The New ActiveCaptain

[skipmac]

Originally Posted by Suijin

That strikes me as cutting off your nose to spite your face. There is a huge amount of value in the AC content. Ditching it entirely because you don't want to take 3 mins to fill out the card or think your privacy is being violated (when it's not) seems foolish.

Agree. If one is worried about privacy or their personal information being sold then fill it out with BS.

When shopping or researching something for business if I encounter a web site that wants me to "register" before I can get the information I want I have a throwaway email address I use and for name and address use something like Anon Y Mous, 123 Main St, Smallville USA.

I had tried to use the old Flash map on Activecaptain but it would never load (and yes I have Flash installed) so tried the full screen option someone pointed out (thankyou) and like it better than the old version anyway.

[nautitrix]

I was just getting ready to start using AC when Garmin bought it. Is there an alternative available anywhere?
I understand a developer selling out but I'm not interested in another commercial enterprise dominating the internet.
BobV

[BandB]

Originally Posted by nautitrix

I was just getting ready to start using AC when Garmin bought it. Is there an alternative available anywhere?
I understand a developer selling out but I'm not interested in another commercial enterprise dominating the internet.
BobV

There is not an alternative near it's equal. That's why it has the users it has. You just use it and endure any issues with ownership or changes.

[David M]

Garmin is a company that likes to remove options for the end user. This is true of their electronics. This is the opposite of Simrad which likes to give their end users plenty of options with which to tweak their electronics. The problem is, the more options you give the end user the more likely they are to get themselves into trouble. Therefore Garmin simplifies and then sets their equipment to what it thinks is best for you. I especially see this with our research boats Garmin side scan sonar. The options for tweaking it are minimal compared to Simrad's sidescan. In retrospect, I wish we had gone with the Simrad sidescan.

I was operating a ferry part time for a while which had a Garmin radar. I could not even adjust the gain. It had an automated gain which was supposed to be better. It had no user adjustable sea clutter or rain clutter either. How crazy is that?

It appears that what Garmin did with Active Captain is to simplify things so as to reduce potential problems. I agree, its unfortunate for those who were used to the previous version.

Those that use Active Captain are going to have to get used to Garmin's unnecessary simplification of things at least for now.

If you have questions, in my experience Garmins tech support is fantastic. It's also a way of voicing your opinion so that features and user interfaces of Active Captain that you like might be brought back in the next version. Garmin does seem to listen to its customers.

[Tia Bu]

Agreed with much of above. I don't like the new one and won't participate. It's a shame. I wonder what the next useful site will be like? Surely someone's cooking it up already.

[Suijin]

Originally Posted by BandB

Providing information to the owner of a site is one thing. Providing it for them to share with others is quite different.

They already do that. It's the premise of the whole service and is the basis of "user generated content".

Originally Posted by BandB

Providing it to be used in a social media situation, to be shared with anyone who happens to participate, to include identifying information is beyond anything I'm willing to do or think is reasonable or necessary.

If you're talking about personally identifying information shared with third party businesses, they don't do that, at least according to the Active Corporation Privacy Policy.

Originally Posted by BandB

The social media aspect of eboatcards is one man's compulsion and when the majority of others polled said they didn't like it, he turned on them with personal attacks. Knowing his volatility is the reason I would never provide any identifying information to him or his site.

Not sure why this is at all relevant. If I didn't buy products or services from any company that had internal squabbles and a dictatorial leader I'd probably have to go live in the forest and eat only nuts and berries. I could give a rat's ass about AC's internal management issues.

