Navigation aid for PDA, Mobile phone or Laptop

[peakvisiontv]

I have recently developed some software to assist with navigational calculations which will run on Pocket PCs (PDAs), Laptops, PCs and some Mobile phones. Should anyone wish to try it I'd be happy to email them a copy, and its free.

I have been involved in the past with a number of computer based navigation systems, the functionality of which is fantastic. I have also experienced inverters fail, GPS reception fail due to storms and Laptops fail to boot. I am a firm believer that you should not set sail without a good knowledge of how to use a chart and a pencil to navigate. However, it's still nice to be able to use a calculator to aid the process. With this in mind I was thinking calculators don't have the functionality we need for navigation, yet a mobile phone or a PDA would come in very handy if it were able to perform a few additional functions. To this end I decided to develop my own application. My first challenge was to find an appropriate language to develop the programme in - if I developed in VB it would work on PDAs but not Mobile phones. After much deliberation I decided to develop a Flash programme, written in Actionscript 2. This would be deliverable to a wider number of devices especially as the Internet develops more, and more mobile devices will have to support flash. It will run as an HTML document in a browser or as a stand-alone flash movie.

At the moment my software has the following functionality:

Helm to Chart calculations:

• Compass course to Magnetic course
• Magnetic course to True course
• Leeway to Water track
• Tide speed, Setting, Vessel speed giving Ground track, Distance made good and Speed made good.

Chart to Helm calculations:

• Ground track, Vessel SMG, Tide speed and Setting giving Water track, Vessel speed through water and Distance through water.
• Leeway to True course to steer
• True CTS to Magnetic course
• Magnetic course to Compass course to steer

Time Speed Distance

• Time from Distance and Speed
• Speed from Time and Distance
• Distance from Speed and Time
• Time HH:MM:SS to Decimal time
• Decimal time to Time HH:MM:SS

I am hoping to add a lot more useful calculations to this software.

System Requirements:

Simply anything that can support Adobe Flash 7 and above.

I am running mine on an HP IPAQ 2210, running Microsoft Windows for Pocket PC 2003 first edition. This is quite an old pocket PC and so I'd expect later models to perform better. Mine is a bit slow loading pages.

Your feedback is very welcome.

Many thanks,

Daryl.

[peakvisiontv]

I've added the application to the web so you can have a look at it here, and download it should you wish . It's a bit long and thin on a PC as it's developed for PDAs etc. However, if I get sufficient feedback I may develop a specific PC/Laptop version.

If you download it and wish to receive any updates I produce, then please e-mail me your details and I'll add you to my list.

Thanks