No More Passage Planning on New Garmins?

[RaySea Lady]

Originally Posted by Highlander40

I guess that's why I don't have a garmin. The menu structure is a bit clunky. On my old Northstar or the new Raymarine, a 50 point route is 10 or 15 min. It's really more to do with work flow and efficient use of key strokes. Ten years ago I did have a Garmin, they still haven't figured it out.

It is a matter of taste

When I bought my boat in 2007 it was all equiped with Raymarine, GPS, autopilot, radar, sonar etc... On the trip from charleston I learned to hate it, due to lack of reliability, something was always down. Over the winter of 2008, I had it all torn out and redid the boat with Garmin. No Regrets !

In my opinion it is a lot more user friendly and reliable, but to each his own. Garmin currently has an offer to buy out Raymarine before they go bankrupt.

[Highlander40]

Ray, so you have one years experience with the Garmin gear.

After ten years with the same Raytheon radar and autopilot, they are still working and reliable. Raymarine still supports the gear.
I had a Northstar plotter that was way ahead of everyone else but they would not support it so I swithched to Raymarine after 9 seasons.

A big factor in the percieved quality of gear is the installation and support.
You didn't say how old the gear was when you got it, or how it was stored and cared for.

I use a garmin handheld (new) for kayaking and it is still has a poorly designed menu. It's like working in a kitchen where all the tools are two flights up.

[barnakiel]

I used Garmins ages ago and it was not possible back then. But you can do it if you use the cartridges.

b.

[clearsea]

Originally Posted by clearsea

Update: Apparently Garmin has released "HomePort", software that allows a user to passage-plan on a PC without having to purchase a second set of electronic charts. However, I am not sure how that would work with a Garmin chartplotter that comes preloaded with BlueCharts. This page says one can simply download them to an SD card: https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=64242

HomePort comes with an SD adapter, but presumably there is nothing unique about this adapter, except that it can read all the card types Garmin echarts might use?


HomePort compatible units:

• GPSMAP 400 series
• GPSMAP 500 series
• GPSMAP 600 series
• GPSMAP 3000 series (trip planning only)
• GPSMAP 4000 series
• GPSMAP 5000 series
• GPSMAP 640 chartplotters preloaded with BlueChart mapping

Compatible maps:

• BlueChart g2 Vision
• BlueChart g2 (both microSD/SD and Garmin data card formats)
• BlueChart (both microSD/SD and Garmin data card formats)

The C-Map system requires a propriertary adapter that allows a user to read their map cartridges on any computer that this adapter is plugged into, which gives the owner flexibility, but prevents the echarts from being used by more than one user at a time. I wonder if the Garmin adapter is hardwired so that only that SD adapter can interpret the electronic charts?

This concept of transferring maps and waypoints via removable electronic card is much more cumbersome than simply plugging a laptop into the receiver via USB and uploading/downloading waypoints, tracks and routes. Seems like a step backward to me. I understand the need to protect their echart product so they can limit it to one user (reasonable business), but the key for echart suppliers is to provide a mechanism for one user to run one set of charts on two devices (GPS chartplotter and laptop) without being cumbersome.

I've just finished a season using the card-transfer solution for the first time (C-Map, because Garmin did not seem to have a solution when I started out in the spring). It's much easier if the laptop is at the boat, but when we are just doing day trips at home and not cruising, I keep the computer at home and not on the boat, so I have bring the cartidge home to make changes and go through a complex bit of work moving saved waypoints from the boat's cartridge to my home computer, and then uploading a revised set of waypoints to the user cartridge to take it back to the boat to overwrite the receiver's memory with the new data. Fiddly, but at least it is possible, and now it seems Garmin is releasing a similar solution: HomePort.

[RaySea Lady]

thanks Clearsea,

It is a bit quirky but at least we don't have to buy the maps all over again like we did with mapsource.

I have 4 of the above, 5212 and 4212 on a network on fly bridge, 440 at lower helm that is not on the network and a 640 on the dinghy. This seems to indicate that I would have to buy three homeports, one for each plotter not on the network and one for the network.

Is this what you understand also?

Seems to me I read somewheres that you could connect a computer to the network. I will see if I can find that again.

[clearsea]

Originally Posted by RaySea Lady

I have 4 of the above, 5212 and 4212 on a network on fly bridge, 440 at lower helm that is not on the network and a 640 on the dinghy. This seems to indicate that I would have to buy three homeports, one for each plotter not on the network and one for the network. Is this what you understand also?

No, I imagine that HomePort is just a piece of software that reads the Garmin echart products on the card in the reader that comes with the software, so you only need to buy it once, I guess. HP lets you create/edit waypoints to build routes so you can passage plan on a computer and upload them to the chartplotter. If that's correct, then you would only need one HomePort installation. What I don't understand yet is how they protect their echart products so the user can't copy them all over the place. Perhaps the SD adapter is hardwired to read the charts, like the C-Map card reader??