cheap chartplotters??

[eidiohir]

I look at the price of GSP road map plotters and wonder.
You can buy a road map plotter now for less than £140 and I wonder why it costs more for a marine one.Isn't the inside working the same?and why should charts cost so much when the full road network of most of Europe is included free with the road version. I know that when you stick marine on something it jumps in price but this seems a lot.
A thought has come to me,is it possible to use road plotters at sea? no it couldn't be that easy could it?

 

[Norman_E]

I have never owned a car SatNav, but went from Blackheath to Croydon in a friend's car fitted with a Tom Tom. It was impressively accurate. I doubt its map pointer was ever more than about 10 metres away from the car's exact position on the road. I guess there are three main
factors in higher cost of marine plotters.
1) Volume of sales
2) Screen size
3) Cost of marine charts as opposed to road atlas data.
For what its worth that Tom Tom cost about as much as a handheld plotter with a screen about the same size, though the car satnavs have dropped in price as volumes sold, and the number of competing makes, have increased.

 

[rich]

No reason why knot if it gives you lat & long position.
and you have a chart!

 

[BrendanS]

or you could get a Garmin 276c with car kit and use for both, with optional car kit. Car gps aren't waterproof, which makes difference to those of us that don't our plotters inside on the boat.

 

[FWB]

[ QUOTE ]
Car gps aren't waterproof, which makes difference to those of us that don't our plotters inside on the boat.

[/ QUOTE ]

This one is but I'm not suggesting that it's for the boat. I think I want one though!

 

[bdsweeting]

With in car SatNav how many waypoints can you enter and how do you set up a route?

 

[Richard10002]

I suppose the argument for the price of the plotters themselves could be volume, and a degree of waterproofing/splashproofing. A Lowrance can be bought without a chart for about £380, and one with a Western Europe Chart for around £450.

I dont know how big the car sat nav market is, but I'm sure it would be a fair guess that it is multiples of the plotter market.

Given that one Admiralty chart costs about £10, and one Road Map of Europe costs £10, (I'm guessing, but it wont be £50), and given that in a C-Map Max cartridge you get what looks like hundreds of detailed charts, £200 or so seems like incredible value for money. Presumably the licensing costs for a road map is fairly low, whereas for charts it will be relatively high.

just my 2 pennorth

 

[FWB]

I have no idea, but no doubt they tell you in the manual .

 

[BrendanS]

Car satnav works very differently, as it doesn't use waypoints. You select a destination, and it calculates the route for you using the road network.

 

[tangofour]

[ QUOTE ]
Car satnav works very differently, as it doesn't use waypoints. You select a destination, and it calculates the route for you using the road network.

[/ QUOTE ]

But that has NO bearing on the cost of the units.

How nav is performed is a software function. The cost of Marine units is affected by several things. 1 - Its MARINE therefore the manufacturers excuse is small market=high cost. 2 - The inclusion of proprietary standards like NMEA and NMEA 2000 support high pricing. ( Car nav systems have to be PC compatible otherwise no one would buy them! )

 

[fdmarsden]

I use a PDA with built in GPS and Tom Tom Navigator 5 for car use, (with speedcam warnings)

Boat can use three alternative solutions:-

C-eMap, comes on an SD card, cost about £200.
Neptune Navigation Pocket Planner £55
Navstation £40

Trial versions of the latter two can be downloaded for free

Ebay can yield a suitable PDA for under £100

This gives you a low cost solution, with a high usage.

 

[raquet]

For position plotting there need be no difference between land use and marine use. The GPS marks your position on a digitised map/chart. I use a PDA for both - on the boat I enclose it in a waterproof bag and it seems to survive.

For route planning the software requirements are quite different – however there is overlap between planning for walkers and planning for yachts. Neither travel in straight lines but both plan using them. I use Pocket Navigator for both OS (land) maps and marine charts but TomTom for roads.

If I forget to change the memory card in my PDA I sometimes find that TomTom becomes worried because my car is two miles north of Barfleur or Pocket Navigator becomes distressed because I am aground in my boat two miles south of Barfleur.