Vesper Marine Announces Cortex
Vesper Marine, a manufacturer of innovative marine electronics, announced the release of Cortex, what the company said is the world’s first marine VHF radio with wireless touchscreen handsets, built-in Class B SOTDMA smartAIS transponder and remote vessel monitoring.
“Innovation in AIS technology, touchscreen devices and vessel monitoring has skyrocketed in recent years, but marine VHF hasn’t kept pace and remains an anachronism,” said Jeff Robbins, CEO, Vesper Marine. “Cortex fundamentally changes how you interact with safety communication systems.”
Cortex provides unparalleled safety by alerting boaters of collision risks, providing key information about the potential threat and making it easy to communicate with them, a press release said.
The touchscreen handset makes typically complicated functions easy to use. For example, touching a vessel onscreen and pressing “call” makes a direct DSC call.
Cortex continuously shows crossing situations, navigation light sectors and even allows trial maneuvers while a boater talks on the VHF radio. Up to 10 handsets, either wired or wireless, provide up to 85 dBA of crystal-clear audio. A 10W speaker output enables louder audio and alerting even while handsets are turned off.
Cortex includes dual-watch, favorite channels and one-handed operation via the click-wheel. Pressing the dedicated man overboard (MOB) button activates a track back mode on all handsets and marks the MOB waypoint on NMEA 2000 connected multi-function displays (MFDs).
