Chart plotting software, free or paid for.

[subie]

Been using Opencpn for about 10years already on my laptop , smartphone and Sony Tablet.
Fantastic program for me on the west coast of south africa
For your Android devices you need to download opencpn from playstore and pay a R150 once of payment.

[thomm225]

To test, you can download OpenCPN to your Laptop and then buy a $17.00 GPS USB Puck

After you download the charts you want and get the puck working it will display your "boat" on the chart.

I live close enough to the water that my "boat" shows up on the chart when I am testing at home

This one works on my Raspberry Pi Computers. I also use the GPS on My SH GX2200 as backup with a lower priority.

AIS from the SH GX2200 is also displayed. (Photos from when testing on the boat)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

OpenCPN site

https://opencpn.org/OpenCPN/info/downloadopencpn.html

[Moody Mike]

Forget ISailor read the reviews on the App store. They used to be great when owned by Transas now taken over by Wartsila they are charging annual subscription fees for updates on Charts we bought with free updates & paid a premium to get . Through this forum & others we mounted a campaign against Wartsila to continue the free updates for existing customers. They agreed & posted on this on FB . Now 12 months on they have started charging again . This company can not be trusted & they don't even bother to reply to enquires. Transas built a great platform but Wartsila has ruined it .

[Draughty]

Originally Posted by roland stockham

I would do it the other way round, decide which you want to use for your main chart supplier then look at which plotter will read them. A lot depends on how widely you cruise as this can have a big effect on chart costs. There is not that much difference between plotters and it is mainly 'ease of use' which is very subjective. For example some use drop down menus which some people find a pain in rough weather.

The one I like has not been mentioned, Software on Board SOB using Cmap charts. Very wide area chart disks are available at a reasonable cost and the look very similar to the Admiralty charts I grew up with.

I've been using SOB/cMap for 10 years; well featured, cheap software.
Why does it virtually never seem to appear in comparison articles online?
Rgds

[ranger58sb]

Originally Posted by oldbuzzard

As an addition to the o.p. Question: what works with active captain?

AquaMap (also includes Waterway Guide markers) and MX Mariner are two. My old version of TimeZero did too, but that was before Garmin bought AC; don't know if the new versions of TZ work with AC or not.

Originally Posted by requiem

I do like plotters for robustness and visibility at the helm, but unfortunately they're pretty far behind in terms of functionality.

I think not. New versions of Furuno, Raymarine, and Garmin plotters that I've reviewed are very full-featured... and water resistant... and visible at the helm. Even our 12-year-old Furuno plotter was better at our helm than a laptop would have been -- for weather resistance, visibility, and sensor connections -- and it ran exactly the same software engine (TZ) so had all the same nav features...

-Chris

[ilenart]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

I am also strongly skeptical re plotters being as good or better than laptop or tablet devices. I do not think we have official plotter service point statistics to claim that.

If anything, I would expect the opposite - mass market products to be more reliable, due to faster product cycle, cheaper prototyping, and bad rep from placing anything but the most reliable products to a very diversified, very quality aware market.

b.

I believe it depends on how critical you believe your nav system is to the safety of your boat. If you mainly doing day sailing with plenty of visual references in calm coastal areas, I would be happy with running iNavX or something similar on an ipad. If you are crossing oceans or doing any pilotage / navigation through unfamiliar coral reefs or similar, I would want multiple backups of dedicated plotters, plus ipads or similar running independent systems.

When you start to do complicated navigation, including downloading Grib files for weather planning from satelites, multiple routes with hundreds of weighpoints, etc, the limitations of ipads and tablets start to become apparent. Plus I have had too many experiences when my ipads and laptops hanging and crashing, requiring a restart and / or fixes. The majority of dedicated plotters I have had just “work” whether its rain, hail or shine. Including a few that are over 20 years old.

Ilenart

[ilenart]

Originally Posted by Draughty

I've been using SOB/cMap for 10 years; well featured, cheap software.
Why does it virtually never seem to appear in comparison articles online?
Rgds

Because its effectively stopped being updated. Check out the number of posts on their facebook support page. Then try to export weighpoints to any modern GPS.

Have been a user of SOB for years and have just moved over to OpenCPN, which is a far better system. SOB is clunky in comparison.

Ilenart

[karle]

Originally Posted by Atcowboy

I have no instruments to hook into them. None. I'd need to get a GPS unit for the laptop or iPad.

-AT

You can get external GPS receivers (incl uBlox) for under $10 on ebay.

If your cruising area is covered by NOAA, opencpn on Windows should be sufficient for your needs. On Android and iOS, I would recommend getting a commercially supported application since their performance is perceptibly better.

Here are a few commercial supported plotter software.
1.)
i-Boating has a universal ECDIS kernel for Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS and linux.

i-Boating Software Download | Nautical Charts App

2.) Navionics also has a universal kernel as well.
But they dropped support for Windows a few years ago. Those who downloaded it long time ago still have it and it works. But new users aren't able to download it.

https://www.navionics.com/usa/blog/p...cs-boating-app

[Atcowboy]

I've ordered a USB puck to play around with OpenCPN while I'm on the boat. So far, I find it a little difficult to use. I get the impression it is a very powerful piece of software when you know how to use it, but the curve is a little steep.

