Odyssey Time Zero Nobeltec System

[St. Elsewhere]

Do any of you have knowledge or experience to share on this upgrade offer from Nobeltec? It is built on the Time Zero products code base.

Last Chance to get Odyssey for $199!

The offer runs to the end of February, and includes charts for all of the US. but the Canadian west coast coverage costs an additional $150 or $300.

[djcameron]

I recently acquired Nobeltec Odyssey (2/2012). After two months of frustration, it is unusable. It can not receive a GPS signal from any modern USB devices. Evenidently it will onlyh work if your computer has a serial port (modern laptops don't even have serial ports anymore). Even with a serial port, I don't know if the software will work. I have tried to get it to recognize the signal from a new Garmin eTrexChx, Garmin 450T, and a Delorme GPS antenna. No success with any of the devices. They all send a good signal that my $39 Delorme Streets software works with flawlessly. I have called Nobeltec support four times and Garmin 3 times. Today after 2.5 hours Nobeltec gave up and said that they simply can't make their software work. Unfortunately, after two months of frustration and over 100 hours of effort, I am beyond the 30 day return timeframe and can't return the product. I am now out $800 for the software and proprietary charts that are essentially useless for navigation.

The software has very little help built in and most features must be learned by trial and error. It is not easy to use for planning and without the ability to use for navigation, it is useless. They are at least a decade behind modern state of the art technology. If anyone has a solution, I would be very interested in hearing it.

[St. Elsewhere]

djcameron sorry to hear of your difficulties. I did acquire their Odyssey upgrade, but kept VNS 10.7 as well. I installed a new Win 7 64 bit, quad core computer, but is is still getting serial GPS, Instrument, Autopilot, and AIS data through a SeaLevel RS232 4 port to USB converter. Odyssey and VNS are both working normally with this arrangement. I grant you that it is a 13 year old physical data connection with new Sea Level Win 7 drivers installed.

I hope that you find a solution.

[sailingwithacat]

I upgraded to Odyssey as well, under some pressure in order to get charts for our Pacific Crossing. We sailed the past couple of years using VNS 10 with no problems, and received our upgrade package while in Panama a couple of months ago. We cannot get it stable, it looses comm, and crashes periodically. We have run it on 2 different computers, and a combination of USB to serial converters, and from several different data sources, with the same result. Our computers meet the box specs. After 2 months of trouble shooting, I asked that my issues be elevated, and here is the response I received:

Perhaps I can help with some clarification. Sean is absolutely correct in assessing you situation. What you have is Simply corrupt NMEA data (any expert can confirm), which in turn is causing some problems for the TZ software and how it handles the data. I understand that this used to work in your older iterations of the software, and this is because the NNS line had the ability to ignore invalid data and invalid checksums. Basically it was forced to work. This is the short of it.

The fact that the software crashes in this situation is not so much a bad thing.

I recommend getting your hardware looked at by a professional. There is likely an issue with wiring, or the hardware itself and a technician can best address this. as there is only so much we can tell you through troubleshooting without that setup in front of us. If you have tried multiple serial to USB adapters with the same response, it is likely that the device itself is malfunctioning. To think this is not possible is simply unfair, as devices to go bad

Sadly, I am an Electrical Engineer, PE, that has run a company for 30 years that writes specialized communications software for operation in high error environments, and they wish me to find an expert. And it appears that their software crashing is a good thing.

If anyone has solved the comm issues with Odyessy, I would be happy to hear of solutions.

[Kenomac]

I went through the same issues. The nobletec software requires very specific graphics and intel processor. I'd gone back to The computer store three times totally frustrated until a geek squad guy spent over two hours trying to get the software not to crash... He finally discovered that the software requires a very specific Intel processor. After he returned the previous computer his company had sold me and exchanged it for a compatible computer, the software worked just fine. Until then... It was extremely frustrating.

Same symtoms... Wouldn't connect to gps, crashes etc. New computer with intel processor... Everything is now fine.

[sailingwithacat]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

I went through the same issues. The nobletec software requires very specific graphics and intel processor. I'd gone back to The computer store three times totally frustrated until a geek squad guy spent over two hours trying to get the software not to crash... He finally discovered that the software requires a very specific Intel processor. After he returned the previous computer his company had sold me and exchanged it for a compatible computer, the software worked just fine. Until then... It was extremely frustrating.

Same symtoms... Wouldn't connect to gps, crashes etc. New computer with intel processor... Everything is now fine.

Helpful, what Processor/memory or whatever did you end up with, that worked?

[Kenomac]

The Nobletec service tech sent me the spec sheet of what was required for the software. I took it down to BestBuy and had the Geek Squad match it up to a laptop computer. The first computer they sold me was an HP with a celeron processor which the software didn't like. My present computer which does run the software is Toshiba with an intel core i5 processor. Widows 7. Not sure of the graphics card, but here's the product name: toshiba satelite p775-s7100. Look up the computer on line and you should be able to find out the particulars.

[Morrissey]

It was simple plug and play for me. Windows 7 desktop, i5 processor. Data input via USB from an Actisense multiplexor which takes multiple NMEA 0183 inputs. Very simple, very stable. No issues whatsoever.

For those with issues, I suggest having only one instrument input at a time and test again. Or use a multiplexor if trying to feed in several.