Replace GPS with Tablet + software

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

Yes, it does.


As smooth as it does on Windows and Linux.


b.

Yes, but...it doesnt have all the plug-ins available for the Linux/Windows versions.

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by ancor

I'm old school, I use Navionics on a tablet. Have a phone I can get GPS location from, without being within phone service and plot onto my paper charts if Navionics fails, or tablet breaks etc. My VHF has DSC, so can get location from that as well. So, 3 GPS's, paper charts and a compass should do. I did have a sextant as well, but never learned how to use it properly. I do think paper charts and compass are an important carry. No batteries required!

Sextant is very easy to use and get a basic position line (e.g. finding your latitude at noon).


A line from the Sun at other times is only slightly more requiring in terms of calculation, still not beyond the math levels of a secondary school. You get two lines, move the first one by the distance you traveled. Bam ! and where they cross is your position.



To me, in real life work at sea, it is actually getting the sight that is the difficult task, not getting the calculations involved.


When we read instruction books on sextant navigation we often forget many were written on navy or cargo decks. Now sight taking is quite a different kind of sport when done onboard a 26' boat sailing downwind in 10ft waves!


(!!!)


;-)


Still, every time my sextant plot falls within say 5 miles of our gps position I DO FEEL A SUDDEN SURGE OF ADRENALINE ;-))))


When it falls within 2 miles, I start knocking on the plotter's screen and assume I did something wrong ... ;-)))


But 5 miles is good enough if your landfall is Martinique. As it is if you landfall at Mururoa AT DAY.


Cheers,
b.

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by belizesailor

Yes, but...it doesnt have all the plug-ins available for the Linux/Windows versions.

Well, if it does not have any plugins that you need then you definitely should use some alt app.


Alt: use the app as is, get the missing functionality from a different app.



I, on my part, do not have any plug ins neither in the Android version nor in the Windows version. Hardly ever use OpenCPN as I am mostly too busy driving the whole bus.



I use separate app for each task - qtvlm for routing tasks, Xygrrib and Zygrib for grib data download, NV Charts for plotting RT, AIS CAAA (Collision Awareness and Avoidance) for AIS situation lookup, etc.etc.



There is so much stuff, if X does not have some function you want, get Y.


It does not need to come all in one package. Things that are good for everything are hardly ever good at anything ;-)



Cheers,

b.

[The Sun King]

My backup is a $20 burner phone loaded with OpenCPN. Works great, but like many LCD devices can be hard to see in sunlight. Has anybody tried one of those ebook readers that are visible in sunlight? Do they have GPS built in?

[pbmaise]

When I installed AIS I interfaced it to a laptop running Open CPN and I kept a backup laptop in the oven. I bought used laptops and ran Windows 10.

This provided me a wide screen, display of other vessels, and charts all in one package for about $300 and another $300 for redundancy.

The GPS I connected to the AIS was designed for a car and ran fine below deck. A steel boat might not be able to do this. Car AIS was less than $30

True the AIS and its GPS wasn't redundant, however I figured I had about five operating GPS devices already aboard including the Garmin depth sounder, and every smart phone aboard. I also always kept a smart phone with Open CPN in the oven.

Note: If you are spending thousands of dollars on chart plotters and high tech gear that tells you wind direction and speed etc... Thank you for supporting the color glossy magazines.

[conachair]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

It does not need to come all in one package. Things that are good for everything are hardly ever good at anything ;-)

Though many of the opencpn plugins are! Like the logbook, weatherfax to overlay sat images/synoptics over gribs, Climatology is another.

Good news is many are slowly getting ported over to android.

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...ml#post2737715

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...ins_free&hl=en
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...n.plugins_paid

[cpisz]

You should check out the Samsung Galaxy Active. It is waterproof. It's display was designed to be seen outdoors. It has the best GPS available in a tablet. It comes with a stylus, so you can use it when wet. This success many of the problems associated with using tablets. My only issue is the 8" screen size. Wish it was bigger. But I could easily see having two of these. One with Navonics and the other with satellite imagery next to each other.

[goodwinds]

Another few options

I run a Ipad with Navionics
Inside I have a Raspberry PI with Openplotter and OpenCPN installed.
Use a 12v 24” monitor for planning, then use VNC viewer to broadcast Open CPN to Ipad at helm. Turn off monitor to save power,
Raspberry has GPS puck, and use a NMEA 2k to 0183 to bring all SeaTalkNG data into OpenCPN, then onto IPad.
Double redundancy, and nice having boat data on IPad so I came even view on the head!! Haha
If all else fails, Macbook with OpenCPN in a dry bag in case things go wrong.
Raspberry PI, Monitor, Keyboard, mouse, NMEA converter, GPS for under A$350, and a complete system that I can even see on IPhone

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by conachair

Though many of the opencpn plugins are! Like the logbook, weatherfax to overlay sat images/synoptics over gribs, Climatology is another.

Good news is many are slowly getting ported over to android.

