Marine technology specialists Brimrun Iceland, Mitsubishi Electric, KVM technologies specialist Adder and controller manufacturer Mauell collaborated on the unusually challenging task of completely modernising the command and control systems of a commercial fishing vessel while it was still at sea off the coast of Africa.
Working together with the ship’s own engineering crew, the companies replaced the existing bridge displays with a fully IP-based solution, allowing data from all the ship’s systems to be visualised on a 4 x 1 LCD videowall supplied by Mitsubishi Electric and Mauell.
The MS Saga, a 120m Icelandic-registered fishing vessel, relies extensively on technology such as sonar, satellite navigation and remotely operated winches. The ship only returns to its home port once every two years, so the refurbishment project was completed at sea in stages.
An old radio room next to the bridge was converted to an equipment room, allowing work to continue without interrupting the ship’s operations. The existing wiring system was replaced with Cat6, with the DVI outputs from the ship’s radar, off-air TV receiver and echo sounder routed via a DVI switch to the main Mauell processor.
A further nine DVI inputs from systems such as the trawl radar, sonar and navigation system are managed by an Adder KVM switch so they can be individually controlled from a single keyboard and mouse. Additional inputs handle a total of 16 CCTV cameras and digital data from the ship’s Hermes system, which includes the fire alarms, engine alarms, the ship’s digital log book and office computer.
With the equipment racks and rewiring complete, the old bridge console was finally removed and replaced with the Mitsubishi Electric videowall. Instead of a confusing array of individual monitors, the captain of the M.S. Saga now sits directly in front of a single display, giving him a commanding view of all the ship’s systems. Additional 55in monitors are fitted at the captain’s chair and at two additional workstations.
www.adder.com
http://brimrun.is/
www.mauell.com
www.mitsubishielectric-displaysolutions.com
