Custom
Electronics for the Vessels, Platforms, and Systems That Operate at
Sea
IEC 60945-aware marine electronics development for commercial vessels, offshore platforms, and autonomous surface vessels. NMEA 2000 and NMEA 0183 firmware implemented natively. Vessel monitoring, offshore instrumentation, and USV navigation electronics engineered with classification society type approval processes in mind — from the first schematic to fleet deployment.
The Problem We Solve
Marine Electronics Operates in the Most Hostile Electrical Environment Short of Space — and the Nearest Repair Technician May Be 2,000 Miles Away.
Marine electronics operates in an environment that commercial and industrial-grade hardware was never designed for: continuous salt air corrosion that attacks component surfaces and connector interfaces over months; 100% sustained relative humidity in machinery spaces where condensation cycles daily; wave-induced vibration at 3–15Hz that fatigues commercial-grade solder joints within 6 to 18 months of installation; green water ingress loads that routinely exceed IP56 requirements on weather deck equipment; and an electromagnetic environment where kilowatt-scale radar transmitters, high-frequency SSB radio systems, and megawatt-scale propulsion inverters operate simultaneously on the same steel hull. The nearest repair technician when something fails may be on the other side of an ocean, days from port. Hardware reliability is not a performance metric in this environment — it is a safety and commercial survival requirement.
Classification societies — DNV, ABS, Lloyd's Register, Bureau Veritas, and ClassNK — exist because the consequences of marine electronics failure have historically been measured in vessel loss, cargo loss, and human life. Their type approval processes exist because every failure mode you might discover late in a product development cycle has already been catalogued by surveyors who have investigated those failures at sea. IEC 60945 defines the environmental test program because it was built from historical evidence of what marine environments actually do to electronics over time. A custom marine electronics developer who approaches type approval as a compliance checkbox — rather than as a design discipline that shapes component selection, PCB finish, enclosure specification, and test methodology from the first schematic — will encounter classification surveyors who are not easily satisfied with after-the-fact fixes. Marine electronics development must be built from classification society rules and IEC 60945 requirements from the first design review.
Three forces are creating sustained demand for custom marine electronics engineering. The IMO GHG Strategy and CII rating system are imposing binding carbon performance obligations on vessel operators, creating demand for precision fuel consumption monitoring, exhaust emissions measurement, and voyage optimization electronics beyond what existing vessel automation systems can deliver. The commercial transition toward remotely operated and autonomously navigated surface vessels is creating demand for custom navigation sensor suites, COLREGs-aware collision avoidance electronics, and fail-safe remote control firmware that does not yet exist as a standardized commercial product. And the offshore energy transition — floating wind, subsea power cable infrastructure, offshore hydrogen production — is creating demand for new monitoring and control electronics in environments where the oil and gas industry's existing technology catalog was never designed to operate.
Marine Electronics Across the Full Vessel and Platform Stack
From vessel alarm management system hardware and NMEA 2000 navigation interfaces to offshore structural health monitoring and USV autonomous navigation electronics.
IEC 60945-compliant design from component selection — salt fog resistant materials, conformal coating specification, IP56 and IP67 enclosure design for bridge and deck equipment, vibration qualification to IEC 60068-2-6 for machinery space installation. EMC design for the shipboard electromagnetic environment in the presence of kilowatt-scale radar transmitters and high-frequency SSB radio systems. ATEX and IECEx Zone 1 and Zone 2 awareness for hazardous area electronics on tankers and gas carriers.
NMEA 0183 sentence encoding and decoding across standard talkers and listeners. NMEA 2000 device implementation: PGN design and registration, J1939-derived physical layer, network management protocol, NAME management for multi-instance devices. IEC 61162 compliant navigation data firmware. Modbus RTU and TCP for machinery monitoring integration. AIS message encoding and decoding. Satellite firmware for Iridium, Inmarsat, and VSAT communication interfaces.
Custom electronics for offshore oil and gas, floating wind, and subsea applications. Topside instrumentation interfaces for FPSOs and semi-submersibles. Subsea umbilical termination unit electronics. Mooring tension and riser angle monitoring hardware. Dynamic positioning sensor interfaces — motion reference unit, wind sensor, and draught sensor electronics. ATEX Zone 1 and Zone 2 compliance awareness for offshore hazardous area equipment.
Vessel performance monitoring and predictive maintenance from operational data streams. Main engine degradation prediction from exhaust gas temperature trend analysis. Turbocharger performance monitoring and compressor map deviation detection. Propulsion shaft bearing wear prediction from vibration signature analysis. Computer vision for hull condition assessment, corrosion mapping, and anode wastage monitoring from ROV and drone imagery. Voyage optimization integrating hull performance, trim, speed profile, and weather routing data.