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...ml#post2737715

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...ins_free&hl=en
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...n.plugins_paid

It is slightly different in my case:



- I use any image viewer to view radiofax,
- I use qtvlm and Xygrib to view grib data,
- I use VPP to view climate data,
-etc.


You will agree plugins or no plugins, I could not care less. I like OpenCPN; I think it is a fine piece of kit and I use it at times. I think it is a worth effort and my experience with asking questions and getting them promptly answered by the developers is way above and beyond my experience with 99% other pieces of software. If I do not use it more often is that I know my home waters by heart and the waters I visit often (West Indies) I prefer sailing with NV Charts.


The above is meant to say OpenCPN developers have my 100% trust and eternal love. If everybody else gave so much and of such high quality to others, well, this world would have been a much finer place to live in!



Another reason why I do not need any plugins is that my devices (at sea) are 7 inch screen max. I do not WANT anything overlayed as on such a small screen all you get is information overload. For the same reason I built my own AIS app that works on slightly different principles than typical proprietary OS AIS apps. Now I do not need to look at the screen to know a ship is coming, will pass ahead of me, in five minutes, at 2 cables' distance. Objects I cannot collide with cannot clutter anything, ones that are about to run me down cannot be 'filtered out' either, etc.



Frankly, providing wx services from an 11 inch device, I do not overlay anything either - I use a couple of windows and swap between data sets. I might change my mind a bit with a 14 inch device but this one is coming my way only later in 2020 as I want a full HD screen and these come at a premium right now. I live in Spain and all we get here is whatever did not sell last year in Germany ... ;-)



The point is probably that there are people who like one app to do it all and others that prefer more specialized apps one for each task.


The upside if one app crashes, I can still do 60 to 80% of the homework without swapping machines.


It is nice indeed that we have so many choices today and that each can find a comfortable fit for their particular style of work.


Cheers,
b.

[akopac]

Opencpn/openplotter, a raspberry pi, and a iPad Air 2 or iPad mini 4 using VNC to view opencpn on the iPad Air 2 or mini 4. You can overlay ais and gribs on opencpn. Power consumption is tiny, the screen is sealed and has a glare coating built into it. The Raspberry pi is the WiFi access point too!

[akopac]

Originally Posted by goodwinds

Another few options



I run a Ipad with Navionics

Inside I have a Raspberry PI with Openplotter and OpenCPN installed.

Use a 12v 24” monitor for planning, then use VNC viewer to broadcast Open CPN to Ipad at helm. Turn off monitor to save power,

Raspberry has GPS puck, and use a NMEA 2k to 0183 to bring all SeaTalkNG data into OpenCPN, then onto IPad.

Double redundancy, and nice having boat data on IPad so I came even view on the head!! Haha

If all else fails, Macbook with OpenCPN in a dry bag in case things go wrong.

Raspberry PI, Monitor, Keyboard, mouse, NMEA converter, GPS for under A$350, and a complete system that I can even see on IPhone

That’s what do. But no navionics

[CarinaPDX]

Originally Posted by cpisz

You should check out the Samsung Galaxy Active.

That looks pretty darn rugged. It's a bit pricey at $500, double the price of the 10" Tab A. My concern starts with Samsung's policy of not supporting phones and tablets after the initial release - this tablet is still on Android 7, two generations behind, and likely not had a security patch for a good long while. Buying a new device with obsolete and unsupported firmware stinks. On the more popular devices, like the Tab A, there are up-to-date open-source ROMs available (for the geek), but niche products like the Active2 are a dead end. This only becomes a problem if the apps that are desired no longer support the older OS versions, or if the tablet is on the network and is exposed to malware (not having those security patches can have a cost).


Greg

[GrowleyMonster]

Originally Posted by Exile

No geek here, but more than capable of geekiness at times. So a dumb question: can OpenCPN run on an Android operating system? Didn't see it on the website, and most tablets these days are Android or iOS. Only a few run on Windows 10 it seems.

There is an Android port, yes. It runs just fine on stock Android, or any Android derived custom OS, apparently. I actually run it on Cyanogenmod but I have ran it on stock Android and a few other Android Open Source Project ROMs. If anything it runs better on an Android device than on a PC. Probably because the GPS is built right into the device and is accessed in a more seamless manner than Windows or even Linux. And yeah it runs way good on Ubuntu, too. There are a couple of diferent versions... a free version and also a paid version that no doubt has better updates and support, and funds the developer as he makes it an even better app.


Before the Android version came out, I ran it in Linux that in turn was running on Android in a chroot environment and it was pretty geeky to set up but it was actually kind of popular. Because of the excellent GPS built in to most Android devices, it was a natural marriage.

[GordMay]

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, cebeuq, and Sailstrong.

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by Sailstrong

s/v Jedi.. If you have the time, I would be very interested on how to "trick" a Furuno NavNet 3D into providing a wifi bridge for NEMA 0183 data to an Ipad Pro with GPS. Conserving battery in the Ipad sounds Great!

I’m not using it anymore so lost memory of details but I found out in the TimeZero software which used it. I’m sure Google would be able to find specifics 👍