Product: MX Marine Unleashes New Family of Electronics

At the Europort 2003 exhibition in Amsterdam last month, MX Marine debuted its new family of marine GPS/DGPS products, a family of products designed to provide a flexible and expandable platform for the next generation of integrated navigation and marine information systems.

"These three new GPS products represent the leading edge of the new wave in marine navigation technology," said David Ritblatt, president of MX Marine. "The MX500, MX510 and MX520 will take the concept of integrated navigation systems to the next level, serving as the platform for a fully integrated marine information center." The new MX500, MX510 and MX520 GPS control/display systems are being introduced by MX Marine to work with the MX521 smart antenna or MX525 black box receiver, providing a highly accurate integrated navigation solution that meets the latest international standards for GPS/DGPS, including Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring (RAIM). According to the manufacturer, the MX500, MX510 and MX520 are the first marine GPS systems to incorporate a common platform with the Intel X-Scale 200 MHz processor with 16 MB Flash and 64 MB SDRAM memory, upgradeable to 400 MHz and 128 MB RAM.

Multiple MX500, MX510 and MX520 control/display units can be networked via a hub powered through MX Marine's MX590 router for real-time sharing of navigation data at different locations around the ship.

The MX500 has a 192 x 96 mm control and display panel with a 3.8-in. (320 x 240) high-resolution QVGA black-and-white graphical LCD, and is designed to fit into a standard-size electronics panel or console. The MX510 has a 5.7-in. (320 x 240) high-resolution QVGA black-and-white graphical LCD. The MX520 has a large sunlight-readable 6.4-in. (640 x 480) color TFT VGA display.

All three products will be able to support built-in electronic charts.

The system architecture is designed to allow for easy software upgrade and migration to WinCE or other customized operating systems that can take advantage of the Intel X-Scale technology. Software updates can be made through the USB, LAN or regular serial port.

"We have retained the familiar man-machine interface (MMI) software features that were pioneered by Leica in the popular MX420 family of GPS products, minimizing the need for retraining watchstanders," said Ritblatt.