[skipmac]

Originally Posted by nautitrix

I was just getting ready to start using AC when Garmin bought it. Is there an alternative available anywhere?
I understand a developer selling out but I'm not interested in another commercial enterprise dominating the internet.
BobV

There are actually a couple of alternatives but not sure if the information is as complete as activecaptain. The first two have chart interface, the last I think is test only. Also, the Waterwayguide charts have large icons for marinas (advertisers I assume) that are kind of in the way.

https://www.waterwayguide.com/explor...mode=anchorage

Cruisers' Net | Cruisers Helping Cruisers

Home | ICW Cruisers Guide

[skipmac]

Originally Posted by David M

Garmin is a company that likes to remove options for the end user. This is true of their electronics. This is the opposite of Simrad which likes to give their end users plenty of options with which to tweak their electronics. The problem is, the more options you give the end user the more likely they are to get themselves into trouble. Therefore Garmin simplifies and then sets their equipment to what it thinks is best for you. I especially see this with our research boats Garmin side scan sonar. The options for tweaking it are minimal compared to Simrad's sidescan. In retrospect, I wish we had gone with the Simrad sidescan.

I was operating a ferry part time for a while which had a Garmin radar. I could not even adjust the gain. It had an automated gain which was supposed to be better. It had no user adjustable sea clutter or rain clutter either. How crazy is that?

I'm planning a new radome and since I have a Garmin plotter guess I'm probably going Garmin dome instead of swapping out the whole system. The manual for the new domes do push their automated filters and such which concerned me. However spoke with a user that has a new Garmin dome who assured me that all the filters, gains, etc were manually adjustable if you wanted.

Originally Posted by David M

If you have questions, in my experience Garmins tech support is fantastic. It's also a way of voicing your opinion so that features and user interfaces of Active Captain that you like might be brought back in the next version. Garmin does seem to listen to its customers.

My only experience with Garmin tech support was 7-8 years ago. I called to ask about the charts included with a handheld GPS and was assured that a complete and detailed ICW chart set was built in. Wrong! Only had the "base charts" meaning no depths, channels, markers, etc.

One thing I did like. I interfaced my Garmin plotter to my new Simrad AP system using the NMEA2000 network. Totally, painlessly, no hassle plug and play. The Garmin immediately interfaced with all the Simrad gear and vice versa. Garmin now takes heading from the Simrad compass and the Simrad will steer to a waypoint on the Garmin plotter.

[BandB]

Originally Posted by skipmac

There are actually a couple of alternatives but not sure if the information is as complete as activecaptain. The first two have chart interface, the last I think is test only. Also, the Waterwayguide charts have large icons for marinas (advertisers I assume) that are kind of in the way.

https://www.waterwayguide.com/explor...mode=anchorage

Cruisers' Net | Cruisers Helping Cruisers

Home | ICW Cruisers Guide

Excellent sites but none of them cover the areas AC does of have the completeness.

[David M]

Originally Posted by skipmac

I'm planning a new radome and since I have a Garmin plotter guess I'm probably going Garmin dome instead of swapping out the whole system. The manual for the new domes do push their automated filters and such which concerned me. However spoke with a user that has a new Garmin dome who assured me that all the filters, gains, etc were manually adjustable if you wanted.




My only experience with Garmin tech support was 7-8 years ago. I called to ask about the charts included with a handheld GPS and was assured that a complete and detailed ICW chart set was built in. Wrong! Only had the "base charts" meaning no depths, channels, markers, etc.

One thing I did like. I interfaced my Garmin plotter to my new Simrad AP system using the NMEA2000 network. Totally, painlessly, no hassle plug and play. The Garmin immediately interfaced with all the Simrad gear and vice versa. Garmin now takes heading from the Simrad compass and the Simrad will steer to a waypoint on the Garmin plotter.

Garmin does network just fine through the NMEA 2000 network. Garmin does not have a (unethical?) proprietary language like Raymarine does in an attempt to lock you into their products. Garmin also has very few proprietary NMEA 2000 sentences which is a good thing.

Given you already have a Garmin setup and you are happy with I would stick to their products. Garmin is really good stuff. Don't get me wrong. It's just a little more limiting than I prefer.

What really impressed me with Garmin a few months ago is that I bought a couple of Garmin GMI 20 displays for the scientists on the afterdeck. These displays really were plug and play. The menus were really easy to navigate and creating a custom page for each was really easy. It also can show me the names of all the devices plugged into the NMEA 2000 network. Very cool.

It's unfortunate Garmin does not provide free domestic NOAA charts. Furuno does for its MFD.

