Are paper charts a dinosaur?

[sailorboy1]

I still carry chart books because I like them for planning better than using my chartplotter. Plus they allow a bigger picture than I can read on chartplotter once I zoom out.

[colemj]

Those chart books have a big label on them that says "not for navigation" - some people here think you are taking your life in your hands by using them!

Mark

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by colemj

Those chart books have a big label on them that says "not for navigation" - some people here think you are taking your life in your hands by using them!

Mark

The Maptech books? But I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere it says the same about the chip cards that go into the chartplotter

[colemj]

Yes, the Maptech books. And the entire joke was about that label being present on chart plotters splash screens and constantly being brought up by the paper people.

Mark

[Cadence]

Originally Posted by MarkJ

If you ever went anywhere you would change your attitude. A circumnavigation in paper charts we worked out on this forum a few years ago casts $15,000


Pay that out and then tell me

I don't doubt that a bit but the weekend sailor isn't circumnavigating.

Maybe the paper desire is what you grew up with prior to RDF or it being out of price range.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Cadence

I don't doubt that a bit but the weekend sailor isn't circumnavigating.

Maybe the paper desire is what you grew up with prior to RDF or it being out of price range.

Of course most weekend sailors are usually pretty familiar with the area and could get to a safe location without any charts.

I know I could get to most of the local destinations without a chart. I wouldn't take some of the shortcuts that are harder to find but that seems a reasonable trade off during the appocolypse.

[Cadence]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

Of course most weekend sailors are usually pretty familiar with the area and could get to a safe location without any charts.

I know I could get to most of the local destinations without a chart. I wouldn't take some of the shortcuts that are harder to find but that seems a reasonable trade off during the appocolypse.

How did we get for $15,000 dollars to none? My point was the weekend sailor probably only needs to spend a couple of bucks on charts. If he has a GPS plotter probably nothing. You don't need either if your a yacht club sailor, sitting at the bar after rounding the buoys. You're right, no charts or nav. equipment needed. I concede.

[jkindredpdx]

Originally Posted by colemj

Mind saying what tablet you are using? None get their positioning from wifi, so I don't understand what you mean there. Some can triangulate off of cell towers, but this isn't the way they navigate. None that I know of "switch" between cell and GPS for positioning. All of them will use a cell triangulation to get a faster initial GPS fix - then stay on the GPS fix.

In what way does it not work for navigation?
Mark

Recognize my understanding is pretty rudimentary. I am running OpenCPN on an ASUS T200TA with Win8, no Cell card and onboard GPS Geolocation. There's actually some description in a couple threads under OpenCPN of my bebugging effort with help of RhythmDoctor http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...pn-135663.html. I also exchanged emails with Petr the author of GeolocationTCP, which is a handy app and seemed to work. I previously used OpenCPN with the GlobalSAT BU353 on my Acer Aspire One and ASUS T100, neither of which had onboard GPS. With the T200 and onboard GPS, it appeared my Geolocation was coming from router SSIDs in my area whether I was connected or not and my location was updated every 28 seconds. When I turned WiFi off, GeolocationTCP updated every 1 second, but OpenCPN didn't pick up my location. With WiFi on, but out on the water away from routers, GeolocationTCP seemed to pick up a signal every 1 second, but OpenCPN was unreliable. At one point OpenCPN put me in Bellingham Wa while GeolocationTCP put me correctly on Mt Hood in Oregon. When I told OpenCPN to use my USB GlobalSAT BU353 GPS receiver OpenCPN worked fine. I admit I'm using opensource software (which I think is pretty good) but my problems seemed to be related to the Win8 access of the Onboard GPS chip.

As for smartphones etc. I was talking about A-GPS Assisted GPS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia... and yes, I've used an iPhone, and a Win8 tablet on the water and the mountains. I'm just recommending people test their GPS in a few scenerios, like deep canyons and cell dark spots, before assuming they will work. The situation where OpenCPN thought I was 300 miles away in Bellingham, I was in a no cell signal zone on Mt Hood but there was a WiFi router and DSL in the cabin.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by jkindredpdx

