In partnership with Furuno, a marine electronics company, Kramer’s AVoIP products were chosen to create Smart Bridge, a control and 4K video fishing and navigation system, installed on the 50-metre ‘Carmona’ fishing vessel to ensure smooth fishing and communications between the different sources onboard.
Designed for fishing vessels, the ‘Smart Bridge’ provides the captain and crew members aboard the Carmona (and other vessels), with the ability to access and view pertinent data and video from a variety of sources, such as radars, ECDIS, chart plotters, echo sounders, sonars, CCTV camera systems, and alarm and control systems.
Harboured in Sweden, and with trips sometimes lasting days – sailing across the North Sea, the Norwegian Sea, Baltic Sea, Kattegatt and Skagerra – safety and visibility, both above and below sea levels – including in identifying suitable fishing areas – were essential to the project. To achieve its ambitions, the Carmona required a reliable, navigation system viewable in high quality from multiple locations on-ship and remotely, with no latency. In addition, it was essential that there are flexible viewing options and control, together with ease of use to ensure smooth operations.
Furuno Smart Bridge with Kramer allows for viewing and control via touchscreen panels, one or more monitors on the videowall, or remotely via a tablet or smartphone.? Additionally, it can be used for the service technician to analyse possible problems onboard.
With customisation required to meet the system and ship’s exact needs, the Kramer Nordic team, worked together with Furuno across the entire development and installation process of the Carmona, identifying the right solutions and overcoming a series of challenges.
While Kramer Control – the company’s award-winning cloud-based, enterprise-class AV control platform – is typically more strongly associated with conference room use, with the dedication of the Kramer Development and Tech teams, adjustments were made to meet the exacting demands of the Smart Bridge concept. For example, to allow multiple users to work on the same system from different screens. This allowed everyone on board to have the clear visibility needed for their jobs, and as many as five users can work separately from different stations, using the same system.
Using Kramer KDS AVoIP encoders and decoders, video is distributed with 4K quality throughout the internal TV network onboard, with near-zero latency, ensuring the crew can follow pertinent data from monitors throughout the ship, with flexible pre-defined layouts on the video wall notifying the crew for specific activities such as fishing, navigation, or docking.