Hi Onno,
I can only share with you my limited understanding of these systems. Please realise that I may be mistaken in some of my beliefs.
You can connect your iPad with
Navionics app to your E7 wirelessly so you only have to plan your
route once on the iPad.
Once connected you select the route that you created on the iPad on your E7 display. (I'm not onboard but I think it's under "My Data" or the likes.
Once you have done that both the iPad and E7 display the route and track your progress.
This also means having to buy mapping for your E7 and then again for your iPad.
Nice, but I find you can only do very basic planning on the iPad. Also if you want to change the route underway it becomes difficult and cumbersome.
It is not a comprehensive planning and
navigation tool such as MacENC, OpenCPN, MaxSea etc.
Unfortunately Raymarine has/had it's own proprietary file format and accepted none other.
That meant transferring routes from the above mentioned comprehensive
software packages meant changing file formats three times, using 2 different programs, to get it into a Raymarine mfd.
I believe this also means not being able to navigate live with this
software as you are not
tracking your progress on your computer. I would love confirmation or denial from the more knowledgeable.
Raymarine, since being taken over by Flir, seems to have come to their senses and have now improved the software on their chart-plotters.
The new software is called Lighthouse II and accepts the commonly used .gpx file format.
This should allow wirelessly connecting eg. MaxSea TimZero to your chart-plotter and having the same integration as with the iPad and Navionics app.
Only much more comprehensive allowing sophisticated, intuitive intefacing that also integrates
weather, tides, instrumentation etc.
I would also love this confirmed or corrected by somebody, please!
A Problem I have is that when the Pro's start explaining these systems they use a language which I have little understanding of. I am not a electronics or software/hardware guy and am therefor on quite a steep
learning curve.
It somewhat reminds me of the MSDos days and how the improved Windows interface opened computing to the masses. It seems
marine electronics is going through a similar jump in advancement.
Regards
Schalk