A yacht AV refit in the South of France should not start with a wish list of new equipment. It should start with a controlled scope: what stays, what goes, what depends on what, and what must be proven before the vessel leaves the yard.
For Monaco, Antibes, Cannes, La Ciotat, and Marseille refit windows, the risk is not only whether the new Crestron, video, audio, network, and connectivity hardware can be installed. The bigger question is whether retained displays, speakers, source devices, racks, cable paths, control interfaces, and remote-support assumptions will behave as one system after the refit. Cave Group's marine integration team designs these projects around Crestron marine control, AV distribution, enterprise networking, Starlink Maritime, cellular failover, and supportable handover documentation.
Start With A Retain, Replace, Reuse Inventory
A useful refit scope should separate every visible feature from the infrastructure behind it. Do not write “upgrade salon AV” and call it complete. Inventory each display, source, amplifier, speaker zone, keypad, touch panel, rack device, network switch, access point, camera, processor, and WAN connection.
For each item, mark one of four statuses: retain, replace, reuse after testing, or remove. Then document the dependency that makes the status matter. A retained display may still affect EDID, HDCP, HDR, scaling, HDMI distance, IR control, serial control, mounting depth, and heat. A retained speaker may affect amplifier channel count, impedance, DSP tuning, grille finish, and whether a ceiling needs to be opened. A retained source may affect video routing, control drivers, rack power, licensing, and account access.
This is especially important when moving from a legacy matrix or 3-Series-era Crestron system to a modern Crestron 4-Series and DM NVX architecture. Crestron describes DM NVX as routing digital AV over standard gigabit Ethernet, but also states that DM NVX traffic is multicast by design and that careful network design is critical to deployment. In other words, a refit is not only a box swap; it is a topology decision.
The inventory should also identify which spaces are guest-facing and which are crew-facing. The owner suite, main salon, skylounge, cinema, aft deck, sundeck, bridge, crew mess, and tender bay may all share sources and network infrastructure, but they should not all share the same acceptance criteria. A guest zone may be judged by simple source selection, stable audio, and a clean control page. A crew zone may be judged by diagnostics, labeling, camera access, and fast recovery when a WAN path changes.
Map Control, Network, And Interface Dependencies
Before programming begins, the project manager should have a dependency map that shows how a command travels. For example: a touch panel command may reach a Crestron processor, trigger a DM NVX route, select an audio zone, wake a display, adjust lighting, and depend on a specific VLAN, switch path, and control driver. If any one retained device sits outside that map, the handover test will find it late.
DM NVX deserves special attention. Crestron lists required switch features for DM NVX deployments including 1 Gbps ports for connected endpoints, a nonblocking backplane, Layer 3 switching, IGMPv2 snooping, an IGMPv2 querier, and fast-leave support. Crestron also notes that interswitch uplinks must have enough bandwidth for encoder and decoder traffic, with design allocation of 1 Gbps per device. On a yacht, that means the AV network cannot be treated as spare capacity on an undocumented switch stack.
IGMP settings should be written into the scope, not left as commissioning folklore. Crestron's IGMP documentation says the switch port connected to a DM NVX device must have IGMPv2 or IGMPv3 snooping enabled to prevent multicast traffic from flooding other ports. Its troubleshooting guidance also ties missing or flickering video in multi-endpoint systems to IGMP snooping, multicast address, and querier configuration issues.
The network scope should define:
- Which VLAN or dedicated segment carries DM NVX traffic.
- Which switches carry AV endpoints, control processors, touch panels, servers, and source devices.
- Which uplinks carry multicast traffic between racks or equipment locations.
- Which multicast address ranges are assigned and reserved.
- Which devices require DHCP, DNS, RADIUS, Active Directory, or other services.
- Which unused ports are disabled and which rack locations are physically secured.
- Which device names appear in Crestron, switch, and support dashboards.
The interface scope should be just as explicit. Touch panels, keypads, handheld remotes, crew tablets, bridge controls, and mobile apps should have defined roles. A guest interface should not expose engineering complexity. A crew interface should not hide the information needed to recover a zone, verify a WAN path, or confirm whether an endpoint is online.
Define WAN And Remote-Support Assumptions
Connectivity should be scoped as an operating assumption, not a promise that every sea state and cruising area behaves the same. Cave Group's marine systems commonly combine Starlink Maritime, cellular failover, and UniFi network distribution where appropriate for the vessel. Peplink describes SpeedFusion as a bonding system that can use connections such as satellite, cellular, DSL, cable, Ethernet, or fiber, and its platform includes InControl remote management. That supports the design logic behind multi-WAN planning, but the refit scope still needs to state which links are installed, prioritized, monitored, and allowed to carry remote support.
For a South of France yard period, document the difference between dockside commissioning and underway operation. A system may pass tests on shore power with yard internet nearby, then behave differently when relying on the vessel's maritime WAN stack. The acceptance plan should therefore include WAN priority, failover behavior, guest and crew network separation, VPN or remote-access policy, support authority, and what happens when remote access is not available.
This is where Cave Watch should be kept distinct from alarm and live video monitoring. Cave Watch 24/7 is Cave Group's managed support and remote monitoring program for installed systems. Cave Watch Central is alarm monitoring using Alarm.com and a UL-listed central station. Deep Sentinel is live guard video monitoring. A yacht AV refit scope should say which support layer applies to the vessel technology package and which security or monitoring layers, if any, are separately included.
Acceptance Tests Before The Vessel Leaves The Yard
A clean handover is not a meeting where everyone agrees the system looks good. It is a test record that proves replaced and retained systems work together.
For AV, test every source-to-display route that the owner, guests, and crew will actually use. Include retained sources, retained displays, HDR and non-HDR content where relevant, audio-follow-video behavior, display wake and power-off, volume control, surround modes, deck audio zones, and any cinema or Kaleidescape paths in scope. Crestron's troubleshooting material links video problems to EDID, HDCP, cable termination, unsupported resolutions, multicast configuration, and IGMP querier behavior, so those items should be visible in the test plan.
For control, test each interface by role. The owner-facing controls should confirm common scenes and source selections without exposing unnecessary technical choices. Crew controls should confirm service states, fault visibility, labeling, and reset procedures. Bridge or engineering interfaces should match the vessel's operating model rather than a residential keypad template copied onto a yacht.
For the network, record switch configuration, VLANs, endpoint names, IP addressing method, multicast ranges, uplink capacity, wireless SSIDs, guest and crew segmentation, and remote-management access. For connectivity, test WAN priority, failover, remote diagnostics, and what support can see when the vessel is no longer on the yard network.
For documentation, collect as-built rack elevations, network diagrams, endpoint lists, cable labels, credential handoff rules, support contacts, warranty records, and the agreed change log. The goal is simple: the next technician, captain, owner representative, or support engineer should be able to understand the system without reverse-engineering the refit.
A refit yard window is too valuable to spend discovering dependencies after panels close and the vessel is preparing to depart. A disciplined scope and acceptance checklist gives the owner a better system, gives the captain clearer operating information, and gives the project manager a defensible handover.