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Marinised computers

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Did you know you can buy off the shelf computers ready approved for mission critical applications on the ship's bridge?


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Capax, a company based in Sweden, has released a new model of its marinised computer. It is pre-approved to IEC-945 by Lloyds Register and DNV, the standard required by most type approval bodies for computer applications running on the ship's bridge. 

The computer can be purchased off the shelf for around £20,000, and has an 800 MHz processor and a 20 Gb hard drive. 

The IEC 945 standard was developed by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), as a means of testing whether computers are able to function in the maritime environment. 

Apart from the obvious rocking of the ship, the computers must be able to withstand the vibration, power drops and power surges. It must be able to high humidity and condensation, and be resistant to radio disturbance from other electrical equipment nearby. 

Capax expects that the greatest market potential for this will be from manufacturers of bridge electronics systems, such as radars, consoles, electronic chart displays and GPS systems. Rather than go through the expense of their own IEC 945 testing for their systems, they can simply use Capax computers and run their software on them and sell the package together to the client. 

The computer can be used for mission critical applications, for example running the electronic chart display, radar display or ship management system. Instead of purchasing a dedicated electronic chart display and information system as a hardware and software package, shipowners can now just purchase the marinised computer directly and then buy separate software to run on it.

Capax has passed its computer for type approval with as much different features as possible; it has a 20 Gb hard disk, two graphics cards (so it can be used to run two monitors at once) and extra communications cards to plug in additional peripherals.

Shipowners do not have to pay to purchase all of these peripherals, but the point is that they can have a computer with less components inside and it is still type approved. If they want a computer with any additional components inside, they have to go through the complete type approval process again. 

Capax first launched a marinised PC about 3 years ago, selling about 200 systems. However one of the suppliers of the spare parts used in the type-approved computer stopped selling a particular part (a CPU guard), forcing Capax to go through the complete type approval process again with different components. 

However this has given Capax an opportunity to submit a computer with a much higher specification than the one it did 3 years ago. The company has also gathered a large stock of the spare parts used in putting together the type-approved computer, so this should not be a problem this time.

Another cost option is that shipowners can purchase a "marinised" computer, which is tough enough to withstand the maritime environment but not IEC 945 compliant, for £1,600 - £2,300.