Are There Only Two Anchor Drag Alarm Apps Available for the iPad ?

[endoftheroad]

If so, which one would be good for my new iPad?
Ships compass?

I have recently downloaded Navionics and can't find either feature provided with the App.

Thanks

[ActiveCaptain]

There are 4 standalone anchor alarm apps for the iPhone. There is also an anchor alarm in iNavX. None of them are anything you'd want to use on even the calmest of nights. They are all pretty bad and all suffer from the requirement to perfectly set them up when you first drop the anchor. Heaven forbid that doesn't go perfectly or you want to change something about your anchor setup.

If you get any of the apps, make sure to try them and experiment a bunch before using them for real.

Navionics does not have an anchor alarm in their app.

[endoftheroad]

That was a lot of great info.

Thank you.


compass?

[zeehag]

best anchor alarm is you and your eyes.

[endoftheroad]

[QUOTE=zeehag;573683]best anchor alarm is you and your eyes.[/QUOTE



Agreed, but since I have a piece of equipment already purchased and sitting there it seems as if it couldn't hurt to use it.

[CaptPaul-]

I agree with Zeehag on this one. It's always tuff to crack open the hatch and get your bearings in the middle of the night but it really is the best. I have a high frequency hearing loss. And I can't hear those little alarms any way. My Garmin has an alarm but it's a really small speaker. I do hope that there will be an iPad app that has a good buzzer. Maybe in the future.

[ActiveCaptain]

Originally Posted by zeehag

best anchor alarm is you and your eyes.

It's just when that silly thing called sleeping gets in the way...

[zeehag]

can ye rig an alarm with a bright light inside cabinhouse?/ that way everyone is alerted to the dragging situation-- but i find my best anchor drag alarm is my own eyeballs--i can almost FEEL the boat lose holding--my kat can-is best alarm i know. warm and fuzzy , too..lol...\
problem is--i told my sailing partner that boat was dragging a couple of different times--he didnt believe me. then when he could SEE the boat flying into something, oops-- there were a couple of places in gulf coast wherein the holding was bad-- silt over shale. was fine until a big wind blew and storms came on....i never sleep in winds and storms. i cook and i read and i play online--but i do not sleep. something always happens .... is why is called anchor WATCH...anchor watch parties are FUN!!

[ActiveCaptain]

I'd also like my anchor alarm to let me know if the boat is moving near the outside of my expected area when I'm off the boat too. That's a pretty important function and easy to do with internet connected phones today.

[zeehag]

we were able to measure with gps the swing and correct if needed but i still choose my eyes over gps, as my eyes were trained well how to take a bearing. my partner uses gps nearly exclusively and not eyeballs as much as i do---with no moon i will use both eyes nd gps--that info can be useful--esp the depth--that will tell for sure that you are dragging-- proximity of fort jefferson worked well also!

[hellosailor]

Bear in mind that all "cell phone" GPSes, including the iPad, are not WAAS-enabled. For coastal US sailors that means "here" is a 15-meter circle instead of a 3-meter circle and your anchor can drag a whole lot more (24 meters more?) before the alarm goes off, unless you have it falsing from position error.

Good as a backup, but not a replacement for a real GPS.

[ActiveCaptain]

With SA turned off, the iPad provides very good GPS accuracy. I often see 15' accuracy including below deck. The iPhone 4 generally provides 15-30'. All older iPhones don't provide enough accuracy from my experience.

One nice thing about iOS Location Services is that it provides the accuracy of the lat/lon received so it can be used in the calculation to help limit false positive alarms.

There are some GPS add-ons for iPads and iPod Touch's that do provide a WAAS GPS (Bad Elf).

[hellosailor]

"very good GPS accuracy"
If we just stick to "very good"...traditional navigators might say 2/10ths of a mile is exceedingly good navigation.<G>

And ignoring the various assisted GPS (AGPS, including iOS) modes that cell phones normally are configured to use when able, because technically, that's AGPS not GPS, and it normally still won't give you WAAS accuracy.

I think it is a sad comment on mass marketing, and the mass market, that a $35 GPS can run rings (position circles?<G>) around the finest cell phone on the market. Because cell phones, even the top Smart Phones, are marketed on cosmetics and frills rather than those pesky numbers and performance criteria. Even the best of them.

"No, that's not a bug, you just can't hold your phone that way, it blocks the signal."
Ahuh, Sure Mister Jobs. (sigh.)

[ActiveCaptain]

Originally Posted by hellosailor

"very good GPS accuracy"
If we just stick to "very good"...traditional navigators might say 2/10ths of a mile is exceedingly good navigation.

You'd have a point if I hadn't mentioned that the accuracy reported is typically 15'. That's about as good as you can get. With multiple WAAS based GPS devices, I can often get to 9' of accuracy. If a difference of 6' in position is an issue while underway, perhaps the boat shouldn't be moving. Heck, most cruising boats have twice that beam!

Originally Posted by hellosailor

"No, that's not a bug, you just can't hold your phone that way, it blocks the signal."
Ahuh, Sure Mister Jobs. (sigh.)

I have 25 cell phones. Counted them this Summer. It's because I develop software for them. But anyway, I tried all of them to see if I could diminish the signal by holding them in a way that would cover the antenna location. Guess what? Every one lost most of its "bar" display by holding it in the right (wrong?) place.

The problem is nothing new although Apple's metal frame probably made it a little more sensitive. The line was also like a "press here" bullseye. It's interesting that none of the 24 other products offered me a free case to help eliminate the problem.

[hellosailor]

Jeffrey, if they're getting 15 feet without WAAS using GPS alone that's pretty good. Of course, if they are using A-GPS, as most default to, then they are using WAAS information obtained over the internet or cellular data services to correct their GPS position. Which is fine, if you have that connection. I'm not sure if I'd call having cellular connectivity in an anchorage a good thing or a bad thing, I suppose it woudl depend on why I was there.<G>

What kind of position accuracy do you get, with a phone or pad manually set to raw GPS only, all forms of assistance disabled? (That's often a secret menu and not always available to the user.)

My cell phone is so crude it actually has an antenna. Not much of an antenna, what Chelsea Handler would call a "nubbin". But it does stick up out of the case, and there's no way you would cover it with your hand in any normal way of holding it.

"The problem is nothing new " You're sure right about that. And Apple's should have hired engineers who were old enough to use televisions with RABBIT EAR ANTENNAS. Any older moron can tell you, when some wetware grabs hold of some antenna, that's going to change how everything works. For better or worse, depending on the design. But it will alter the antenna. What, are they hiring engineers out of grade school now?

AFAIK Apple was the first to botch it that badly, What others have typically done is move the antenna inside the rear cover, where your palm is guaranteed to block the signal. I know at least one smartphone maker is using diversity antennas (two patches in two places in the phone) in order to work around this. It costs them a little more, but ensures that wherever your hand is, the phone uses the other antenna.