The inside scoop is that Furuno is giving up on its recreational user line of products. They are targeting only mid to larger commercial vessels now.

[skipmac]

Originally Posted by David M

It's unfortunate Garmin does not provide free domestic NOAA charts. Furuno does for its MFD.

The inside scoop is that Furuno is giving up on its recreational user line of products. They are targeting only mid to larger commercial vessels now.

I think Garmin's not the only one that takes free NOAA charts, converts them to a proprietary format and sells them to the boater. If I was a cynical person I would say it's done just to extract more money from the customer but maybe there is some technical advantage to using some encoding that works "better" with their hardware.

Too bad about Furuno. They have always had the reputation of building the best radar.

[Alberg30Shill]

Originally Posted by Suijin

...in exchange for incredibly valuable content that they provide you for free.

What from your perspective would be a better and still viable business model?

Did you read my sentence? I am providing the content, not them.

The business model is called open source, has been around for decades and runs the vast majority of the internet. You really should look into it, it's changing the world in ways that will effect you.

[Hoosiersailor]

Originally Posted by skipmac

I think Garmin's not the only one that takes free NOAA charts, converts them to a proprietary format and sells them to the boater. If I was a cynical person I would say it's done just to extract more money from the customer but maybe there is some technical advantage to using some encoding that works "better" with their hardware.

Too bad about Furuno. They have always had the reputation of building the best radar.

This is one of my frustrations with Garmin. They do have a very proprietary chart format that they don't share with anyone. Garmin does not want anyone developing charts for their hardware and unfortunately there are a lot of pretty cool products out there. I had a Garmin and purchased a Simrad GO7 for my flats boat because of this.

https://www.floridamarinetracks.com/

Also not really happy to see all of the patent infringement suits against Garmin for sonar transducer developed by Hummingbird and Simrad/Lowrance.

[skipmac]

Originally Posted by Alberg30Shill

Did you read my sentence? I am providing the content, not them.

Well more correctly, you are providing a very, very tiny fraction of the content along with hundreds or thousands of other users. Meanwhile the provider, in this case Garmin, provides the platform that includes hardware, software, maintenance, moderation, etc. I assume you know that this doesn't come free.

And if you are so opposed to some company profiting by your free contribution why are you on Cruisers Forum?

[CarlF]

My Garmin radar has sliders for all the "automatic modes". I use the sliders as I know how, but automatic seems an advantage to someone new to radar.

I much prefer Garmin's charts. For $100 I get the whole US and Bahamas. There's no moving between different scale charts. No installation of lots of files. The text font is sized to be legible regardless of zoom level. The text is not upside down if I'm steering "course-up". The shading of shallow areas can be set as I want. I can reduce the the amount of clutter/detail. In these waters, accuracy seems as good good as other electronic charts or paper charts. Each has their problem areas. And if you use Garmin with AC on an Ipad the crowd sourcing makes the combination the most accurate charts available.

While it would have been nice if Karen and Jeff would have owned AC forever, like all business startups they deserve a chance to make some money - and then have some time to enjoy it. And the Flash problem was only going to get worse as more companies moved away from Flash. I expect (with no inside knowledge) that the cost and man hours of developing a non-Flash version was a factor in sale timing.

Worse would have been to merge with another privately held and likely undercapitalized company like Navionics. They could then slowly starve together.

And much worse than a well capitalized S&P 500 company like Garmin would be a private equity firm with a plan is to do a rollup, load AC with debt and then flip it in five years -probably to another PE firm. PE firms have bought many of the great marine names with mediocre to poor results for customers -- Simrad, B&G, Oyster, Hinckley, Blue Sea, to name a few.

Garmin doesn't care about the tiny profit of AC - if there is one. They made $1.6B last year. AC isn't even a rounding error. The value of AC to Garmin is building a stronger brand in the marine space - as was behind the purchase of InReach (which also helped their business in aviation and back country outdoors).

Since it had to happen eventually, I really have trouble thinking of a many better acquirers of AC than Garmin. Can anyone else?