mr-canada
New Member
I saw this thread looking for a better way than I've already discovered... Noticed that the post originated in 2010 but is still alive.
Hands down nothing will beat and cost less than an Android GPS-enabled tablet with a 12V car charger accessory. You can get or DIY the tablet mount, the charging system provided its not going through an inverter will keep the sucker sufficiently charged, especially if you either have auto-blackout set for five minutes (you just need to touch the screen to wake it up) or are religious in dimming the screen to off when not absolutely in use. While you can get 3G enabled devices or wireless, for battery life, you really want to turn bluetooth, wifi, 3g, everything. Its the screen and the wireless that kills these devices.
The app to buy has incredibly cheap maps, called Navionics. My Canadian charts Pacific cost $499 (rediculously expensive) in digital format, Navionics sells me the software in HD for Android for $99 for US & Canada, Lakes and Oceans (even some rivers). Prices are comparable for the many other areas they cover. It even has restauarant reviews and some sort of "other users near me" if you have internet enabled.
I am a network engineer, and key to battery life is making this a dedicated device. It should do chart plotting, and that is it. Everything else uninstalled, nobody reading the web, etc. Buy a second tablet if you want to do that sort of thing or use your phone. If you're not navigating then the screen should be off and it will drop into standby. Your 12V system on board will keep the thing charged to full practically forever.
I have looked at every which way to make a cheap, simple, reliable chartplotter save for buying a marine product with their hideously priced and encrypted SD cards.
Like the OPs, I considered bareboard motherboards, taking netbooks apart and mounting the hardware inside something, getting custom transformers that originate at 12V rather than 120V for the charging (to reduce loss). Linux-based dedicated devices, QNX devices.
The problem with everything I found is that it is more of a PIA to use, unreliable, difficult to mount, and comes to the same price as the chartplotter I was trying to avoid buying.
A cheap as can be Android tablet that can run Navionics at slightly higher than their base spec that has GPS and a car charger, all in your done for under $350, all you need to do is mount it, and that can be as simple as leaving it on the chart table or as fancy as mounting it to the wall or on a custom rigged up small TV wall mount. If you're really wanting to be fancy you could take a saw and drop it in so it's flush with the chart table surface, get a peice of thin clear plastic (like window plastic) and cover the whole thing - touch screen will still work.
I've racked my brains and priced out and tried everything more complicated... but this is really the only thing that will work and not die on you because of a fangle of wires, some rinky dinked exterior monitor or having the fine ribbon cable that goes from the netbook mobo to the LCD display rip off on you because a can of soup flew across the cabin in a blow.
If the sucker does die for some reason (broaching? fire? lots of cans of soup flying around in a blow smashing the screen?) the core unit can be replaced for $250 and you can redownload your app from Google Play and be operational again in under 30 minutes (depending on the complexity of your mounting system).
And hey, if you're really cheap, swap your phone to an Android platform and download the non HD (ie. phone) version and just use it on your phone. That version of Navionics is only $49.
Speaking as someone who wasted far too much time looking for alternatives to the obvious.
I have a BlackBerry *everything* and reams of PC hardware and just didnt want to start on a new OS (Android). But this is the real way to go, who cares I can browse the web and check my messages on my Playbook. Battery lasts longer on the tablet when I only use it for it's intended purpose.
Hands down nothing will beat and cost less than an Android GPS-enabled tablet with a 12V car charger accessory. You can get or DIY the tablet mount, the charging system provided its not going through an inverter will keep the sucker sufficiently charged, especially if you either have auto-blackout set for five minutes (you just need to touch the screen to wake it up) or are religious in dimming the screen to off when not absolutely in use. While you can get 3G enabled devices or wireless, for battery life, you really want to turn bluetooth, wifi, 3g, everything. Its the screen and the wireless that kills these devices.
The app to buy has incredibly cheap maps, called Navionics. My Canadian charts Pacific cost $499 (rediculously expensive) in digital format, Navionics sells me the software in HD for Android for $99 for US & Canada, Lakes and Oceans (even some rivers). Prices are comparable for the many other areas they cover. It even has restauarant reviews and some sort of "other users near me" if you have internet enabled.
I am a network engineer, and key to battery life is making this a dedicated device. It should do chart plotting, and that is it. Everything else uninstalled, nobody reading the web, etc. Buy a second tablet if you want to do that sort of thing or use your phone. If you're not navigating then the screen should be off and it will drop into standby. Your 12V system on board will keep the thing charged to full practically forever.
I have looked at every which way to make a cheap, simple, reliable chartplotter save for buying a marine product with their hideously priced and encrypted SD cards.
Like the OPs, I considered bareboard motherboards, taking netbooks apart and mounting the hardware inside something, getting custom transformers that originate at 12V rather than 120V for the charging (to reduce loss). Linux-based dedicated devices, QNX devices.
The problem with everything I found is that it is more of a PIA to use, unreliable, difficult to mount, and comes to the same price as the chartplotter I was trying to avoid buying.
A cheap as can be Android tablet that can run Navionics at slightly higher than their base spec that has GPS and a car charger, all in your done for under $350, all you need to do is mount it, and that can be as simple as leaving it on the chart table or as fancy as mounting it to the wall or on a custom rigged up small TV wall mount. If you're really wanting to be fancy you could take a saw and drop it in so it's flush with the chart table surface, get a peice of thin clear plastic (like window plastic) and cover the whole thing - touch screen will still work.
I've racked my brains and priced out and tried everything more complicated... but this is really the only thing that will work and not die on you because of a fangle of wires, some rinky dinked exterior monitor or having the fine ribbon cable that goes from the netbook mobo to the LCD display rip off on you because a can of soup flew across the cabin in a blow.
If the sucker does die for some reason (broaching? fire? lots of cans of soup flying around in a blow smashing the screen?) the core unit can be replaced for $250 and you can redownload your app from Google Play and be operational again in under 30 minutes (depending on the complexity of your mounting system).
And hey, if you're really cheap, swap your phone to an Android platform and download the non HD (ie. phone) version and just use it on your phone. That version of Navionics is only $49.
Speaking as someone who wasted far too much time looking for alternatives to the obvious.
I have a BlackBerry *everything* and reams of PC hardware and just didnt want to start on a new OS (Android). But this is the real way to go, who cares I can browse the web and check my messages on my Playbook. Battery lasts longer on the tablet when I only use it for it's intended purpose.
