We've seen lots of Mac mini based carputers, but now reader Matt sends us a link to this excellent Mac mini "boatputer" setup. Running MacENC navigation software, this Mac mini is hooked up to a GPS reciever, waterproof display and waterproof touchpad to give real-time marine navigational charts to Bob Etter, the enterprising sailor who built it. I think this nice piece of nautical Mac kit is clearly worth a TUAW Rig of the Week nod.
Thanks Matt!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9-13-2007 @ 4:15PM
jefferson said...
shouldn't it really be titled "Rig of Whenever the Heck We Feel Like It"?
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9-13-2007 @ 4:35PM
admin said...
shouldn't it really be titled "Rig of Whenever the Heck We Feel Like It"?
Seconded.
It was one of the things that i enjoyed about TUAW.
:|
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9-13-2007 @ 4:43PM
Mat Lu said...
Well think of it this way: it's the rig of THIS week. We basically have decided that we'll do RotW when something particularly interesting/unusual comes along. I'm sorry if we've disappointed anyone, but rest assured that we like to post on interesting rigs, even if that means we don't get to one every week.
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9-13-2007 @ 5:37PM
Peter said...
We've looked at this for our boat -- few issues with using a computer:
* Needs to be solid state
* Needs to have raid redundancy, every part replaceable, ideally an additional computer somewhere too.
I'm interested in knowing what they did to address these :)
This might be overkill for this guy though - my boat is a 60ft steel boat designed for serious weather and storms :)
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9-13-2007 @ 5:55PM
Ricky said...
@1 Or "Rig of a slow news day" ;-)
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9-13-2007 @ 7:53PM
Kjartan said...
There's nothing new or revolutionary about having a ship computer that can "give real-time marine navigational charts". There's not even anything new about using a Mac for that purpose. A Performa type Macintosh was onboard a ship we(the then family business) bought ~5-6 years back. Of course it was pretty outdated then, so it was switched out for a HP workstation :(
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9-13-2007 @ 7:58PM
Kjartan said...
Oh, and Peter: I've never had a hard drive failure on a ship computer, so a solid state drive, while nice - wouldn't be necessary. RAIDing is a very good idea, though.
Today, though, if I was using a mac mini for a ship computer, I'd switch the harddrive out for something like this: http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/26/the-cf-to-sata-hard-drive-adapter/
I know those also exist for 2 CF cards, so you can easily have 16GB of storage, which should be fine.
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9-14-2007 @ 5:57PM
Wendell gallagher said...
Peter, I too worried about redundancy. On my boat, a 38 foot Diesel Duck, there will be two Mac Minis, one for entertainment below, and one for navigation in the wheelhouse above (both synced using CronoSync). If the navigation 'puter goes belly up, I'll simply plug in the entertainment one... and if all else fails (ac on the fritz; bum monitor) there is always the trusty 12" PB).
-Wendell
www.sshelge.com
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