How far are we away from 100% iPad / PC navigation?

[zeehag]

mebbe in my next life, but no t now--i dont see any use for a puter in my cockpit.

mebbe because i learned from old salt with only a lead line, knot log and a compass.......he also had a sextant, but didnt need to use it in hudson river....

[MarkJ]

The two companies that should be worried are Raymarine and Garmin. They have both been superseded by PCs. iPads are Ok but without the mouse they are pretty useless.
See how fast you can plot a course, adjust a route, etc on OpenCpn on a PC and then try it on IPad, or chart plotter. PC wins hands down.

Companies facing bankruptcy due to bad products can remain in business for years... FLIR has just bought Raymarine so with its injection of cash Raymarine might survive for ages...
Commercial reality wil head for the PCs And Androids.... Not necessarily iPads. Android can change, iPad is set in its ways of refusing third party software, peripherals etc like a mouse.

IPads battery life means one could do the whole Atlantic without recharging if necessary!

I any event we are looking forward to an exciting future! The next ten years will shake the industry out into some wonderful, cheaper, more safer, more accurate products, easy to use and that let us explore more areas acurately and safely.

Viva Progress!

[tartansail]

We have an older Raymarine unit linked into the ST60+ wind, depth, speed and the Ray AP head. We use paper and the iPad for trip planning. The paper is for giving the trip overview. The iPad plays multiple roles. iNavX with Navionics charts is used for route building once the overview is in place. Charts and Tides gives us Active Captain to help us with choices about stopovers, fuel, food, etc. Tide Graph complements Eldredge to help us with timing passages to ride favorable tides.

Underway, we use the iPad to track our route. We tend to put single waypoints into the MFD if we're using the AP or the radar. On AP, we'll use MFD to steer to a waypoint or, occasionally, a wind angle. If the weather is bad, the iPad is in a ziplock bag or below at the chart table. We don't have AIS. When we get it, I plan to put in a wireless MUX to send data to the iPad. This year, I'll be working from the boat in season so will have my laptop. However, I don't see a need for it as a navigation tool.

[ArtM]

My comment on this is not based on hard experience, but on perception and extrapolation of related experiences:

I think if your navigation needs are sophisticated enough that you require (or desire) radar overlay, then they are probably sophisticated enough to warrant a dedicated device. Tablets are fun to play with, and nice to have as a backup, as a planning tool, or as an occasional navigation aid for the occasional cruiser, but my feeling is that extended repeated use will find the tablet/laptop solution lacking. It is clumsy and poorly fit for the job at hand, for the reasons you yourself mentioned.

However, it surely can be done. You yourself might be a contributor to the functionality you're suggesting, if you have any technology/software skills.

I don't think the manufacturers will be quick to integrate their sensors with OpenCPN, or similar apps, as they have no revenue or sales stream and are therefore difficult to market against. Again, I'm extrapolating from experience in other technology areas, and have no hard understanding of marine-specific marketing

[ArtM]

Originally Posted by MarkJ

IPads battery life means one could do the whole Atlantic without recharging if necessary!

IPads are well engineered, but their long battery life is largely due to their strict controls over the software engineering and implementation process. A cleverly calculated marketing and engineer strategy straight from the mouth of Steve Jobs, it has alienated some but has made great fans of many.

For the rest of us, an Android tablet and reliable access to power are the keys to achieving our single-device Nirvana.

[Maine Sail]

Quote: "How far are we away from 100% iPad / PC navigation?"

Based on today's experiences in a warm dry home hopefully not for a long while.

The iPad 2 has frozen on us for the third time today. I know "doesn't happen with Apple products" ..Sure...My MacBook Pro is also on the fritz and does not like the latest version of Mozilla, hell it doesn't like much that I actually want to use, without running it as a Windows machine.....

Our four week old top end desktop computer with Windows 8 is the biggest JOKE I have seen come out of Microsoft in a long while. If I could go back to Windows 7 I would in a heart beat. Microsoft BONED ME on Windows 8, IT SUCKS!!!!! Spent nearly four hours yesterday trying to sort out why none of the internet connections would work for more than 20 minutesand this is just ONE of the many issues on this brand new machine.What a complete and utter joke.That said our Garmin plotters have not so much as hiccuped in the time we've owned them. I can see them in the bright sun, I can't see the iPad, I can use them in down pours, I can display my radar on it and it is built to take the marine environment. I bought a number of navigation apps for the iPad and have been utterly disappointed in it as anything more than a glorified toy for our 5 year old or for playing our music on.

