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Water at your Fingertips by Paola Bertelli

The desalinator is promoted from engine room to plotter. The new Part-Net Interface system by HP Watermakers makes it possible for the unit to interact with the on-board electronics and enables remote management via an Internet link

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ntegration is the magic word in the world of on-board elec-

plotter, and if the device is part of the network it’s possible to turn on

tronics, describing a system that’s smart, user-friendly and

and switch off the device, reset the alarms and monitor its operation

innovative – and it’s a concept for which there’s a growing

and data from a smartphone, tablet or computer. The machine’s log

demand. Now we can also talk about integration when the

can also be displayed, along with the record of alarms and use.

subject is desalinators, those useful devices that until recently lan-

“We at HP have brought the desalinator out of the engine room”,

guished out of sight in the engine room. Their sudden rise in status

says Gianni Zucco, co-founder of HP Watermakers along with his

is down to HP Watermakers, an Italian company that may be small

father Luciano and mother Valeria Grossi, “By enabling it to interface

when compared to the multinational giants it competes against but

on the on-board plotter through our Part-Net Interface system. This

is also flexible and above all highly innovative.

differentiates us from our competitors and means our equipment

Its great strength is its totally automatic desalinators, which can now

operates on another level completely, one where pure technology is

interface with plotters, which means system functions, monitoring

transformed into luxury and true comfort”.

and maintenance can be managed directly from the helm console

HP initiated this evolution in their desalinators in 2002, when the

The automatic HP Watermakers desalinators. The Part-Net Interface system is currently compatibile with Garmin, Raymarine, Furuno, Simrad, B&G and Lowrance plotters. The system displays on the plotters (the three images at the bottom) are synoptic or analogue

company patented the RP TRONIC valve, enabling them to launch

screen. We’re a small firm, so it’s a great source of pride to take our

the first machines capable of self-management, introducing a new

place beside the Raymarine apps, and it’s also very useful business-

concept of automation into a market that until that point had featured

wise for us”.

only essentially manual systems. They did not stop there, though

The system is in constant development, and the latest release also

– HP took another important step forward in 2017 by offering the

enables users to manage alarms with directions to links and tutorials

opportunity to control their automatic desalinators remotely via their

for immediate problem solving without having to involve yards and

BiBi system, and two years later the company initiated the interface

maintenance services. This progress is made possible by a connec-

process that has now made the Part-Net system compatible with

tion that’s becoming an increasingly common feature of on-board

Garmin, Raymarine, Furuno, Simrad, B&G and Lowrance plotters.

equipment, making it possible to design smarter, more customisable

“We’re one of the third-party apps on Raymarine sets”, Gianni Zucco

systems that enhance comfort and safety at sea.

continues, “So by default our icon appears on the plotters’ home