Belfield Tide Plotter programme - update

sarabande

sarabande

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You may remember some recent discussion about Belfield and their Tide Plotter Website. I followed up the thread with the Belfield management, who do not have a presence on the forum.

I have had Natalie's agreement to post the following:


START
Belfield Software has supported the development and sale of its successful Tide Plotter software for many years, including a free utility for the original PDA (Pocket PC).


We have made efforts to continue development of the Pocket PC application, but backward compatibility has become increasingly difficult, and with recent market and standards changes for Android, iphone and Windows smartphones, we have reluctantly come to the conclusion that the 10 years old Windows PocketPC PDA application is no longer commercially or practically viable.


However, we have been considering development of a new Tide Plotter application for the most common smart phone platforms, using a similar graphical interface and menus as the main Windows PC product for 2000/XP/Vista/7/8, with tide tables, tide heights, tidal stream diamonds, GPS interface, and other tidal calculations and data.


It would be very useful if the forum could indicate if such a product is likely to be of benefit and use, and what particular outputs might best answer users' needs.
END

I have no commercial affiliation with Belfield, though I am a long-term, satisfied, user
 
I have used Keith Belfields program for years, I bought a pocket PC just to run it. I was very disappointed when he stopped supporting the pocket PC. However, unless he produces an andriod or IOS version he will be wasting his time.
I have now bought an iPad Mini to replace the pocket PC and I run the Tucabo Tides Planner and the Tides UK apps on it.
The nice thing about the Belfield prog was the moving time line.
The Tucabo does not as yet have the time line moving in real time, but this is due in the next upgrade. The Tides uk app has a moving time line but has limited ports.
Both apps run on the iPhone, iPad and iPad mini.
 
sarabande said:
You may remember some recent discussion about Belfield and their Tide Plotter Website. I followed up the thread with the Belfield management, who do not have a presence on the forum.

I have had Natalie's agreement to post the following:



START
Belfield Software has supported the development and sale of its successful Tide Plotter software for many years, including a free utility for the original PDA (Pocket PC).


We have made efforts to continue development of the Pocket PC application, but backward compatibility has become increasingly difficult, and with recent market and standards changes for Android, iphone and Windows smartphones, we have reluctantly come to the conclusion that the 10 years old Windows PocketPC PDA application is no longer commercially or practically viable.


However, we have been considering development of a new Tide Plotter application for the most common smart phone platforms, using a similar graphical interface and menus as the main Windows PC product for 2000/XP/Vista/7/8, with tide tables, tide heights, tidal stream diamonds, GPS interface, and other tidal calculations and data.


It would be very useful if the forum could indicate if such a product is likely to be of benefit and use, and what particular outputs might best answer users' needs.
END

I have no commercial affiliation with Belfield, though I am a long-term, satisfied, user
Click to expand...

Ive used his prog for years, time for android and ipad now
Stu
 
Yes please for Android and windows Phone 7
I used to purchase of copy of this every year for Pc 7 Pocket PC. It was far better then any of the current iOS/Andoid/WP7 offerings.
The graph was always better then the tables for Poole though..
 
+1 for Android - I used to have the Pocket PC version but alas that phone died 2 years ago. I still used Tideplotter 2010 on my home PC but the tidal data expired at Christmas.

I would buy a combined Android and Windows 7 version tomorrow if available.

Edit: I suspect that the Android version would need to be 'standalone' and supplied via the Google Play Store as phones locked to networks are sometimes blocked from installing programs from other sources?
 
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I am very much going to miss the ability to use my iPAQ to run Tide Plotter (used since 2004). I don't want do run a laptop PC for reasons of space, power and fragility, but cannot find anything else as clear and usable and of course run off-line on a handheld device.

Calculation of the times at which tide is at a specified height is an essential feature in my opinion for anyone needing to consider getting in/out over a bar or similar. The Pocket PC version didn't do this directly, but could easily be used to get numeric readings of height/clearence at any time rather than have to try and read off a small tidal curve display.

Port Tide Plotter to Android (packaged with the PC version as for PPC before) and I would be very pleased. Currently I am searching for alternatives but will probably end up renewing for the PC version which at least can produce paper tables with predicted times at which the tide is at a specified height.

Does anybody know of another package PC/Android which is able to calculate times for specified heights?

Thanks

Chris.
 
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