A good captain stays in tune with his boat and can feel most problems coming well before they knock him out of action. Part of this ability comes from careful monitoring of all the ship's systems. That's one reason why many big-hitters in the marine-electronics realm made the move to electronic instrument and multifunction gauge systems. Reason number two: These days, just about every serious electronics suite is NMEA 2000-compliant, which means that all of these instruments are compatible with numerous systems. If you want to see what's going on with your boat at a glance and know for a fact that you're getting an accurate read on the situation, now you can.
Furuno FI-50
Furuno rolled out the latest entry in the NMEA 2000 digital world with its FI-50 Precision Instrument Series. The series comes with six instruments (the FI-501 and FI-502 wind display units; the FI-503 for navigation data; the FI-504 multifunction; the FI-505 digital compass; and the FI-506 rudder-angle display) that will interface with any system via NMEA 2000. Or it can be installed as part of the Furuno NavNet system. In either case, integrating these instruments consists essentially of plug-and-play installation. Some data sets, however, such as weather, require additional sensors and potentially a junction box.
One of the most important advantages you can gain from displays like these is the ability to read your data at a glance, and in this regard the FI-50s do not disappoint. The digits are big and bold, though they'd probably be even bolder if they were displayed in color - stay tuned for that, as Furuno will surely bring color to the series in the future.
The FI-503 navigation data display splits data boxes into three levels, and you can easily read each one, even when looking across a large helm station. Analog gauges also display digits in the center of the gauge, and an automatic backlighting sensor fires up the lights when ambient light fades. Thanks in part to this auto-backlighting, FI-50s boast an extremely low power usage, consuming less than 0.1 amps. Although these gauges don't offer graph displays, let's remember what going digital is all about - better visibility and easy access to information. The FI-50 series' easy-to-read numerals may not bring as much "wow" factor as color, multifunction displays, but in the at-a-glance department, they take the cake. For those who desire the best numeric view, operational simplicity and a relatively low cost, the FI-50 series is a top pick.
