Spoken For - Big Bay monitor

For some reason, when I set up Delfin's nav station in the pilot house, I elected to install a $2,300 Big Bay monitor. The computer with charts and Coastal Explorer was in the office belowdecks with cabling up to the pilot house. The laptop computer went toes up on me after intermittent displays of the blue screen of death, so I bought a nice little Asus laptop ($499) and installed the latest version of CE and charts on that. Unfortunately, when connected the Big Bay kept displaying a flashing error message of "Change Mode", laid over the chart, which also wouldn't display correctly in any case, no matter what the screen resolution, scaling, refresh rate, etc. was set at. I finally got my backup Lenovo to work, but as soon as I changed a parameter I got the error message again, and changing the display setting back to exactly what it was didn't affect the error message, nor the display issue.

I called Big Bay, who provided zero assistance, other than to suggest I contact Asus and ask them why my expensive Big Bay monitor didn't have a clue. Gee, thanks, Big Bay.

So, I purchased a GeChic 1503H portable monitor that has 1920 x 1080 HD resolution and it is really, really nice. Not cheap, as monitors go, but I had to have one that would fit in the nav console I built and most monitors are too big. And it is about 1/5th the cost of another Big Bay that comes with Big Bay's legendary "we have no idea and couldn't care less" customer service.

The resolution on this is amazing, so I am very happy with it as a replacement, but I have the Big Bay monitor to either throw over the side or donate to a fellow forumite, preferably with an older computer as I think its issue was acceptance of the hdmi output of the new Asus which ran through an hdmi->vga converter. That is a guess, but if you have a 15 pin vga output on your computer, there is no reason this shouldn't work.

So, free to a good home if you would like an expensive, but useless to me 15.5" Big Bay monitor. PM and pay for shipping and it's yours.

PM sent

Love to have it, but I especially would love to have that helm (and the boat along with it. Sorry for that Big Bay frustration though. Not so good for Big Bay either.

I had my electronics guy on the boat today sizing up a few things I wanted him to resolve. One of those is my FB monitor - from Green Marine. Will update with how supportive they are when he starts to work through the issue.

https://www.greenmarinemonitors.com/

Thanks all, the monitor is now spoken for, and I'm glad someone could make use of it.

If it falls through I will come and pick it up.

That helm though, Amazing!

Delfin said:

Thanks all, the monitor is now spoken for, and I'm glad someone could make use of it.

Click to expand...

Very generous of you Delfin. Taking care of TF members.

Thank you for the feedback on bigbay customer service.
Just fired verizon from four phones for the same reason.
They brag and are useless.
I will not shop for or use a bigbay product until I get multiple green lights from our TF group.

schaefferoil said:

Thank you for the feedback on bigbay customer service.
Just fired verizon from four phones for the same reason.
They brag and are useless.
I will not shop for or use a bigbay product until I get multiple green lights from our TF group.

Click to expand...

In hindsight, I recall that the reason I spent a lot more money on the Big Bay than other alternatives was because I bought the "viewable from 90 degrees" and "1,000 NITS" brightness alleged superiority. In researching what to replace the BB with, I found that the ability for a monitor to be viewable from all angles is now commonplace and the NITS brightness doesn't actually matter assuming you are installing the monitor in an inside location. The BB is a nice monitor and will work fine for the person claiming it because they have a vga connector on the computer using the monitor, but the $400 GeChic monitor seems an improvement for me, mostly because of its HD resolution of 1920 x 1080.

https://www.gechic.com/en-portable-monitor-onlap1503h-overview.html

The specific features of this monitor that were important include wide angle viewing, HD, fitting in the same space as the BB, and a flat panel back so I could easily mount it on the console. Many monitors have rounded backs, making a clean mount difficult.

The issue I have with driving the Big Bay from an HDMI output could have been solved by buying another computer with a vga native output, but I am looking forward to the wider, richer display the HD resolution provides. That said, the attitude of the BB person I spoke with, who I am pretty sure was the owner was totally unhelpful, and his suggestion that I call the computer manufacturer was frankly insulting since he knew that would be pointless.

However, running an HDMI cable from below decks to the new monitor would be challenging to say the least, so I have my fingers crossed that a wireless HDMI transmitter/receiver will allow me to connect the below decks computer with the pilot house monitor. Fingers crossed, and I'll let you know how it works. If it doesn't, there will be tales of woe running a new HDMI cable....