Is Maretron on Life Support?

[mikehar]

What's up with Maretron these days? Carlington acquired them, and then Carlington was acquired by LittleFuse. It felt like the first acquisition was to beef up Carlington for the subsequent acquisition. It doesn't feel like there is much investment in Maretron anymore. I see more end-of-life announcements than new product announcements.

They did manage to release the WSO200 after years of work (the WSO100 discount was in 2010?) and a minor update to their N2KAnalyzer package.

They still haven't released the SMS200 despite 3G being phased out years ago. There is still no WSV100. The backend is still written in Flash/Actionscript, and there is a broken/useless mobile app, ridiculous "cloud service," dated screens, missing deadlines by more than a year, etc.

It would be a shame to see them fail. The hardware is pretty solid. Good sensors, cables, and parts. At some point, I'm going to redo my dash, and I'm looking for a replacement for my Maretron screens and alarm system.

Are there any rumors out there about what is going on?

 

[bkcorwin]

I've reached out to them a few times over the past weeks and they've been responsive. That said I agree with you about all of your complaints with n2kview and maretron. Of particular frustration is if you have several devices reporting the same PGN. Say dc voltage.

However, it does seem like the easiest thing to implement for most people. In contrast, in addition to a n2kview instance, im running signalk on a pi hooked to a 11" ultrawide waveshare touch screen (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0C497LQFL/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1). It seems to work well, but its not a simple plug and play to get everything up and running.

I am using the signalk instrument panel called "kip". Developers are active and things are being upgraded. I've attached an image showing the n2kview screen and a kip screen.

 

[mikehar]

FWIW, they are still funding their support, and they seem responsive.

 

[mikehar]

I've reached out to them a few times over the past weeks and they've been responsive. That said I agree with you about all of your complaints with n2kview and maretron. Of particular frustration is if you have several devices reporting the same PGN. Say dc voltage.

However, it does seem like the easiest thing to implement for most people. In contrast, in addition to a n2kview instance, im running signalk on a pi hooked to a 11" ultrawide waveshare touch screen (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0C497LQFL/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1). It seems to work well, but its not a simple plug and play to get everything up and running.

I am using the signalk instrument panel called "kip". Developers are active and things are being upgraded. I've attached an image showing the n2kview screen and a kip screen.

Can non-maretron devices use standard PGNs to send alerts to my DSM
250s?

 

[bkcorwin]

So, in theory you would think it should be possible because nmea2000 has standard PGNs for alerts and notifications. Unfortunately it appears that maretron, at least with the dsm410, does not support the standard pgn 126983. Instead they implement their own system of PGNs for alerts

130819	Alert Transmission (Maretron)	N/A
130820	Alert Response (Maretron)	N/A
130821	Alert Text (Maretron)	N/A
130822	Alert Control (Maretron)	N/A

the reverse engineering of these PGNs is incomplete per the canboat documentation so im not sure theres anyway to utilize these messages.

Sad really.

 

[egbauman]

I have also been disappointed by the lack of product updates from Maretron in the past couple of years. I’ve basically given up asking about the status of the SMS200. I’ve also noticed a distinct lack of Maretron inventory at various retailers. A couple months ago, the DSM410 display was nowhere to be found. It’s better now and I just installed one on my boat today. But also had issues finding an available focus tube for the TLM00.
Anyway, I hope Maretron has a future as their products have been quite good.

 

[stiggy]

I have also been disappointed by the lack of product updates from Maretron in the past couple of years. I’ve basically given up asking about the status of the SMS200. I’ve also noticed a distinct lack of Maretron inventory at various retailers. A couple months ago, the DSM410 display was nowhere to be found. It’s better now and I just installed one on my boat today. But also had issues finding an available focus tube for the TLM00.
Anyway, I hope Maretron has a future as their products have been quite good.

Where did you find the DSM410, they seem to be out of stock everywhere I've looked.

 

[egbauman]

I purchased a DSM410 and TLM100 from Boemarine.com a couple of weeks ago.

 

[mcarthur]

I've been going Maretron - n2kview, ipg, mPower. Starting to wonder if I've got on the wrong horse as
a) there's a lot proprietary in it, including the mPower details, and
b) they aren't making stuff modern - n2kview is ancient and clunky in UX terms, and while it was great there's a lot of better UX tech that is flexible.
Look at what some people are doing with home assistant and simple/cheap sensors that, under Maretron and N2K, would cost a lot more.

Oh, and now there's others like Victron making a play with the Cerbo GX being a hub, at least for electrical but also for discrete sensors.

 

[mikehar]

Some days I think the only person trying to hold Mareton together is their support guy, Ron De Pastino. Still, for the second year in a row, my cloud subscription lapsed and the only way to get it started is to PHYSICALLY RESET THE IPG100. Maybe that would be ok if I just hadn't left the boat for a month. The cloud service is still beta level software, it's really fragile. No significant updates, the WSO still has setup bugs despite it being released a year and a half ago. The remaining co-founder Frank Enmett seems to have moved onto a bigger job. It looks bleak. I wish they would sell or open source their software business.