Laptop?charplotter

[steve157]

To all the techie people, I have a lowrance chartplotter on the flybridge but stuff all at the lower helm, my question is can you get extension leads for the power and gps antenna so I can take the plotter inside or can I convert my laptop to a chartplotter, have seen the gps antennas you can get for the pc but what software do you need.
The lowrance uses a C map card which looks very much like a SD card is it the same and can my card reader read it so I have the maps on the laptop?
I know these are probably really knob questions but I don have a clue when it comes to the tech stuff

 

[fireball]

If the lowrance has an NMEA output (which it would need to feed into a DSC VHF) then you could parallel the same feed into a laptop with chart plotting software.
I don't know about the C map cards, but you can read SD cards in a laptop (depending on format). I believe there is software allowing you to plan your C map passage, so I'd guess it can do chart plotting too.

What it won't easily do is map exactly what you have on your lowrance, so if you put a waypoint, route or whatever user data into that, you'll have to export it to the laptop before it will appear on there, and visaversa .. effectively you will have 2 chart plotters with 2 sets of user data but 1 GPS feed.

We have a fixed Garmin 152 that we use for our Nav, but feed the data into a laptop running the Maptech Offshore Nav lite software, I also have a Garmin Etrex that I can use as a backup incase the fixed set fails - using a data cable direct into the laptop.
You could do very similar, just swapping the 152 and Etrex for whatever GPS you have available.

 

[qetoo]

I use my laptop as a plotter. It runs off of my Garmin 128 GPS. I show the electrical connections at:

http://carlten.tripod.com/Navigation/navigation.html

Works very well, but the charts were purchased separately on CD.
Sorry, I don't know how you would get the C-Map charts into the laptop.

 

[Guest]

Suggest you join the GPS Nav group listed below in my signature .... we will help in every way possible.

What you want to do is easily achievable.