I do have a dedicated Windows 7 laptop for navigation but use it only as a back up to the many back ups I already have. I use it for plotting courses but that is about it because it is soooooooo power hungry it borders on ridiculous, especially compared to our Garmin plotter which is a real miser..... I keep my options open but as of yet have not found anything compter based that has proven as reliable, easy to use or as glitch free as our Garmin plotter.

[rebel heart]

Originally Posted by jackdale

I do have OpenCPN on a netbook, a Garmin 76CX and a Android phone with Navionics. But I still use paper.

Same for me on the west coast of the US / Mexico / Baja. I also have an Android tablet.

Successfully have been using paper and in general I'd put my nav chops up against electronics user. My ETA's are more accurate because I still take the time to calc set and drift and do all that noise. I can sit in the cockpit with other sailors with charts and make plans, or carry it over to a bar in my backpack. Hell I think I even fish better because it's really easy to see sea mounts and cliffs when navigating so making course adjustments to take advantage of undersea surface area is much more common.

I dig OpenCPN for route planning. There have been a few times (like when crossing the Sea of Cortez) that my paper charts didn't "connect" and I needed an accurate rhumbline to shoot. For feature-less water that doesn't require piloting skills I'd take OpenCPN. Once I'm in an area covered by paper, the paper rules the roost.

I know I sound like a broken record, but I'll bet solid money that the 5-day-old catamaran that went up on the rocks had electronic navigation and someone who would argue that it was just as good or better than paper.

You aren't good at what you don't practice, and there's not a lot of good that comes from being a less-adept navigator on an ocean going vessel.

Sorry for the brunt force opinion.

[mikereed100]

How far are we away from 100% iPad / PC navigation?

I'm already there. I use open CPN on a 10" netbook with a 12v plug. Uses something like 10 watts and allows me to use a mouse which is so much faster than buttons or touch screen. I use a laptop with a 15" screen when the engine is running or the sun is out. One caveat; we have a pilot-house cat and the nav station never sees spray.
We have an MFD but use it only for the radar display. We also have paper charts as backup because we are all only a lightning strike away from the 19th century. All of my non-marine electronics have been very reliable as long as they are kept out of direct contact with water.

[David M]

Originally Posted by mikereed100

All of my non-marine electronics have been very reliable as long as they are kept out of direct contact with water.

Same here, and on a research vessel I have a LOT of non-marine electronics. Take any electronics outside and it had better be designed from the beginning to get hosed down with salt water.


Re: How far are we away from 100% iPad / PC navigation?

So from a recreational sailboat perspective we are not yet there. Cheap, waterproof and truly functional are still pretty much mutually exclusive.

[Sailor_Hutch]

Originally Posted by rebel heart

You aren't good at what you don't practice, and there's not a lot of good that comes from being a less-adept navigator on an ocean going vessel.

Sorry for the brunt force opinion.

RebelHeart has that one nailed. Yep - the smarter we make the programs and gizmos, the dumber we become as a society.

Most users of cell phones and other tether-type electronic devices are truly clueless when requirements in the field go beyond a few memorized button pushes. This pool of thought goes far beyond the simple idea of starlight navigation. In my perspective, It's a little bit anathema to the heart and mindset of sailors to tarry the thought of relinquishing the helm to a gizmo, letting it make the critical decisions ...

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by Heritage

This is a debate that has been going on for at least a couple of years, and will probably continue for many more.

We have both a Raymarine RL70C and a Garmin 440S chartplotters, but we navigate mostly with an iPad and iNav-X. The Raymarine charts cost over $700 for all the US east coast, and new charts for the Garmin are $175. The iPad charts are free. So now the RL70 is just a radar display, and the Garmin is just a fishfinder.

Not all Ipad charts are free. some are quite expensive, like European ones.

Waterproofing is a red herring. We have left our iPad out in lite rain with no ill effects. I am sure it would be ruined if we ever dropped it overboard, but then our two chartplotters don't claim to be waterproof either. If the iPad was in a location where it was subject to a lot of salt spay, we would put it in a sandwich bag.

