Marine Electronics
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Furuno marine electronics, one of the broadest lines of marine electronics devices available, can be configured in a variety of ship based LAN and WAN networks, giving you, your crew and your passengers all the communications power they have on land and more.
The network systems that Furuno offers are as advanced as any you will find at any of the top corporations. And that’s because they have to be. A network on a ship, with hundreds of crewmembers and passengers, needs not only to allow those onboard to communicate with each other effectively, but also with others onshore, often thousands of miles away. And this means that on ship networks, besides having to connect locally, also have the added job of making direct and reliable satellite connections.
Furuno Imarsat Fleetbroadband satellite systems enable a full-featured satellite based broadband telecommunications system on your vessel. These systems come with everything you need to turn your vessel into a floating, always on, 24/7 communication center.
Two of the most popular satellite communications systems that Furuno offers are the FELCOM250 and the FELCOM500. With these units, a complete network can be configured that ties not only all of your crewmembers and passengers mobile communications together, but also all their PCs, all your ship based landlines and all your ship’s instrumentation systems.
But that’s not all: your entire network is also tied into the Imsarat satellite system letting all your crew and passengers connect anytime and anywhere and any way. And all at speeds that go all the way up to streaming video.
An expandable network system, the FELCOM satellite system comes with just three major components. These include the Furuno’s FB2000 communication unit, complete with integrated server and router, the FB8000 IP handset and one of two of Furuno’s high-powered antennas.
These three components, however, give you all the necessary hardware and software to manage not only several on-ship LAN networks but also global WAN networks.
At the global level, the system provides always connected satellite communications that allow crewmembers to surf the worldwide Internet or make direct calls to onshore locations or even send economical messages through SMS texting.
For localized crew-to-crew, instrument-to-instrument and PC-to-PC communications the system also allows for an extensive variety of local area networks to be configured that support all types of office equipment, from your everyday telephone to streaming video machines. Because the FELCOM250 and FELCOM500 systems support ISDN, vessel network managers can also set up PBX systems that can be used to establish their private telephone network.
Because the LAN systems can also be configured for wireless communications, crew members can use their own wireless smart phones and PDAs to talk securely to any other member or passenger on the ship.
Configuring a system for your custom needs is simplified with the extensive hardware and software interface of the FB2000 communication unit. On the hardware side, the communications unit provides four ethernet ports, which support Power over Ethernet applications, four two-wire analog telephone ports, an alarm output, USMI port, RS232 port and L-Band output.
For easy configuration, the system software offers a variety of easy-to-use menus. The PBX menu, for example, lets you assign phone number extensions directly. There are also menus for setting the baud rate of your custom ports and for setting satellite options.
The antenna units for the system configuration are mid-range in size and weight. The more powerful FB-1500 for the FELCOM500 weighs in at 46 pounds and has a width of 25.7 inches and a height of 25.7 inches. For the FELCOM250 the much lighter and smaller FB1250 can be used. That unit only weighs 14.3 pounds and has a diameter of just 7.0 inches.
