Charts

[idpnd]

Well kerryd, if you had to pay for your charts TWICE you'd perhaps permit my use of the term "free" (limited to the second iteration of twice in most of the world!)

[kerrydeare]

Originally Posted by idpnd

Well kerryd, if you had to pay for your charts TWICE you'd perhaps permit my use of the term "free" ...

In fact I DO pay twice. I have been using digital charts since 1993 but even now I cannot imagine going to sea without "the real thing," a navigational chart that is not subject to electrical failure. We carry paper charts of sufficient detail for every cruise undertaken and these are not FREE in the US or elsewhere as far as I am able to determine. In recent years my costs for paper charts have run about 300% higher than electronic materials for the area under consideration (and in a few cases this is a low estimate).

[idpnd]

I see.. there are affordable providers such as Bellingham charts.. It may be asking a bit much to furnish everybody with free paper charts (consider parallel development for roadmaps?)

[GDD]

Hi,

Can someone explain what the story is with these NZ raster charts?

NZMariner - Official Raster Navigational Charts

The description all sounds like the are free like NOAA's charts of the USA, yet they are in a format i've never seen before.

thanks,
george

[dacust]

Originally Posted by GDD

Hi,

Can someone explain what the story is with these NZ raster charts?

NZMariner - Official Raster Navigational Charts

The description all sounds like the are free like NOAA's charts of the USA, yet they are in a format i've never seen before.

thanks,
george

They are encrypted and can only be used by certain software packages.

See this page.

-dan

[GPS-Marco]

Hi all, here you can find a new chartcal.dir. It now contains 214 New Zeland charts data. Please use KapGen beta05 (if you don't have already) available at MCE66 - Software for MAP building. This new Chartcal.dir is available also at the above link as individual download.

The data base now contains all the:
NZ2*, NZ3*, NZ4*, NZ8*, NZ9*, NZ14*

Partially includes:
NZ5*

Still does not include:
NZ6*, NZ7*

Let me know about errors, suggestions, etc.

Ciao, Marco.

[GDD]

Thanks,

I've looked a little closer now. They seem to come with license files. So even though they are encrypted, when you download them you get some sort of key. Am I mistaken, or isn't this a new type of chart format that opencpn could perhaps be made to read? From the effort on this thread to convert the free .tiff charts to BSB, am I supposed to infer that the answer is no?

Also, since i just have read this thread over the last few days, does someone have some summary instructions on how to download these free .tiff charts and convert them to BSB? I"m heading to the Bay of Islands in a few weeks...

thanks
george

[GPS-Marco]

Originally Posted by GDD

Also, since i just have read this thread over the last few days, does someone have some summary instructions on how to download these free .tiff charts and convert them to BSB? I"m heading to the Bay of Islands in a few weeks...
thanks
george

George, Bay of Island is covered now by latest chartcal-v16. If you use windows just download KapGen at MCE66 - Software, download also new chartcal V16 and substitute old chartcal in /Calibration folder with latest (V16), run KapGen and build the maps you need (NZ512, NZ5125, NZ5124_1 just to start...). Use -l to have the list. Attached is your destination in OCPN.

Please: don't forget official charts for your safest navigation.

Fair winds. Ciao, Marco.

[GDD]

Thanks Marco,

I will try this out and let you know how I do. I will be using CM93 when I get there, I just always prefer to have something to check cm93 against.

George

[sredna]

Originally Posted by idpnd

Oddly enough, I suppose the content would have to be manually copied from existing commercial charts (which were generated with taxpayer money in the first place) for this not to constitute copyright breach.

Unfortunately that is not good enough, for data to be free, you have to collect them and licence them free for use, the OSM database have requirements - look here: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/F...t_come_from.3F

[GPS-Marco]

Hi all, let me wish you an happy new year with the newest version of chartcal.dir that now contains 238 New Zeland charts data. Please download KapGen beta05 (if you don't have already) available at MCE66 - Software for MAP building. This new Chartcal.dir is available also at the above link as individual download.

