Two new Golden Shellback items today. Above is a recent photo of Inventor Sid Martin with the equipment used to apply the coating and at the bottom of this post you’ll find a recent audio interview with the guys at Blackberry Cool. For those new to this blog, Golden Shellback is an amazing new technology created by Northeast Maritime Institute that protects electronics that are exposed to water. We first saw this technology when our parent company, Unofficial Networks, visited the Institute’s headquarters in Fairhaven Mass to build the school a new website. After convincing them to tape a video for gCaptain and subsiquently arranging a visit to the Today Show, UN was asked to help market and sell the product. It’s been a whirlwind of activity ever since.
Our friend, Sid Martin of Golden Shellback fame was on the Today Show this morning dunking Matt Lauer’s blackberry in a fish tank full of water. I hear even Al Roker was impressed. here is the video.
Note of disclosure: gCaptain’s maritime consulting arm arranged the taping.
Last year Sid Martin, Director of Technology at Northeast Maritime Institute was faced with a dilemma. He had been hired to spearhead a project bringing the latest technology to the field of Maritime Security and test it in the field. Martin was the perfect candidate for this job. Prior to working at NMI he was a member of the project team responsible for the wheel bearings on the Mars Lander and in doing so became familiar with the obstacles faced in developing products for use in harsh environments. But the project was nearing completion and he needed to find new ways to use his experience at the institute.
Before developing Aerospace technology Martin worked for years in the manufacturing of semiconductors and during this time he gained both knowledge and experience coating objects at a molecular scale. With the sole directive of realizing the Institute’s mission to “honor the mariner” Sid diverted his focus from maritime security to a long stirring idea; Waterproofing Electronics.
With the backing of NMI President Eric Dawicki he began work on techniques he learned during the time he worked in the semiconductor industry, applied coatings to surfaces at the molecular level. Up to this point marine electronics were separated from the corrosive and conductive properties of salt water with the use of protective shells. A waterproof radio for example, combines a protective shell with plastic coating and gaskets to keep water away from sensitive electrical components. This works fairly well provided you maintain the watertight integrity of the unit but it’s expensive to manufacture and maintain not to mention the extra weight and bulk it adds to the device itself. Damage the shell or service the components in harsh conditions and that protection is useless.
Martin’s idea was different. By merging his experience in harsh weather design with his knowledge of semiconductors he developed a new coating that provides direct protection to both internal and external components of a device regardless of size. The process itself is a closely guarded secret but results in a ultra thin yet durable protection at the molecular level.
To test this claim we visited NMI’s workshop in Fairhaven Massachusetts and asked him for a personal demonstration. The results were simply astounding. Standing above a 5 gallon bucket of water Martin picks up a working Balckberry phone and drops it straight into the salt water. Minutes later he removes the device and makes a call with the water still pouring out of the keypad. As if this was not impressive enough he proceeds to pour what remains in the bucket onto his Dell laptop computer. He then remarks, “The possibilities are endless. Not only are the internal components protected but the CPU is actually being cooled by the water inside the case!”
The possibilities are exciting indeed and to help convince me (as if that was still required) he refills the bucket and begins dunking the other items he has coated. First in was a 372 year old letter sent to mariner from his wife, then he dunks an ipod touch and finally compares two sets of stainless steel bolt; one exposed to salt water and the other not. The difference was noticeable.
What’s next for Martin’s dunk tank? He replies with a wide grin, “ I’ve already tried this coating on sugar cubes, I think the next challenge will be to coat an ice cube!”
Regardless of the next product to be tested Martin is currently looking for companies wishing to employ this technology in the manufacturing process. Otherwise he hopes to team up with retailers and offer the coating as a service provided in-store. If all goes according to plan it won’t be long until you can take your new iPhone to the pool and drop it in just to witness the reaction of onlookers. Martin’s goals are slighltly higher, “I’m waiting for the day a mariner finds trouble in harsh conditions and a coated device provides a lifeline to help. That will turn my grin into a big smile”.
Expect NMI’s Golden Shellback coatings to be available on some of your favorite devices in the coming months. For our full Golden Shellback Coverage click HERE.
gCaptain just returned from a whirlwind tour of San Francisco with the Northeast Maritime Institute’s Golden Shellback development team. Highlighting the met with blogger Adrian Covert of Gizmodo to give a hands on demonstration of the miraculous weather resistant coating. The video can be found above and the full article can be read HERE.
Meanwhile, across town we met with Kara Tsuboi at CNET studios. Here is video of her interview with Inventor Sid Martin.
