On-Line Chart Viewer

[unbusted67]

God love NOAA. And we trust them with our weather?

[Sonny]

Bush must have had something to do with this

[DeepFrz]

Has the "free" chart service ended?

[S/V Elusive]

hummm... I know that I downloaded the viewer from the NOAA (maybe CG) site. Don't know why they wouldn't still be there.

[Pblais]

Maptech has a free viewer but you can only view RNC charts. You can't do anything else but pan and zoom. They have an inexpensive version of the larger version that has more features. You can view on line at their web site too and set up downloads, but the NOAA site has higher bandwidth if you know what you want.

There are no free ENC chart packages.

[Amgine]

The NOAA electronic navigational chart (NOAA ENCÆ) files that may be downloaded from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are official products. Official ENCs are suitable for navigation under the following regulations and policies, and in the following circumstances:

This is from the readme.txt in the ENC package I downloaded from a NOAA site, Office of Coast Survey - NOAA Electronic Navigational Charts, Download. The complete set of NOAA ENC charts are available for free, the latest update to the complete package is 16 Dec. 2006.


As for a free reader... MacENC has an annoyanceware free version, but I expect that won't work for most readers... and I don't know of a free web-based ENC browser.

[MABell]

I've downloaded all the ENC's and raster charts from the site. Make sure you have the current Java app installed.

[Amgine]

Ah!

The URL works, the links work, but the actual webapp is broken.

Here is the link to notify them regarding errors/problems: mailto:ChartViewer@noaa.gov?subject=Chart%20Viewer %20error%20notification
Here is the link to contact the webmaster: click here

Please contact them and explain the issue as you see it. I'm sending them a screencap myself; I would encourage everyone else who has a problem with the link to do the same. It is quite possible that the software does not recognize the latest release of FireFox, or something similar.

[MABell]

Try this…

If the area your having problems with is what I think it is – the graphical display that show a map and lets you pick charts to download - try…

Backing up a page and picking the download by chart number. Or better yet, I chose the option to download all charts. It’s a huge file, but you know you will want them all anyway.

By the way, being that your from Canada –
Have you found any chart downloads for Canadian waters.
I found a site that charges for the downloads
http://www.charts.gc.ca/pub/en/digitaldata/default.asp
but was hoping to find some freebee’s.
THX

[knottybuoyz]

Originally Posted by MABell

but was hoping to find some freebee’s.

Ain't gonna happen. Canadian Hydrographic Services is locked into long term licensing agreement with Nautical Data International (NDI) with exclusive rights to distribute all Cdn nautical chart data.

CHS: Digital Data (NDI)

Nautical Data International (NDI) Canadian Marine Electronic Charts and Data

The current arrangement isn't likely to change anytime soon even though attempts have been made by CHS to withdraw from the contract.

Nautical Data International (NDI), News from Digital Ocean

Rick

[Amgine]

I got a response (and it looks like it's from a real-live-honest-to-goodness person! though I'm not betting.)

The NOAA Online Chart Viewer is currently unavailable due to technical problems with the server. We expect to have the service operational the week of January 8, 2007.

Which would be cool...

As for Canadian charts... I'm working on locating a series of chart for Canadian waters which are from the 1950s, and scanning them in. (If anyone can help with getting Hugin or any other pano software installed on a Mac, please contact me! I have some very big scans to reassemble...)

If I can get the images reassembled, I will be happy to build raster charts useable in software which can scale the images, and host them on one of my servers. I currently have rather a few GB of bloated .tiffs and no way to reassemble them very well (see top and bottom of chart 5301... but the software cannot work top/bottom, only side to side.)

[unbusted67]

Actually before a bunch of these posts I did try to download those charts from the non graphical portion of that sight and it worked alright. But then when I got the charts up on my laptop they were very glitchy and sometimes big chunks would be whited out.
It was around this time that I started questioning heavily the idea that bringing anything digital around a bunch of salt water is such a good idea.

[S/V Elusive]

Amgine - I'd be careful with what you propose to do. I'm not a lawyer, but if someone has exclusive rights to distribution, I'm pretty sure that means they are the ONLY ones who are leagally allowed to distribute them. Might want to investigate that a bit further. If, as Rick says (and he is almost always spot on) that even the ORIGINATORS of those charts can't recind their contract and distribute for free, then I'm feel certain an individual couldn't do that also.

Just some food for thought.

[knottybuoyz]

I can't even get a "free" set from the guys at CHS who I've worked with for years. They've got some neat technology that blows everything you've seen commercially available right out of the water!!! If you think Google Earth + Raster + Vector is neat you would positively go bonkers over the technology these guys are using and right down to 1:1000 scale. The last time I was over there at their shop they were working on something called "The Shoreline" project. Imagine digital charts that morph in real time to tides and currents with overlays of wind, weather, arial photography, satellite imagery (ice) and AIS feeds all in real time. Objects appear and disappear as the water levels change. Now that's freakin' neat!

CG uses a vessel traffic management system called "Innav" that is just about as capable. Sort of like an ECDIS display for the entire country. Data is passed along a wide area network between vessel traffic management centres as well as ship to shore, shore to ship and ship to ship in real time. Feeds into the system are mostly by vessel traffic controller with radar and AIS feeds. From our National Command Centre in Ottawa we can pan around the country for looks at what's going on in every major shipping centre in Canada.

Personally I think digital electronic navigation is still in its infancy and will steadily improve over the next few years. Part of the problem like I said was the licensing of the data in Canada but hopefully that'll change soon too.

[FrankZ]

Originally Posted by knottybuoyz

I can't even get a "free" set from the guys at CHS who I've worked with for years. They've got some neat technology that blows everything you've seen commercially available right out of the water!!! If you think Google Earth + Raster + Vector is neat you would positively go bonkers over the technology these guys are using and right down to 1:1000 scale. The last time I was over there at their shop they were working on something called "The Shoreline" project. Imagine digital charts that morph in real time to tides and currents with overlays of wind, weather, arial photography, satellite imagery (ice) and AIS feeds all in real time. Objects appear and disappear as the water levels change. Now that's freakin' neat!

CG uses a vessel traffic management system called "Innav" that is just about as capable. Sort of like an ECDIS display for the entire country. Data is passed along a wide area network between vessel traffic management centres as well as ship to shore, shore to ship and ship to ship in real time. Feeds into the system are mostly by vessel traffic controller with radar and AIS feeds. From our National Command Centre in Ottawa we can pan around the country for looks at what's going on in every major shipping centre in Canada.

Personally I think digital electronic navigation is still in its infancy and will steadily improve over the next few years. Part of the problem like I said was the licensing of the data in Canada but hopefully that'll change soon too.

Ok. I am a geek and love technology and where it is going. I do wonder if something like this might be neat but not as useful. Wouldn't someone get lost in the details and take their eye off the ball so to speak?