The data base now contains all the:
NZ2*, NZ3*, NZ4*, NZ5*, NZ8*, NZ9*, NZ14*

It still does not include:
NZ6*, NZ7*

Refer also to this Chart Images site for help in chart numbering.

If you have built maps with older chartcals, please rebuild NZ4541, NZ4541_1, NZ4314 (calibration info are updated). Moreover a new edition of chart NZ4315 has been released so if you have already built that map please delete nz4315.tif from /Img folder and rebuild NZ4315 and NZ4315_1 (KapGen will dowload the new version).

Let me know about errors, suggestions, etc.

I wish you the best, and of course... sailing in fair winds and good company

Ciao, Marco.

[idpnd]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

Agree. Would be very good to be able to calibrate and use rasters under OpenCPN.

barnie

There is an albeit complicated way of achieving this now, in the future there has been discussion of implementing an open referencing standard (NOT seaclear's) to produce (transparent) overlays with google earth images et al, such as the open KMZ (compressed KML reference with image file) standard. Weather gribs are already implemented within the software as it stands.

Best wishes

[sinbad7]

Good harbour chart of Genova based on NaviChart's map base.

[GDD]

Hi;

I have tried out the mapcal program and had some degree of sucess. First, I was able to convert the NZ14XXX charts and load them in OpenCpn, but not into any other plotting program (i have maxsea and and an old Nobeltec). In maxsea I see just the chart outlines but no image, whereas Nobeltec is unable to load the charts at all. Both these programs work on all other forms of raster charts I have (bsb, NOSGEO, hdr etc etc).

My second issue to report is that next I tried NZ5125 and 5124 and these did not work so well. Opencpn could load them, but only if they are in a directory on their own. So, If the 14XXX charts and 51XX charts are in the same directory, and i tell opencpn that that is my only chart directory, then the 51XX charts do not load.

Hope this info helps.

Thanks
George

[ActiveCaptain]

Originally Posted by dacust

I wonder if someone like Active Captain would be interested in hosting.

I'm sorry to bring back a quote from before. I was noodling around OpenCPN and found this back from earlier in the thread. A couple of thoughts:

1. Why didn't anyone contact me? Geez! I'm a developer myself. I love the idea of where OpenCPN is going. I've followed it and have installed it from time-to-time over a long time now. While ActiveCaptain might mistakenly look closed, the ability to access the data from "outside" is a huge part of the design. We've been working hard to build the data and I think we're "there" now. You'll start to see a variety of others accessing the data in the upcoming months.

2. We have a ton of bandwidth and storage available for hosting lots of things. Please! Let me know what you're interested in and let's find a way to make it available. ActiveCaptain is all about cruisers providing info for other cruisers. Heck, none of the data is ours. It all comes from others. We provide the conduit, tools, and marketing to get it out and used.

Here's what I see...

There are a variety of chartplotter applications out there. We all know them well. None are designed to integrate outside data, especially POI data, together for the user. They're typically pretty good at integrating navigation data...but user's want more than that.

Want to get OpenCPN into the hands of thousands of users? Make it a guidebook. Combine it with an offline SQLite database and download the data from ActiveCaptain for offline use. Now you have a real chartplotter and a replacement for every guidebook that exists. And by the way, our data is way better than any guidebook for marinas, anchorages, bridge restrictions, ICW hazards, etc. We're not charging for the data...the software becomes free...and the user now has something worth hundreds (thousands?) of dollars just considering the Waterway Guide replacements. Once the "guidebook" is in the hands of a few thousand boaters, you have a great conduit for pushing other navigation capabilities to them. We have some additional features coming like route sharing, position logging and sharing, etc. These all make sense for OpenCPN.

We have 20,000 users today. The number one thing we're asked about is offline access. How many of our users do you think would want an offline ActiveCaptain?

I don't have time to do the OpenCPN coding but I certainly can help assist an effort to integrate to our data. And get me involved in whatever hosting issues you might have also. Perhaps I can help with that too.