It looks like a spendy bit of software, but has anyone used TimeZero?

https://mytimezero.com/tz-navigator

- AT

[Atcowboy]

Originally Posted by zstine

I cruised many years in the USA and never needed to buy electronic charts until we sailed to the Caribbean. NOAA has all the free charts you need and I really like OpenCPN to view them as a real time chart plotter on my laptop, all free. OpenCPN can overlay AIS, Radar, Grib, weather routing, etc... That said, I did buy a subscription ($15/yr) to navionics/boatUS on my phone when we left the country as a backup that was useful.


You can also share the screen on your laptop to have a remote display in the cockpit on your phone, tablet, etc.

How did you go about sharing OpenCPN to your phone/tablet? Was it a remote desktop kind of connection where you're trying to use a laptop wanting a mouse input with a touch screen? Or can OpenCPN (laptop) cast to OpenCPN Android?

- AT

[ranger58sb]

Originally Posted by Atcowboy

It looks like a spendy bit of software, but has anyone used TimeZero?

Yes. Very full featured, it's great. OTOH, I started using it as backup because it's exactly the same software engine our Furuno chartplotter used so there was only a little over one learning curve.

-Chris

[lordgeoff]

Originally Posted by roland stockham

I would do it the other way round, decide which you want to use for your main chart supplier then look at which plotter will read them. A lot depends on how widely you cruise as this can have a big effect on chart costs. There is not that much difference between plotters and it is mainly 'ease of use' which is very subjective. For example some use drop down menus which some people find a pain in rough weather.

The one I like has not been mentioned, Software on Board SOB using Cmap charts. Very wide area chart disks are available at a reasonable cost and the look very similar to the Admiralty charts I grew up with.

I have used Software On Board (SOB) since 2006. Still use the same CMAP reader and same USB GPS.
I buy new CMAP charts as needed. Runs on the laptop(s). Download the software and try it. There is a free version but the full version is not expensive. I use it as a secondary backup to my Garmin Plotter.
Very useful for passage planning. I like and trust CMAP charts.
Thinking seriously of renewing the CMAP Reader and USB GPS and continue to use as my backup and planner for Med to AUS trip.

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by Atcowboy

It looks like a spendy bit of software, but has anyone used TimeZero?

https://mytimezero.com/tz-navigator

- AT

I have used various flavours. All vere exc+++


Excellent performance, very good choice of functions, superb connectivity.


If I were to pay $$ for software, I could opt for this.


b.

[ilenart]

Originally Posted by lordgeoff

I have used Software On Board (SOB) since 2006. Still use the same CMAP reader and same USB GPS.
I buy new CMAP charts as needed. Runs on the laptop(s). Download the software and try it. There is a free version but the full version is not expensive. I use it as a secondary backup to my Garmin Plotter.
Very useful for passage planning. I like and trust CMAP charts.
Thinking seriously of renewing the CMAP Reader and USB GPS and continue to use as my backup and planner for Med to AUS trip.

I have just moved away from SOB and now using OpenCPN. Unfortunately they stopped updating SOB where other packages have kept being developed. A major issue for me is that SOB does not support transfer of routes and waypoints in GPX transfer format. So you cannot transfer routes from SOB into any modern chartplotter. In comparison OpenCPN can transfer the routes in GPX format via a thumb drive to Raymarine and BSG plotters.

Another issue is support. When I last looked at their Facebook page there had been about 3 posts in 6 months. Compare that to the hundred’s of OpenCPN posts on this website and a very active OpenCPN facebook page. To give SOB recognition, I always found their email technical support pretty good, with a response time normally in 24-48 hours. However it is nice to talk to other users about techniques and issues.

Plus quite frankly SOB is pretty cluncky to use in comparison to OpenCPN. If you are happy with SOB you should keep using. However there are now better products available.

I can understand SOB’s problem, its hard to compete when your main competing product is free.

Ilenart

[requiem]

Originally Posted by ranger42c

I think not. New versions of Furuno, Raymarine, and Garmin plotters that I've reviewed are very full-featured... and water resistant... and visible at the helm. Even our 12-year-old Furuno plotter was better at our helm than a laptop would have been -- for weather resistance, visibility, and sensor connections -- and it ran exactly the same software engine (TZ) so had all the same nav features...

I agree completely on the weather resistance and visibility, and at the helm that's particularly important to me.

I haven't used a TZ system, but I very much like what I see there. The integration of tides and currents into their route planning, along with their weather routing, looks like a very helpful feature. If it works as well as claimed, I could easily see myself buying a copy.

My personal requirements for an electronic nav system may be a bit snobby: I want it to use official charts when available, to allow traditional position plotting, and for the interface to be responsive and not too clunky. (I have yet to see a chartplotter that's as smooth in the pan/zoom department as an iPad, and many seem rather low-res in terms of properly registering touches.)