Zezo forum:

Post by lorenzo | 2018-04-01 | 20:30:13

Hi folks, anyone has a suggestion for an alternative to Avionics Europe?

What I need: for a Tablet, running on Android, mostly cartography for costal navigation in the Mediterranean (Italy, Spain, Greece, Croatia). Depth, harbors, hazardous points. No real need for any advanced navigation tools.

Any experience (pros and cons) for iSailor, OpenCPN or any other is mostly appreciated.

Thanks

4 Comments

Post by GeGaX | 2018-04-02 | 09:00:40

Hello,
I am marine electronics and I am asked more and more to implement a navigation system via ipad or android tablet

The first question to ask yourself is: do you want to get info from your ship's nav station on the app?
If so, what is the brand and range of your plant?
- Raymarine st 40/50/60 (seatalk); st70 / i40 / i50 / i60 / i70 (seatalkNG = NMEA 2000 + yellow seatalk wire).
- B & G / Simrad (network / simnet / nmea 2000)
- NKE (topline)
- Other (Lowrance / Clipper / Nasa / Advansea / ...)

The second question is about GPS:
Do you have a fixed GPS on board? (example Furuno GP3x or a plotter with a map)

The third question is:
Want to be able to do routing, display AIS targets, ...

Basically tell me what you already have on board and what you want to get in the end I could point out the compatible systems and how to implement them.

Post by lorenzo | 2018-04-02 | 10:23:39

Hi Gegax,
Thanks for the replay

No I do not need to get any info from the ship's nav station.
Kids are still small and for now we only do costal navigation with them

I just need a backup to the nautical charts and I already have Navionics on my android tablet.
I was wondering if there are other apps which are better / less expensive / more updated etc

So to your questions
do you want to get info from your ship's nav station on the app? --> No

Do you have a fixed GPS on board? --> yes but in this case I use the one into the tablet

Want to be able to do routing, display AIS targets --> no real need

Thanks for help

Post by GeGaX | 2018-04-02 | 11:23:04

If you do not need to recover the information of your central on the application, I do not see the interest to invest in a new application, unless your subscription expires, you can, in this case, test OpenCPN with CM93 v3 charts (can be found easily on the web)

The advantage of tablet navigation is to dispense with the purchase of a chartplotter (rather expensive, on an application, the subscription of the charts is "cheap" -100 euros / year and it is possible to display AIS targets, routing, autopilot control, etc ...) Be careful though, the LCD slabs of the tablets are very dark in the sun.

In general, for cruise navigation, the tablet is used in rehearsal inside the boat of a chartplotter placed outside less restrictive than a PC (for recent chartplotters)
For those who use the tablet in main mode, 99% of the time it is an iPad / iPad Pro / M$ Surface and the central navigation is centralized on a Miniplex.

There is a multitude of navigation software here is a non-exhaustive list
# Android:
QtVLM / OpenCPN / iSailor / Navionics / Plan2Nav / ...
# iOS:
QtVLM / iNavX / Weather 4D 2.0 / MaxseaTZ / iSailor / Navionics / Plan2Nav / ...
# PC:
QtVLM / OpenCPN / SimSail / Maxsea TZ / Adrena / Deckman / Expedition / Scannav / ...
# MAC:
QtVLM / OpenCPN / GPSNavX / MacENC / ...