Full-stack electronics and firmware for unmanned surface vessels — navigation sensor fusion integrating GNSS, radar, AIS, lidar, and camera inputs. COLREGs-aware collision avoidance with deterministic response to encounter scenarios. Satellite communications for beyond-line-of-sight remote control via Iridium and Inmarsat. Fail-safe loss-of-link autonomous behavior firmware — deterministic safe state protocols for communication-interrupted scenarios. ROV thruster control and sensor payload firmware for remotely operated underwater vehicles.
MARPOL Annex VI compliance hardware — exhaust gas scrubber monitoring, fuel oil sulfur content measurement, NOx sensor interfaces, and black carbon emissions monitoring. Ballast water treatment system monitoring for BWMS Code compliance. CII data collection platforms with verified fuel consumption measurement. EU ETS MRV reporting systems. Alternative fuel monitoring electronics for LNG, methanol, and ammonia propulsion systems.
Platforms & Protocols
Built on Marine-Grade Platforms
Why Engineering Teams Choose Ankh
Designed for the Sea, Not the Shore
IEC 60945 environmental qualification is not a test certificate applied to a finished product — it is a design discipline that governs component selection from the first schematic. Salt fog resistance starts with tin-lead or ENIG PCB finish selection and connector material specification. Conformal coating selection depends on the specific chemistry of the marine atmosphere and the thermal cycling profile of the installation. IP56 for bridge equipment and IP67 for machinery space and deck equipment are enclosure design requirements, not product specifications. Vibration qualification to IEC 60068-2-6 for machinery space installation means the PCB layout, component mounting, and connector retention mechanisms were designed to survive years of continuous propulsion machinery vibration — not tested against it after the fact. EMC design for the shipboard environment means the hardware was designed knowing that a 50kW S-band marine radar may be transmitting from an antenna metres above the installation point. Ankh designs for this environment from component selection, not from the type approval test report.
Protocol Fluent at the Firmware Level
NMEA 2000 is not a protocol you integrate with a pre-built gateway — it is a protocol you implement. The J1939-derived physical layer with its 250kbps bit rate, 120-ohm termination, and NMEA 2000 certified cable requirements; the network management protocol with address claiming and NAME management for multi-instance devices across a multi-talker vessel network; the PGN design process including fast-packet transmission for messages that exceed a single 8-byte CAN frame; and the device certification requirements for hardware connecting to NMEA 2000 certified equipment — all of these are firmware and hardware-level design decisions, not integration problems solved with a purchased module. The same depth applies to NMEA 0183 sentence structure and multi-talker bus arbitration, AIS message encoding and decoding, Modbus exception handling and register mapping, and Iridium SBD protocol implementation — all built from the specification, not from example code.
Classification Society Aware
DNV, ABS, Lloyd's Register, Bureau Veritas, and ClassNK are not certification bodies that issue marine certificates to finished hardware — they are technical regulatory organizations whose class rules define the engineering requirements for marine electronics from the first design review. Type approval is not an endorsement that the product performed adequately in a type test — it is a statement that the product was designed to class rules, tested to the required IEC standards, and reviewed by a surveyor whose professional judgment depends on not approving hardware that will fail at sea. Submitting a finished product to a classification surveyor without engagement during design is the single most reliable way to encounter expensive redesign requirements. Ankh engages classification requirements during design — SOLAS alarm management system compliance, MARPOL emissions monitoring hardware requirements, IMO navigation equipment performance standards, and IACS unified requirements are all design inputs, not compliance checkboxes applied after the engineering work is complete.
Remote Fleet Capable
A vessel on a 60-day ocean voyage cannot wait for a service engineer to fly to the next port of call. The hardware and firmware architecture decisions that support remote fleet operation — satellite OTA firmware update delivery via Iridium SBD or VSAT, remote monitoring and alarm management from shore-based operations centers, offline-capable vessel management applications that synchronize when connectivity is available, and hardware designed to degrade gracefully under partial system failure rather than triggering complete system loss — must be designed in from program inception. Ankh designs marine electronics with the 2,000-nautical-mile repair constraint in mind: watchdog supervision, power loss data protection, redundant communications paths, graceful degradation architecture, and the remote diagnostic instrumentation that allows operations center engineers to diagnose a hardware problem on a vessel in the South Pacific without waiting for it to arrive at the next port of call.
Integrated Performance Monitoring System for a 34-Vessel Tanker Fleet
Custom vessel performance monitoring unit integrating shaft power measurement, fuel flow across 4 fuel systems, hull speed log, trim and draught sensors, weather data, and NMEA 2000 navigation data. Fleet deployment via satellite OTA update from operations center to 34 vessels without dry-dock or port visit required. Shore-based analytics delivering real-time CII performance ratings, voyage optimization recommendations, and fleet benchmark data to the shipowner's technical management team.
Start a Similar ProjectEngineering electronics for the sea? Let's build it seaworthy.
IEC 60945 marine environmental design from the first component selection. NMEA 2000, NMEA 0183, AIS, and Modbus firmware implemented natively — no gateway middleware adding failure points to safety-critical monitoring systems. Classification society type approval awareness from design review to vessel commissioning.
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