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jeff cote here with voting tech talk so

where we've got here is an unboxing and

we have a product that we want to

introduce to everyone

this is the amtrak b ais transponder and

receiver

ais stands for automatic identification

system

and it's basically a way for us boaters

to share

information about our boats with other

boaters

over what are called vhf frequencies so

it's actually data

being transmitted over vhf frequencies

from boat to boat so you actually don't

it could even work in the middle of the

ocean you don't need a repeater station

of course there are repeater stations

for some of us

that want to follow what's happening on

on the sea and we can

and there certainly are repeater

stations but this is actually boat to

boat

so this is ship to ship communication

and the great thing is what can happen

here is with a device like this this

amtrak

b 953 you can actually start sharing not

only your boat's location your speed on

ground your course on ground your

vessel's name

with other boaters but it can also be

used for collision avoidance

so collision and voidness is safety and

safety is a good thing

i'm not saying this replaces radar some

people say that no i would say it's

complementary to radar some people

actually choose to have

an ais transponder before a radar that's

a personal choice i'm not even going to

go

pros and cons but certainly this is what

i consider

a low-hanging fruit meaning there's a

lot of benefit to having an ais

transponder in your boat okay

first we're gonna see is the box it's

relatively i mean this is good news

right if the box is not too big that

means that you can probably fit this

device

on your boat so we're gonna turn the box

around

um and we're gonna open this

baby up okay excellent so

all right excellent so here we

slowly and methodically here we go so

i'm gonna take off there's a little bit

of cardboard but not too much

and here is the black box

by the way black box stands for

something

that does something um and there's

multiple inputs and outputs

so this is an ais transponder and

receiver

and you can see there's various ports on

either side now here's a really

interesting thing about this device

first of all it's got low power draw so

low power draw is important because some

of us are going to leave these ais

transponders

on all the time right so especially for

passage making

this is a draw that some people that are

crossing oceans or doing long passages

are going to have this ais transponder

on for the whole journey of the passage

so having a low power draw is essential

because it means that overall

especially if you're a sailor and you're

not running an engine if you're draining

on your batteries

this is going to reduce the impact of

having this device on

your boat all right so that's one thing

um there's also an internal gps now the

good news is you can also have an

external gps to this so if you mount it

in a place on your boat and you're like

i'm not getting a really good signal

strength and by the way how do you know

that

you can actually log on and actually see

that you can log into the device

and actually see what's going on for

signal strength but if you're not having

a great location sometimes that happens

you know this

is buried in a dash somewhere and you

know what gps signal strength isn't too

good

then what you can do is you can actually

buy an external gps for this device but

for many of us we don't need one

the other thing too that's pretty

amazing is that this actually has a

built-in splitter so what does that mean

a built-in splitter so you need a vhf

antenna connect to this but most of us

on our boat already have a vhf antenna

right i mean most of us

as boaters are going to have a fixed

mounted vhf radio and we're going to

have some antenna

somewhere on the boat it could be at the

top of the mass it could be on a radar

arch

it could be on the side of the brow

wherever your vhf antenna is coming to a

vhf radio

so the good news about these ais

transponders and specifically

this b953 is that it has a built-in

splitter so you

intercept the vhf antenna right you

intercept the vhf antenna

bring it to there and then you can

actually notice it's right this port

right here

and then you can actually take a daisy

chain wire and bring it to your vhf

radio

so one antenna does two things both vhf

radio

and ais transponder and receiver pretty

handy makes the installation

easier the other thing too is you can

actually see from this side is you're

going to have a bunch of ports one is

sort of a

data communications and power port and

you can see there's a lot of different

pin assignments there

and then also enemy a2000 so the good

news is you can actually integrate this

device over

enemy a0183 or if you're lucky and your

boat is

has a more recent navigation system you

can have it over nmea 2000.

nmea is national marine electronics

association and it's a protocol

like here we are speaking english marine

equipment need to speak to each other in

a language that is sort of

understood by any and that language is

either nmea-0183

or nmea 2000. all right let's keep

opening the box

so you're even going to have these vhb

you know very high bond stickers if you

ever wanted to mount

this but it always even comes with

fasteners you can see it's got the power

pigtail and let's open that and

what you'll notice is if you don't have

an enemy 2000

sharp water but maybe yours is nme80183

you actually have all the little wires

are actually properly labeled for what

they're doing

so this is sort of would fit right here

on the port right there and so this

connector fits right in there so pretty

easy and again for some of us that do

not have any ma2000 not everyone

has ma2000 right um we'll be connecting

or integrating this device with a chart

plotter and the reason why you would do

that in case you're wondering

is you might it's one thing to transmit

where you are right

that's like creating an echo seeing

making sure you're visible right i'm

right here i'm right here

but what about and importantly you

seeing others

so it's an ais transponder and an ais

receiver

and that receiving can also be broadcast

to other devices on your boat so you can

actually see ais targets right on the

boat

this is the cable or the little cable

that is going to daisy chain between the

vhf radio that might be on board because

you intercepted that vhf antenna right

and you brought it to the ais

transponder

there's a little mounting bracket right

here

so you can mount it and lastly there's

going to be some instructions but notice

what they did i like that

pictures important visual let's not

intimidate ourselves with too many words

so they're really going through the

whole process trying to show you like

how does it work how does it integrate

so that's really nice

um the other thing too uh with these

devices

uh that are really handy is you need to

remember you're gonna need to apply for

what's called an

mmsi id as sort of a unique identifier

for your boat

right um and you need to absolutely

enter

that mmsi that is generally assigned by

different jurisdictions

uh in canada it's a department a

government agency that does that

in the united states there's different

agencies and they're basically

giving you a unique identifier so that

everyone

knows who you are by just transmitting

it's a nine digit number

okay um really handy device

relatively inexpensive it's probably i'd

say

if you're thinking about a radar price

point this is probably a third

of the price of a radar to a half so

it's significantly less money than a

radar again

for collision avoidance it's really

dependent on other boats

transmitting their is location so if

they're not transmitting you're not

going to see them

right and that's why radar is different

than this sort of device

the other thing i like about it too is

that sometimes when we're navigating

really congested waterways

which happens to some of us sometimes

the great thing about this is it

actually knows where you are

it knows where you're going so it knows

because it's got an internal gps

it knows your position it knows your

course on ground and it knows your speed

on ground

and it also then is receiving other

ships information from other boats in

your vicinity

right over vhf frequencies and it's

calculating if

eventually you're going to be on a

collision course which is great because

sometimes

the waterways can be congested there's a

lot of ports where there's a lot of

commercial traffic going in and this

takes the whole guesswork of knowing oh

my god is

that 10th boat far in the distance and i

i think we might be on a collision

course

but i'm not sure this would actually

tell you that it is

so whenever you're thinking about doing

a navigation system uh you know where

all most of us are going to think about

a chart plotter and maybe a transducer

right that's going to be sort of bare

bones as

depth sounder gps charts this is another

low hanging fruit

um you've got to consider it i'm not

saying it's for everyone

but it's definitely worth thinking about

and again because of the price point

so this is one of our go-to uh choices

for ais transponders and receivers

uh we install hundreds every year and

we're big fans

so have a look and share with us your

experience with the product

and let us know how it's working for you

thanks for watching

and we'll see you on

the next video

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