what do you guys think about the SIONYX cameras

[magna 6882]

I was reading a little on the night vision and while not trying to run in the dark i do get caught once in a while. Seems like a good idea and they have a sale going on through tomorrow. I am wondering if it will wifi to my garmin 8612?
Your thoughts?
Rod

 

[Comodave]

I have one and it hooks up thru Bluetooth to my iPad. I just set the iPad on the dash and use it for the screen. Works surprisingly well for the price.

 

[Seevee]

Where is the sale? And how does it stack up with FLIR, just a few bucks more.

 

[magna 6882]

On there website they are having a march madness sale.

 

[Comodave]

If I remember I paid about $300 for mine when they first came out. For that price it is pretty good.

 

[twistedtree]

The big thing I see (sorry, pun intended) is that the SIONYX is a low light camera, where the FLIR is a thermal camera. Those are just different parts of the light spectrum, but they also show you different things. Some of the high end FLIR cameras include both low light and thermal imagers, and combine the two.


So then the question becomes which is better for boating, low light or thermal imaging, and I really don't know. Both let you "see" at night, and that's helpful no matter what. A low light image looks more like a daylight image, so can be less disorienting vs a thermal image. But a thermal image shows things that a low light image never will. Things like the contrast between a person in the water and the surrounding water. Or ice in the water. Both of those things really stand out. And only thermal will show you an overheating connection in an electric panel, or help you find heating hoses behind inaccessible panels. And you can get the FLIR in an exterior housing with point and tilt control, and gimbaled stabilization. But it costs... quite a bit.

 

[Comodave]

Yes, the FLIRs are great but the price is many times more than the Sionyx.

 

[rgano]

The issue I have with low light scopes and cameras (I hunt feral hogs with a low-light night scope) is that on no moon nights, you end up seeing very little, and if a farmer's night light is in your field of vision, well, BLOOM, and you are done. Muzzle blast blooms you out for a second, although I have been able to reacquire a running pig and down him after a first shot miss. OTOH, I have looked through a 7,000-dollar IR rifle scope on a dark night with a power station's lights in the field of view beyond the animal I was observing and yet felt like I was looking at a very sharp green-hued photo negative. It was a cow we avoided targeting.

I spent a fair amount of time at sea off Vietnam looking through a mounted night scope as well as us of an IP system we had mounted in a gun director. The haze would severely limit the range of the IR at times. The engine room spaces of a destroyer a few thousand yards away were clearly brighter than the darker ship silhouette we could also see with the IR allowing us to quickly ID the target, while a sailor smoking a cigarette on deck would have been only a bright point of light on the night vision scope.

The combo units now available sound really cool. Anything which you feel helps you see better at night is good; you just need to have a feel for what conditions you will need that aid in to be able to decide which you need. My needs are such that I feel comfortable enough operating in the dark without these items, plus my boat is just too small to accommodate any more nav-related gear to distract me.

 

[magna 6882]

When in the dark with charts and radar i do know where i am but i am unable to see any debris that may be in the water. The night vision camera might allow me to see whats floating in the water a few hundred feet in front of the boat.

 

[rgano]

When in the dark with charts and radar i do know where i am but i am unable to see any debris that may be in the water. The night vision camera might allow me to see whats floating in the water a few hundred feet in front of the boat.

Hopefully so, and if I was in debris-prone areas at night I would stop or have best night vision I could afford.

 

[Lepke]

In the PNW, considering the logs, crab trap buoys, and the debris that came with the Japanese tsunami, I think for the price, the Sionyx camera would be a good tool. Canada still allows logs to move by water and they loose a few. I've never made the passage without seeing logs. And we had Japanese cement docks wash ashore in Oregon, with a few boats found offshore.

 

[rsn48]

Let me be the bad guy. You probably don't need it. I've done an incredible amount of sailing in the night from the San Juan Islands to the Gulf Islands. You will do just fine without the night vision. Realize all those commercial vessels on the water don't have it yet they travel in the night continually.

If you are in an area where you are concerned about debris in the water, more a BC concern than a State of Washington concern then just slow down to something like 6 knots so if you do hit something it won't be any big deal.

I've hit a couple of things with a sailboat with no repercussions because the boat was going slow as sailboats do. You will hear something thunking along your hull. But this is rare. I hit a log at 22 knots in my sedan cruiser, that was a big deal.