(i.e., music and video) and internet update
Present Update (Saturday, January 4)
Well we have left Brunswick Landing Marina and after a two day overnight sail into the Atlantic Ocean we are now anchored in West Palm Beach enjoying sunny South Florida. Our next post will cover that so we had a post in the "can" so to speak since we knew we would be tired. So without further adieu...
System Series No. 7
When I first started this series over a year ago, I indicated that I would write it over a few weeks. Then we started doing more interesting stuff so it sort of fell by the wayside. Time to dust off this series and move a bit forward.
When we had a land-based house, I really enjoyed the audio/visual aspect of making a home theater and entire house music. Sadly, creating a 7.1 surround sound on our 40' boat would have been difficult and a bit overkill so I scaled back a bit while still scavenging some items from our land base system.
Music
Our sound system for the boat is a mixture of Sonos components and a Fusion MS-RA670 amp/receiver. I have a Sonos port component tied to my fusion amp/receiver so I can use normal wired speakers in addition to other powered Sonos speakers (2 play3 speakers). I have used Sonos for years on land and I hated getting rid of it since it was a big investment and the sound the speakers produce are particularly good.
We have music zones in the following locations: Cockpit, main salon, and master berth. The cockpit has two midrange Fusion Series 3 speakers tied to the Fusion receiver. The salon has two midrange speakers (came with the boat), and a single Sonos Play 3 powered speaker. Although the two midrange speakers in the salon are ok, the single Sonos speaker really punches up the sound and gives the salon some base and depth that it wouldn’t otherwise have. In the master berth we have a single Sonos Play 3 speaker. For such a small area this single speaker is more than enough.
In addition, we have a single Sonos roam. It acts as our Bluetooth speaker when we are off the boat or if we are on the forward deck, we can bring this forward while keeping the rest of the system at reasonable volumes. I also use the Sonos Roam as sort of a center channel for our TV (more on that later). The little Sonos roam switches seamlessly between Bluetooth off the boat and will connect to our Wi-Fi network when we are in range of the boat so the speakers can all play together. You can see roam here: Sonos Roam
We made the conscious decision to stream all our music and not use any physical media. We have had a Spotify subscription for years so that is the primary source of most our music. We also have various internet radio stations such as Radio Paradise and Soma FM. Each of these stations has many different genres for whatever mood we happen to be in. We also have amazon Music and Sonos Radio, but we rarely use it since the other platforms have anything we would want to listen to. With the Sonos app on our phone (or on our iPad or laptop) we can access our different stations or streaming platforms and control the rooms to broadcast and control the volume level from a variety of devices.
Video
For video we have a Nebula Capsule 3 projector for the boat. This thing is about the size of a big can of beans and it projects over a large distance. It is also a smart projector which means it has all the apps built in for streaming our various subscriptions. For general TV viewing we have a 48” fold up screen we put up in the salon. We can quickly set up the system for TV watching and then stow it away quickly when we don’t need it.
The little projector has a built-in speaker but it’s pretty tinny so for sound we use an aux cable that goes from the projector, and we have that tied to the Sonos system. That allows us to use all our Sonos system and other speakers to fill our salon with fairly good sound for TV watching. It’s not surround sound, but it certainly fills the room.
We use our internet connection for all our TV watching. Right now, our paid subscriptions are: HBO (Max), Prime Video, Disney Plus, Hulu, ESPN+. We have a Netflix account we have on pause until something we really want to watch comes out. We also use YouTube and other free streaming services when we want. The projector has all the apps built in, so we
have access to a lot of shows. We don’t watch a massive amount of TV so with those handfuls of subscriptions we have more than enough.
Internet Update
For our music and video, we heavily rely on internet for all the services. In the past we used our mobile hotspot on our phone or used marina internet. This was not an ideal situation mostly due to speed and running out of our fast internet on our phone very quickly at the beginning of each month. Enter nutty Elon…
We now have Starlink, and it has solved our slow internet issue. We ended up purchasing the Starlink Mini antenna and have the Roam-Unlimited subscription package. This allows us to have internet anywhere within 12 miles of land on the North American continent. That includes US, Canada, Mexico, Bahamas, and everything in the Caribbean except South America. This will serve us well for the next few years and if there is a need to expand outside of that area we can get a more expensive subscription. During a passage when we think we might be more than 12 miles offshore we can purchase offshore data for that particular crossing. UPDATE: During our passage to West Palm we did go off shore 12 miles for a few hours and as expected, Starlink went out and immediately came back when within the 12 mile geofence.
We got the Starlink mini mostly for the size and the low power consumption of the system. In theory the mini will give a bit slower speeds but right now at the dock in Brunswick we are getting 50-100 mb/s consistently. This is more than enough for our purpose (especially since Marinas are normally in the 5-10 range). The power difference is 65 watts for the full-size antenna and 23 watts for the Mini. That’s quite a bit for a system that runs off batteries.
Next week back to our normal travel adventures!
(Post No. 25-01)
Jimmy and Sondra, great blog (as usual)! Glad to hear you're out and about on the water again! I was particulary intereted in your starlink mini expereince. I bought one for Christmas for our house network and have it mounted on a 6-foot PVC pole on a second floor observation deck to use it as a backup to spectrum, which can be iffy. It works great most of the time and has come through in a pinch already! What kind of 48 inch screen are you using? from Mike Sweeney