Space is paramount onboard boats, even large luxury yachts. Every corner of the ship is used to store things and you will find it hard to find where to house your audiovisual gear. Critical decisions are taken during the engineering period, and if you are not persuasive enough you will get in deep trouble when it will be time to install. To avoid this unpleasant situation, and whatever you are installing, keep in mind these following points :

• Location

Choosing the location of your audiovisual gear is very important and not that easy. There is a lot of points to be taken in consideration and you will have to make decision according to the need of the owner and the crew.

Cable length 

You know it: a shorter cable is always better for signal. This is paramount for video and audio signal, specially if you have a large TV screen or a videoprojector, and a powerfull sound system. So when you choose the location of your gear, try to be as close as the TV Set, speakers and every “end-of-line” gear to avoid loss of signal.

And please : DON’T use cable extenders. Adding active equipment to your system will make it less reliable, will lower quality and will increase power consumption and heat dissipation… instead, locate your gear closer to the TV or use an other type of signal.

Access to guest areas

You have found a nice cabinet right behind the TV in the Owner’s cabin to house your AV equipment. Great. But now imagine you are the crew member in charge of the system. The owner is chilling in his cabin, reading. He is not using the system and you have basic maintenance to do that need access to the system. You can’t.

Depending on owers or guests, access to areas can be a real issue. This is why, before you decide to install all gear within the cabin, you should have a look to the technical lockers around. Maybe you will find a nice locker, close enough to the cabin, and that will offer all the comfort you need to operate without disturbing or being disturbed.

Accessibility

You need front and rear access to your equipment. Front access is used to operate the equipment manually, rear access is used for connections and power. You need both, even if you’ve installed the smartest automation system of the world, for configuration and reboot.

The best access you can have is by pulling out side or rear panels, with enough room for you to go around. This is why you should try to house your AV gear in a central piece of furniture (such as a coffee table or a bar) instead of something close to a bulkhead. Side access can be ok, as long as you have enough room to move around and operate.

If you have no option, think about pull-out shelves or racks. Forget pivoting stands, unless you don’t have many cables. Otherwise, ue only pull-out racks or shelves. This can help you to have a proper rear access, but will not be as good as a full rear panel removed.

Size

Despite your good will, you will not be able to get rid of all cables and wires plugged to your AV equipment. So you need to find a place to house them. Think about size of connectors, cables curve, cables managements items etc… before you agree on the alocated space for your equipment.

Empty volumes around gear will help engineers to install and operate it, and will help air flow to cool the system. If you have a lot of items, you will need forced air extraction and maybe cool air input.

Flexibility

It is very difficult to obtain the perfect location for your system, so you will have to compromise with the interior designer. The one word to keep in mind is FLEXIBLITY. Keep some extra pull-out racks or shelves to use where needed, split your AV rack to have easier access, keep your system simple and reduce the number of electronic ‘boxes’… Discussions with the shipyard and the interior designers can be of great help to find unexpected locations, so use and abuse of their time!

Even the best audiovisual system technician seems not to be aware that power on a yacht is not the same as power in his house or at the factory. But it is.

Because of the nature of the boat and despite all efforts from shipbuilders, power onboard is less reliable than power ashore. You have three main problems with your energy onboard :
• more frequent loss of power
• unclean peaks of energy
• earth problems and induced current

Loss of power

During the build or refit period, the ship is usually unpowered, unless for tests or measurements. Unexpected shutdowns will  happen very often during this period. You can also loose power when the engineers switch power from the generators to the shore lines, or reverse. More rarely you can have unexpected generator failures onboard, with power shut down for several minutes.

Unexpected shutdowns can have various results on audiovisual and IT systems. Electronics equipment, espacially computer based equipment, are very sensitive to power failure. Sometimes you will need to reboot your system and everything will be back on track, but sometimes you may loose saved settings or have hardware problems (power supply damaged, hard disk crashed…).

I have seen HiFi amplifiers loosing there settings after unexpected power failure, or automation controlers crashing with no other option than unplugging and replugging the power socket to reboot them!

Unclean peaks of energy

A boat is working as a small community, with power loads changing frequently. This induce perturbations over the electrical communications, and “peaks” of energy when demending systems are powered on or off. These peaks of energy are not a problem for strong power supplies, which can easily absorb them. But smaller sensitive power supplies can be disrupted, and induce crashes of the equipment they supply. I have seen this happenned a lot with Set Top Boxes, Automation controlers or Mac Minis: these gears crashed and a hard reboot (I mean by unplugging the power supply) was needed to restart the system. Every time, the technician in charge told me “I don’t understand, it never happened at the factory”. And I trusted him: it never happens at the factory, but it always happens onboard!

Earth problems and induced current

Most ships are now build with steel hull and a lighter aluminium superstructure. When in contact, steel and hull are subject to corrosion and to inducced currents, which can result in potential difference between two zones of the boat. To avoid this, shipbuilders link the two parts with a piece of isolation. Problem is you now have several potential zones onboard that might induce disruption and perturbation to your system.

To avoid, or at least reduce, all these problems, you should always follow these recommandations:
• connect your sensitive equipment to UPS (servers, IP switches, antenna controlers, IPBX…). If possible, connect guests and owner audiovisual equipment to UPS as well.
• connect cat5 or cat6 cables shield only on one end (patch panels but not sockets for instance). This will avoid induced current between the patch panel and distant sockets, especially if cables are pulled through different decks.
• use PoE (Power over Ethernet) devices to connect equipment such as Set Top Boxes, Telephones etc… this will help to clean the peaks on the electrical communication and avoid crashes or “freezing”. It will also give you the possibility to reboot equipment remotely and individually.
• always install a specific circuit breaker for the AV system. And open the breaker when you know there will be power disruption.
• always make sure interior designers will leave good access (front and rear) to the system gears. If not, don’t even install the system, as you will not be able to operate it properly!
• simplify your system: the more gears you have, the less reliable your system will be. Instead, make sure you are using all the features of each component of the system : THIS is your added value!