FLYING LESSONS NOT INCLUDED

Raymarine’s latest Lighthouse operating system and Axiom multifunction displays can control drones.

IMAGERY OF BLUE SKY, LUSH VEGETATION AND THE SUNSHINE State's warm waters streamed down from a hovering drone's camera as we circled the waters off Virginia Key aboard Raymarine’s Boston Whaler 350 Outrage. The drone’s operator swung the camera’s perspective, and our boat came into view. He was controlling the drone directly from our vessel’s 12-inch Raymarine Axiom Pro multifunction display — not from the drone manufacturer’s remote control — and the live footage was playing in real time on the MFD’s split-screen display. ¶ Giuseppe Carnevali would have been impressed. When Carnevali, the founder and former CEO of Navionics, unveiled the world’s first chart plotter in 1984, his goal was safe, reliable navigation, not third-party interoperability. But now, almost a quarter century later, the technology has evolved tremendously. Raymarine released its Axiom MFDs last year and spec’d them with lightning-fast processors and vast

memory, allowing engineers to continue developing and releasing software and applications — which now include the ability to control drones. ¶ “We wanted unsurpassed speed and performance and as long a life as possible, so we built plenty of overhead into Axiom,” says Jim McGowan, Raymarine’s Americas marketing manager. “We also wanted

to eliminate black boxes, [so we] built these capabilities into the [MFD] sonar in particular.” ¶ Raymarine’s original Axiom MFDs have quad-core Android processors and are available in 7- (from $649), 9- (from $949) and 12-inch (from $2,449) models. Axiom Pro MFDs come with 9– (from $2,299), 12- (from $3,399) and 16-inch (from $5,399) displays. ¶ All Axiom and Axiom Pro models have Raym rine's Lighthouse 3 operating syste which is based on the Android OS. Raymarine has released six Light-house updates — free of charge — that have i creased Axiom's operating capa-bilities "Our initial challenge was to bring lighthouse 2 features interfaces that let Axiom users control compatible gear. Some examples include Theyr's GRIB global weather and tide app, Seakeeper's gyrostabilizer control app, and Mazu by SkyMate's mSeries control app. ¶ "Mazu uses an HTML 5 interface," McGowan says. "We didn't do the development — it was native to Mazu. We just opened the gate after vet-ting the app to ensure it wouldn't put the boat on the rocks." ¶ Axiom MFD users can also download entertainment apps, including Netflix and Spotify, which can run in the background during nav-igation. ¶ "Netflix and Spotify are stan-dards," McGowan says, hinting that oth-er streamable media, including Pandora, could make an appearance on the Axiom platform in the near future. "The MFD just needs connectivity over the internet, so you either need a Wi-Fi hotspot or a smartphone or satellite-communica--

tion equipment, and the MFD streams your content from there. Axiom reaches out and behaves the same as [your computer] at home: You just log into your account, and the Axiom streams content in real time, using bandwidth.” ¶ Lighthouse 3.6 is the version that allows Axiom owners to control compatible drones (currently DJI Mavic Series models). A user hard-wires his DJI controller to the Axiom via a USB cable to establish two-way, wireless communication between the MFD and the drone. ¶ “Axiom’s Android platform makes this easy,” McGowan says. “We realized we could bring some automation into the process, which lets Axiom take workload off the pilot.” ¶ While most drones can automatically return home, that process is manual aboard yachts, because the location of home is dynamic. ¶ “The Axiom constantly sends its location information to the drone, which does the same,” McGowan says. The Axiom automatically plots the drone’s location on-screen and presents its critical navigation data (altitude, speed and distance) while displaying its camera feed. ¶ While controlling a drone from your MFD may seem like frivolous fun, it also has practical applications, say, if the drone is flying 60 feet above sea level. ¶ “It gives you a line of sight that’s way better than the upper deck,” McGowan says, adding that this is a good position to reconnoiter approaches through sandbars, reefs or coral heads. “You can also scope for fish using the camera’s polarizer.” ¶ While Axiom’s Android-based platform enables third-party apps, McGowan says, Raymarine always has the MFD’s core purpose in mind. ¶ “Axiom is primarily a navigation tool,” he says. “We can’t let people play Angry Birds just because it’s an Android system.” ¶ Still, future possibilities include remotely controlling Web-enabled devices (say, home-security cameras). ¶ “There’s a lot of digital switching that we might be able to do with HTML 5,” he says. ¶ This level of interoperability is changing marine electronics — and yachting. Which, of course, was exactly what Carnevali intended in (drumroll please) 1984, even if he was thinking about data-rich screens instead of aerial camera feeds.