No sounding depths/details on inland waterway charts

[tobyyost]

Hi all, I am new to OPNCPN and I have downloaded the ACE charts of the TN river. When I view them I see the buoy's, and sailing line but I do not see the detailed depth numbers and contour lines. I use the navionics app on my ipad and I get this information there, so I am just hoping that this is a setup thing that I can fix. My settings are checked to show the depth soundings, and I tried the scan, full rebuild, and repair options and still nothing. If I scroll down to the charts of the gulf coast area then the depth sounding details shows up. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[meridian28]

Minimum 9.9 feet on the rivers for barges. No depths shown on the charts

[tobyyost]

Is there no way to get the detail that is available on the navionics ipad app over to OpenCPN? I find the navionics app incredibly helpful when looking for a cove to spend the night in, etc... It gives pretty accurate sounding information. I really want to get OpenCPN setup on my new RPI with a few touchscreen monitors, but without that depth detail I will still find myself using the ipad quite often. Guy in the slip next to me has the navionics charts for his Garmin, any way to hack them from the garmin over to OpenCpn? I would gladly buy them if they are available somewhere? Any help with this would be greatly appreciated as I do most all my boating on the inland rivers, I have to imagine others struggle with this also. thanks in advance for any thoughts that anyone has on this subject,

[nohal]

OpenCPN can't show information that is not available in the charts. Most of the iENC charts do not contain individual soundings, only depth areas.
There is no way to "hack" the Garmin/Navionics charts to show on OpenCPN, less a legal one.

[verkerkbr]

Originally Posted by meridian28

Minimum 9.9 feet on the rivers for barges. No depths shown on the charts

Here on the Inland ENC charts there are no detailed depth. But is you click on the river with a right click, then you get the information about the dredged depth of the river.


See image.

[tobyyost]

That’s a bummer. I was really hoping I could get the same chart detail that the navionics app uses. I find these charts very useful. I’ll try to attach an image so you cam see what I’m referring to.

[bcn]

Those Navionics soundings - source?

[tobyyost]

Yes that print screen is from the navionics app on my iPad

[bcn]

The question was: who has made the survey for the data shown by the Navionics app - the source - and how reliable are they?

[Wayne hoath]

Naviconics allows for community updates. Users can and do connect sonar to the iPad app and this is then uploaded to navionics to be displayed on the charts; crowd sourced data. Much like your google maps traffic data as I understand it.

[verkerkbr]

Originally Posted by tobyyost

That’s a bummer. I was really hoping I could get the same chart detail that the navionics app uses. I find these charts very useful. I’ll try to attach an image so you cam see what I’m referring to.
Attachment 188101

Your image is not from a small river but a lake ! There is a difference between Inland ENC and ENC charts.

Here the Veerse Meer (lake) in ENC chart format.

The chart surveys are not done by Navionics but by the local or Hydrographic Organisations.

[transmitterdan]

I think you will find that the detailed contours in programs like Navionics are not often updated. Most are 20 years old or more. I forget how to check but I think the date of the survey data is shown down in the bowels of some menu on Navionics app. Might be interesting to look at that.

The army Corp of engineers is responsible for making commercial navigation on inland waterways as safe as they can. They don’t care about little coves that will never be used by commercial vessels. But the ACE charts are updated very often. So for passages on inland US waters the ACE charts are the most up to date you can get. And the least expensive.

[tobyyost]

As far as who did the depth survey, I really don't know See the image below that is all I know as far as the chart subscription. I really doubt that those depths are crowd source updated. I don't know when they were last updated, but I do a lot of exploring on the TN river and they are pretty darn accurate when I compare them to the soundings that I am getting. I find it very useful as I can look at a cove or an offshoot and know whether or not I should even attempt it or not, of course I am always very careful when exploring out of the channel, but it helps to have an idea. I have been cruising the inland rivers for 10 years now and for a long time I did use the ACE charts, but a couple years ago when I ran across the navionics charts I have used them and not gone back. I really want to get this opencpn system setup, so I will continue with it, but unfortunately I will still be keeping my navionics app on my ipad next to me, which I was hoping to avoid. Just wish there was some way that I could buy those charts and port them over to openCPN, as I gladly would spend the money on that

[Wayne hoath]

Within navionics you have the choice to view the base chart or the sonar charts. You decide. If you use sonarChart you are using the crowdsourced data.



Which generally had much greater detail but obviously depends upon people connecting their sonar and choosing to upload the data to navionics to verify and distribute.

[verkerkbr]

Originally Posted by FreeSpearit

SonarChart layer in Navionics is not especially crowdsourced, some of it is actually from Navionics employees that go out and do the depth soundings. Other data is from crowdsourcing. Navionics has an average of 2000 updates per day. You can see recent examples of updates in the bottom section of this page: https://www.navionics.com/usa/charts...latest-changes

Never heard of Navionic employees doing depth soundings. Soundings are done by the Hydrographic Organisations or Waterway Authorities and are made in the ENC format. That is the source for all nautical charts.

There are other sources, like Google Earth, Infra red images.

In the latest OpenCPN Version 5 MBTiles can be used.

Layers can be added with operation times and other info for locks and bridges.

Here an example of the ENC chart with the infra-red image of the same area.


Bram