WIRED magazine ran an article that was a real surprise to me: It was about a sextant, and a very good looking sextant at that! This old school navigational device has some sexy styling that any nautical buff would be proud to get their hands on. Take a look at the story and the picture of this excellent piece of retro nautical tech. Read More
This is video of the Golden Shellback coating in action. We will be keeping you updated with more information on our Golden Shellback page, the product homepage and via twitter. Stay tuned for the details!
Note: This is not our gear or our ship. <-click for photographer details.
Working “day jobs” aboard ship gCaptain’s crew has three separate offices; home, work and mobile. As chief blogger I get to carry the most stuff so I wanted to show you what it takes to blog when I’m away from gCaptain HQ. Here’s the gear I use at home and thousands of miles from the nearest shore:
While gCaptain has a very nice office in downtown San Luis Obispo, maritime news breaks at all hours of the day and night. So while I’m at home my office consists of a Mac Pro connected to both my 23inch Cinema Display and my 42″ Plasma Television. Since I don’t work and watch TV at the same time the setup works well. I use it with a Logitech Sidewinder mouse and an ultra sleek Apple Slim Keyboard. The Mac Pro is probably overkill but it was inherited from a failed start-up and I had no takers on Craigslist. I also have an inexpensive dell monitor I rotate 90degrees for dual monitor goodness (a trick I learned from Jason Calcanis at Mahalo -image-).
While traveling to destinations around the world my setup is a black macbook and my iPhone. I tend towards lengthy email replies when using the Macbook so I much prefer the iPhone to make them short and quick.
On the ship my primary computer is a windows box which I need for my day job. Because of restricted permissions I rely heavily on a Portable Application Suite I launch from my waterproof USB drive and VNC to access my office computer. Outside my office the environment is unfriendly to electronics. I rely on my Pelican Flashlight at night, Rite in the Rain notepad and Fisher Space Pen. If I need a camera I put my Waterproof Xacti Digital Camcorder in a Micro Pelican Case. If I am outside on the ship’s deck for extended periods of time I catch up on the days news with a custom RSS reader; printed paper. To keep from killing too many trees I use a duplex enabled printer set at 2-pages per side.
I work a schedule of 3 weeks at work and 3 weeks home so I get 6 months vacation per year. To facilitate this each position on the ship is filled by two people, the person on and the person off. This is nice because while at home my relief answers all emails, phone calls, ect., leaving me 100% disconnected from work. But regardless of where in the world my ship is located on the globe I must fly to it every 3 weeks. Staying connected on the road is important. To accomplish this I have set-up a custom SSH tunnel solution that I use with Apple Remote Desktop to connect back to my office network. I also have setup automatic back-ups with the Amazon S3 based app JungleDisk and use Transmit to retrieve my files. Storage is important while traveling so I cloned my MacBook‚ hard drive using SuperDuper and replaced it with a 250gb laptop hard drive.
The folks from “Rite in the Rain” were at the Pacific Marine Expo, and I picked up a brochure, an all-weather pen, and another pocket-sized spiral notebook…thanks guys!
See, I use these products every day. Into my pockets each morning go my keys, wallet, coin purse, cell phone, and my little Weems & Plath-branded Rite in the Rain 3″ x 5″ all-weather spiral notebook.
I have been using these products for many years in fairly harsh environments aboard ship and highly recommend them for use on deck.
While much larger initiatives are needed to make shipping more environmentally sound, the little things add up. Don’t believe me? Ask any Engineer who has played the efficiency contest, a game where each on duty engineer goes around the ship turning off lights to increase the vessel’s fuel efficiency during his watch. The object of the game is to obtain better efficiency figures than the last watchstander.
Or was the game just intended to confuse the Deckies? (We really need an Engineer blogger here at gCaptain… any takers?).
Panbo brings us a small improvement in energy conservation that, if deployed on ships worldwide, may have a lasting improvement. They write:
Last winter, thanks to Lee Guite of East Boothbay, I tried some LED bulbs Lee used to replace the incandescent ones in the Aqua Signal nav lights aboard his Dulcinea. Lee got pretty carried away researching available replacement bulbs and the ones he finally chose were “flux” models from the LED Shop in Australia. In the photo above I was trying to get a camera comparison of his steaming light versus an OGM combo LED running light. They both seemed fairly effective, but now the LED Shop has more powerful SMT bulbs, and Orca Green Marine has dropped the multi-LED models altogether in favor of single LED lights. I don’t know much about LEDs, but they do seem to be in a state of rapid technological change, which means that one LED may perform quite differently than another, and none of them may be what we’ll be using a few years hence.
| Stumble It!
and my 42″ 
I rely on my 
