Monitoring & Control Apps: InteliSea & Maretron

Ah, so there you are stretched out in a teak chaise on the skydeck of your mega, but are you bored and/or uncomfortably out of touch? Hell no, not with an iPad full of books, videos, games, work tools, internet connectivity, and even an app that connects you directly into your elaborate InteliSea vessel monitoring and control system. There's a nice demo of their existing $99 iPhone app at the InteliSea site, and I can tell you from on-phone testing that it manages complexities like those mimic screens above better than demoed, but won't this app shine on the iPad? And if you're a geek, or the yacht's engineer...

Apparently, as shown in the screen below, you'll be able to design new InteliSea iPad display pages with touches and swipes right on its screen. Mind you, though, that this may just be a mock-up of an app so far, created at least partially in response to my iPad ruminations a few weeks, just like we got a peek at what Active Captain might look like on this platform. (The April Yachting column I was trying to illustrate should be out very soon.) I haven't spoken with Palladium Technologies recently, but given their early iSiMON app, and their general enthusiasm for sexy tech, I'll bet they have an iPad app near ready to go. And Maretron is about to arrive on the M&C apps scene, too...

Maretron hasn't yet announced the app that will go with its N2KView PC software system, but judging from a demo I've been trying (screens below), it's almost ready to go. I don't see mimic screens in it yet, but we know that N2KView can handle them. Remember, too, that the Basic edition of the software is only $500, and hence can scale to less than megaboats. But screen one below shows all the chapters available to a Platinum user, and the dots at the bottom of the other screens show multiple pages within a chapter. Incidentally, Maretron's digital switching system is due out soon too. Note too the "Download Config File" button on final Setting screen. Apparently you can design all these screens from within the N2KView application on a PC, which makes good sense. All these illustrations can be clicked to larger versions, by the way. Will Maretron (and Krill and ???) iPad apps be far behind?

Written by: Ben Ellison

Ben Ellison is electronics editor for Bonnier Marine Group, specifically Yachting and Cruising World. He previously was electronics editor for Power & Motoryacht and SAIL, as well as a writer for Ocean Navigator. His blog posts appear courtesy of his website www.Panbo.com, which has 80,000 monthly readers worldwide.