrelevant: defence and sports".
st599
Well-Known Member
They just have to point at a repository of the source code. The only possible problems would be: 1) they would need to release any modifications they made to the community and 2) are there any licensing conditions for the data structures it uses (e.g. NMEA).
There's nothing to stop anyone selling open source products.
JumbleDuck
Well-Known Member
I had one of the original Eee PCs (701) for which one could download the source code from Asus, As far as NMEA goes I suppose they could encapsulate in a closed binary blob as many Android phone manufacturers do with camera code, for example, or as the Raspberry Pi does for GPU stuff. I don't think (but I am happy to be corrected) that there is anything to stop you distributing closed source stuff alongside open source.
AngusMcDoon
Well-Known Member
Zeus Touch 12 is just under £3k at RRP, but I expect it can be bought for less than that.
lw395
Well-Known Member
Perhaps industrial control stuff would be similar quantities? but without retailers in the chain.
The problem is, most new boat buyers want to spend a lot on toys.
Swanrad2
Well-Known Member
THAT is the key - boaters are the architects of their own market. The prices charged reflect the 'oooh must have one of those' factor, most gadgets bought have not improved the sailing experience maybe just made the barriers to entry a little lower?
AngusMcDoon
Well-Known Member
There is always the Nasa budget choice, but I doubt many go on brand new boats.