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I'm pretty skeptical of propitiatory protocols too. And a lot of pro marine stuff is starting to go wireless which is scary to think about.

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It's all Bluetooth low energy afaict, they're not exactly in the field of inventing new RF comms.

BLE? I'd stay the hell away from that. It's bad enough dealing with it in consumer context, but in something safety critical?!

All these gizmos are not safety critical. Anemometer? Wind on your face. Depth? Plenty of people go around with broken ones. SOW paddle? They're always clogged. Wind angle? Wind on your face, check telltale, check sails, check wind index. Particularly the BLE stuff are things that are nice to haves and a pain to physically wire (masthead instruments).

The only "safety critical" thing in this tech is the chart plotter (and GPS), and weather reports. Marine chartplotters are glorified consumer grade computers, and this OpenPlotter thing with OpenCPN is 1000% more reliable and not actively trying to kill you with proprietary licensing crap. Your phone is a great chartplotter and plenty of people cross oceans using nothing more than an iPad.

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