Ipads are very sensitive to moisture a brief sprinkling of water followed by a dry off is one thing, exposed month after month to a salt laden environment is very different. Theres a reason Garmin are to IPx7 standards.

Sunlight viewability is another "red herring" We can't see our iPad or either of our chartplotters if sun is directly on the screens, but our iPad is on a swivel RAM mount, so can be easily turned away from the sun. Of course, the iPad screen is turned up to max brightness. We can't change the brightness of either of our chartplotters.

My Garmin gets better as the sun shines on it, My IPad is virtually unusable outside.

I could go on about the variety of nav software, instead of being stuck with just one, about the ability to connect various manufactures instrumentation, weather censors, depthsounders, AIS, etc, etc, but I am sure you get the idea. And then lets not forget the internet and email.

NMEA 2K is opening up the nav electronics to multi vendor approaches. Right now IPad is difficult to connect to a N2k networks, Its a very closed system.

If I was to equip a boat today, I would specify no chartplotters, instead three iPads, one for navigation, one for instrumentation, and one for internet, set up so any one would be a backup of any other.

Then you would be very misguided,

So the bottom line is that I think that there will probably always be a small nich market for traditional chartplotters, but most will be replaced by Apple, Android, and Blackberry Pads.

The death of dedicated MFDs ( chart plotters etc al ) has long been fortold, the same was said when laptops arrived on boats, Funnily it didnt happen

Firstly the whole leisure marine market is a fairly small niche market. The display device is only one small part of the picture. We need radar, sensors and other devices, all these are essentially proprietary. We are very unlikely to see open source radars for example ( and please SIMRADS go Free isn't), Then we have CHirp sounders, and other technologies where manufacturers need payback froim a relatively small marketplace.

Secondly , Ipad et all are cheap consumer grade units not built in any way for the marine environment. As the technology progresses, engineers cost reduce the designs making them even more "commoditised" There are devices designed with 2 year life cycles, and are intended to be used in the manner that most people use them, and thats not at sea.

MFDs today are not a big part of the overall electronics costs on a boat. They have become more and more powerful and reliable. IN my view they will be around a lot longer then say Blackberry or Windows Mobile.

Dave

[David M]

Originally Posted by Sailor_Hutch

RebelHeart has that one nailed. Yep - the smarter we make the programs and gizmos, the dumber we become as a society.

Most users of cell phones and other tether-type electronic devices are truly clueless when requirements in the field go beyond a few memorized button pushes. This pool of thought goes far beyond the simple idea of starlight navigation. In my perspective, It's a little bit anathema to the heart and mindset of sailors to tarry the thought of relinquishing the helm to a gizmo, letting it make the critical decisions ...

Reminds me of aircraft that can fly and land themselves. Although recreational boaters are not required to know the basics of navigation, its a good thing we have an FAA that requires professional pilots to know and to practice the very basics. Otherwise a dead GPS or an engine flame out might ruin their day.

[GPSNavX]

Right now IPad is difficult to connect to a N2k networks, Its a very closed system.

Not true, A SeaSmart WiFi adapter makes it quite easy ..

SeaSmart

Not all Ipad charts are free. some are quite expensive, like European ones.

The Navionics charts for iPad/iPhone are much lower cost then their MFD equivalents.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by GPSNavX

Not true, A SeaSmart WiFi adapter makes it quite easy ..

SeaSmart




The Navionics charts for iPad/iPhone are much lower cost then their MFD equivalents.

The seasmart is a webserver , its not really integrated like a MFD is. Currently no standard exists to stream N2K over TCP/IP ( NMEA are working on one) so we have hodge podge solutions. Its doesnt connect in the same way a MFD does, with full two way functionality.

Those solutions are not mission critical fit for purpose solutions to connecting IPads into N2K networks. Until we have a standard and things like OpenCPN a integrated into it, my original comments remains correct.
dave

[Tar34]

Originally Posted by MarkJ

Commercial reality wil head for the PCs And Androids.... Not necessarily iPads. Android can change, iPad is set in its ways of refusing third party software,

Really? Google Maps, Navionics.........Medscape Epocrates .... Keyboards....
Credit Card readers........Can render .tiff Well you get the point...

Not saying a I would not bring along my MBP, or a dedicated GPS....