Recognize my understanding is pretty rudimentary. I am running OpenCPN on an ASUS T200TA with Win8, no Cell card and onboard GPS Geolocation. There's actually some description in a couple threads under OpenCPN of my bebugging effort with help of RhythmDoctor http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...pn-135663.html. I also exchanged emails with Petr the author of GeolocationTCP, which is a handy app and seemed to work. I previously used OpenCPN with the GlobalSAT BU353 on my Acer Aspire One and ASUS T100, neither of which had onboard GPS. With the T200 and onboard GPS, it appeared my Geolocation was coming from router SSIDs in my area whether I was connected or not and my location was updated every 28 seconds. When I turned WiFi off, GeolocationTCP updated every 1 second, but OpenCPN didn't pick up my location. With WiFi on, but out on the water away from routers, GeolocationTCP seemed to pick up a signal every 1 second, but OpenCPN was unreliable. At one point OpenCPN put me in Bellingham Wa while GeolocationTCP put me correctly on Mt Hood in Oregon. When I told OpenCPN to use my USB GlobalSAT BU353 GPS receiver OpenCPN worked fine. I admit I'm using opensource software (which I think is pretty good) but my problems seemed to be related to the Win8 access of the Onboard GPS chip.

As for smartphones etc. I was talking about A-GPS Assisted GPS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia... and yes, I've used an iPhone, and a Win8 tablet on the water and the mountains. I'm just recommending people test their GPS in a few scenerios, like deep canyons and cell dark spots, before assuming they will work. The situation where OpenCPN thought I was 300 miles away in Bellingham, I was in a no cell signal zone on Mt Hood but there was a WiFi router and DSL in the cabin.

Ooooooooh..... my brain hurts...

My too smart for its own good phone has been 'offline' since I passed through Sydney yesterday on my way to Auckland (I don't have an unzud sim card).... google maps still thinks I'm in NE Victoria...

[Jon Eisberg]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Ooooooooh..... my brain hurts...

I'm lucky, in that regard... When reading something like that, my eyes begin to glaze over, before my brain really starts hurting... ;-)

I suppose that's the way dinosaurs were wired, no?

[zboss]

I had a previous job as the "Can you hear me now guy" for Verizon working out of their headquarters in New Jersey. I would travel Central America (mostly places you really really do not want to be with 3 laptops and 15 cell phones, alone), Canada, and the Caribbean testing the network integration points between those countries towers/network switches and verizons in the US.

Since iphone 3 all iphones have been true GPS. YES they are A-GPS but that just means assisted and is uses this ADDITIONAL technology to help with a fix that is more accurate than could be achieved otherwise. The issue with the GPS in these phones is that they are an integrated design, built right into the main CPU and are not standalone nor the best GPS designs available. You only have so much space and power that can be used in these applications with these batteries, so A-GPS helps keep accuracy up and power utilization down. In addition, the phones don't have a very good GPS antenna.

The iphones can take more than 10 minutes to get a good fix when out of cellular range or even longer if the reception is poor because of clouds, weather, trees, your bimini - all because the chip is not a GOOD gps and the antenna is not a GOOD gps antenna.

In addition, not all developers use the GPS APIs very well. Many are lazy or choose not use all the API methods available. For example... there are two properties in the locationmanager one called "desiredAccuracy" and another called "distanceFilter".

The desiredaccuracy can be set at pretty much any value but you don't want to make it too small because it uses way too much power when outside of cellular range because it forced the chip to keep looking for and calculating changes in position much more that when you are in cellular position. SO, many developers will simply set the value higher when outside of cellular range.

The distancefilter measures the distance between new movements. Same deal. Outside of range they usually set this value much higher.

Here is the issue: many developers ASSUME you are going to be within cell range because if you are not you probably don't need a lot of accuracy or they don't set any value for being outside of cell range. Thus an uninitiated value may be set, which can be fairly random in the C language world; or some hugely large value arbitrarily set because the developer doesn't have requirements for the system to function any particular way outside of cell range.

Anyhow... its a hardware AND software issue but the GPS in the iphone is a true GPS.

[Jammer Six]

That's interesting information.

Do you have any citations for any of these claims?

[nohal]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS
The rest is hardly being publicly available in an easy to understand way, but sounds pretty credible and at a quick sight has no "what he says sucks" in it, although I don't do development for mobile platforms directly.

Pavel

[Jammer Six]

The reason I asked for citations is because it does not match what I understand, and I'm interested in the truth. I've seen other claims borne out by results, and the results and the claims do not match what he says.

As an interesting aside, we have a bona-fide resident expert here, the man who sells iNavX.

I can understand there being reasons for him to avoid this conversation, but statements on these matters from him I, for one, would accept as fact.

Otherwise, if zboss can provide citations, then we can all learn the truth.

If there are no citations it's yet another internet post.

[Adelie]

Originally Posted by Jammer Six

If there are no citations it's yet another internet post.

Even with citations it's "yet another internet post". For that matter your post that I am responding to is "yet another internet post". And my response is also "yet another internet post". Wow! Three different "yet another internet posts" all referred to in one paragraph. I think this is becoming a little meta.


Adelie