XB8000 AIS & GPS Charts on Android Phone?

[PelagicNomad]

Hi all


I am very technologically not advanced, broke, and generally concerned about the marriage of these products...

I'm pretty sure that I am going to buy this unit, the splitter and the alarm. I'd like to start by using it with free or cheap downloaded GPS charts, running them wireless, through my Android phone and sometimes through my laptop. My crew has an iPhone and a tablet (I think it is an ipad). So I guess we'd need to download different charts?

I am about to sail from Perth, Western Australia, to Melbourne in Victoria. So I am wondering which charts might be best. And what "best" even means? Most compatible with the system, in my mind!? But I guess that some of them won't even do charts for my area?

I haven't really asked for information anywhere else. So I really am not 100% sure I understand the basics, and the true costs... Am I overlooking any obvious details? Should I be a little hesitant to use a phone and downloaded charts?

Any info much appreciated


Andrew

[Wanderlust]

I don't know of a solution as you describe for Android, but the laptop solution works very well.

I have an XB-8000 which comes with its own dedicated GPS. The XB-8000 transmits NMEA sentences over WiFi, so I connect my Windows 7 laptop running OpenCPN and downloaded CM93 charts. OpenCPN interprets the XB-8000 AIS data and displays ships and positions on the chart. It works very well and is an excellent solution. There has been some work on developing an Android version but as far as I know it is far from release ready - you said you were not technical.

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...er-133759.html

As a separate system, I use Navionics on my Android tablet (works on phone as well), but that system will not accept and interpret external NMEA data such as transmitted by the XB-8000. If you can find an Android charting application that accepts such NMEA signals then you could have a solution - but I don't think it exists.

You could display your laptop screen on the Android via Teamviewer or similar, but just using the laptop alone seems better to me.

Perhaps you should contact Vesper directly as they are quite helpful whether by email or phone.

[jeffrobbins]

You might have a look at memory-map. It's an Android app that has various charting and mapping capabilities. I just learned about it from the developer and gave it a quick try over the past weekend aboard my boat. The GPS & AIS support was developed using a Vesper Marine XB-8000 and it also worked fine using the WatchMate Vision I've got on-board. I think the ship icons are a bit tiny on my small tablet, but that's just a personal preference and you might even be able to configure that.

Others I know about are Sailtracker Polar AIS which uses satellite images and droidAIS which uses OpenSeaMaps. I've been maintaining a page of apps that I've tested with XB-8000 and Vision at Mobile Apps for WatchMate Vision and XB-8000 but I haven't had a chance to update it yet with memory-map.