Most people outside the marine industry don’t pay attention to the National Marine Electronics Association’s annual trade show (the NMEA show) but this is where some hot news gets made each and every year – and for 2018 it means a including a continued winning streak for the Garmin Panoptix LiveScope. You may remember that shortly after the ICAST fishing tackle show, we broke the news of Garmin’s big award in the article New Fishing Gear Introduced at ICAST: Garmin Panoptix LiveScope Wins! And now this system has been recognized yet again, this time with a NMEA Technology Award. A panel of four judges including two members of the media and two NMEA-certified marine electronics technicians, said “LiveScope is the first and only live, real-time recreational scanning sonar. LiveScope is an innovative system that combines scanning sonar and live sonar to deliver easy-to-interpret images of bottom structure, bait, and fish to 200 feet below or around the boat.”
Garmin also won awards for the MFD category (with the GPSMAP 8624) and autopilot (with the GPH Reactor 40 Hydraulic Autopilot with SmartPump). Garmin’s ActiveCaptain was also honored in the mobile application category. Oh yes, and Garmin also was named Manufacturer of the Year.
Some other big winners of note at NMEA: Fusion, with their new RA770 which won in the Entertainment category. Fusion says this unit is “the world’s first purpose-built marine entertainment system with a one-piece glass touchscreen display, built-in Wi-Fi streaming, Digital Signal Processing Technology (DSP), PartyBus capabilities and Apple AirPlay functionality.”
KVH hit it big in the Satellite Communications category with the TracPhone V7-HTS. And Furuno hit five Product of Excellence awards for 2018, for radar (DS4D-NXT), Fishfinder (DFF3D Multi-Beam sonar), AIS (FA170), NMEA2000 Sensor (SC33 Satellite compass), and Commercial (FAR2127 IMO radar).