Laptop uses?

AngusMcDoon said:
I have found that those TV receivers only work when connected to a domestic standard aerial, i.e. at home, so you might as well watch the home telly. The little stub aerial doesn't work at all.
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For the money they're also fantastic SDR receivers, http://www.rtl-sdr.com/

Just a pity they don't go down below 50Mhz but for not many quid you can get aircraft date, satelitte weather, ais, loads of stuff.

http://sdrformariners.blogspot.co.uk/p/software-beginners-guide.html
 
Tranona said:
The first dongle is potentially OK, but as it plugs direct into laptop you will likely find reception poor, so the cable will allow you to site it higher up in a place where it will get a better signal. No idea why you would want the second item as it seems unrelated to what you are trying to do.

Trying always to find the "cheapest" when you don't fully understand what you are buying is likely to end in tears when you find you can't get it to work.
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Buying the cheapest is'nt necessarily my aim but there is one hell of a lot of hype out there particularly with the boat market/chandlery so I do try to buy as cheaply as possibly & evaluate everything/learn as I go along & then if you are careful you can make great savings.
I agree that you have to be careful so that you don't end up with a load of junk :encouragement:
 
GHA said:
The TV dongle can be used to receive ais and feed it into opencpn, amongst many other things.
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I was aware from the forums that some people are using them to track aircraft but are they genuinely usable as an ais thing (still don't know much about that) to track ship movements etc/what we want in a marine environment?
Please explain all you can & then if they are practical (& simple) I will buy one along with one of those gps things on an extended lead.This is really getting quite interesting :encouragement:

PS: I just thought they would be handy to have for the radio but why should'nt we be able to do all that stuff through a computer including use them for VHF/DSC things?
 
Nicholas123 said:
I was aware from the forums that some people are using them to track aircraft but are they genuinely usable as an ais thing (still don't know much about that) to track ship movements etc/what we want in a marine environment?
Please explain all you can & then if they are practical (& simple) I will buy one along with one of those gps things on an extended lead.This is really getting quite interesting :encouragement:

PS: I just thought they would be handy to have for the radio but why should'nt we be able to do all that stuff through a computer including use them for VHF/DSC things?
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For the cost I would definitely get an rtl dongle. Apparently they work OK for receiving ais but I wouldn't want to rely on one other than as an interesting hobby on board. http://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-tutorial-cheap-ais-ship-tracking/

I've just got hold of a Raspberry Pi 2 mini computer so will have a go getting opencpn up and running with ais from an rtl dongle and report back here.
Happy shopping :)

One thing, laptops can be power hungry beasts onboard , hope you have some mains power if you're playing on the boat.
 
GHA said:
For the cost I would definitely get an rtl dongle. Apparently they work OK for receiving ais but I wouldn't want to rely on one other than as an interesting hobby on board. http://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-tutorial-cheap-ais-ship-tracking/

I've just got hold of a Raspberry Pi 2 mini computer so will have a go getting opencpn up and running with ais from an rtl dongle and report back here.
Happy shopping :)

One thing, laptops can be power hungry beasts onboard , hope you have some mains power if you're playing on the boat.
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Just received the cigarette lighter charger I gave a link to earlier & it looks like a good quality bit of kit :encouragement:

Thanks everyone.
 
V1701 said:
This is also worth consideration:

http://www.visitmyharbour.com/charts-for-seaclear.asp

Download Seaclear (the free chart plotting software) here:

http://www.sping.com/seaclear/#DOWNLOAD

And Open CPN, free download here:

http://opencpn.org/ocpn/download
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A hearty +1 for Visitmyharbour chart sets -- official For Navigation raster charts for the whole UK, with a year of updates, for an extremely reasonable cost.

Raster charts are far better for planning and are quite suitable for navigation as well.

You can also get vector charts from them if you prefer those.

OpenCPN is a superior charting program, incredibly powerful, but perhaps not quite as easy to use as commercial packages. But very much worth the slight extra effort needed to learn the program.
 
I had a browse through some of the video's on youtube last night to try & get some idea of how these chart plotting packages work & I can't say the ones I looked at were all that satisfactory. Clearly if you already know what they are talking about I dare say they made sense but from the perspective of someone who has never even seen a dedicated chart plotter in action they all seemed very lacking in detail & I can't say I learned a lot from them so if someone has got a link to a very down to earth & practically laid out package that is free & simple to use for a beginner I would be very grateful if they could supply it.
 
Nicholas123 said:
I had a browse through some of the video's on youtube last night to try & get some idea of how these chart plotting packages work & I can't say the ones I looked at were all that satisfactory. Clearly if you already know what they are talking about I dare say they made sense but from the perspective of someone who has never even seen a dedicated chart plotter in action they all seemed very lacking in detail & I can't say I learned a lot from them so if someone has got a link to a very down to earth & practically laid out package that is free & simple to use for a beginner I would be very grateful if they could supply it.
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Opencpn is free and very good indeed. http://opencpn.org/ocpn/
Lots of help on thier forum if you get stuck, though the manual is pretty good an- d should cover most things - http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f134/
Downside is it doesn't come with charts, you can get visitmyharbour raster for the UK or older vector charts can be downloaded with the help of a teenager :)
 
GHA said:
One thing, laptops can be power hungry beasts onboard , hope you have some mains power if you're playing on the boat.
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The Samsung NC10 and NC110 are pretty much up with the best for miserly power consumption. It's a pity they are not available new any more. Disabling unused bits of hardware increases battery life even further, like Wifi, bluetooth, the ethernet port, video camera etc. They can be set to go to sleep when the lid is closed reawakening withing 2 or 3 seconds when it is opened. Using them this way I find that over a 10 hour day the battery discharges by about 1% per hour.
 
GHA said:
Opencpn is free and very good indeed. http://opencpn.org/ocpn/
Lots of help on thier forum if you get stuck, though the manual is pretty good an- d should cover most things - http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f134/
Downside is it doesn't come with charts, you can get visitmyharbour raster for the UK or older vector charts can be downloaded with the help of a teenager :)
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I checked out one of the links to visitmyharbour & they seemed to charge for charts.What I would like is some free ones of the Solent say as I'm fairly familiar with it so that I can evaluate the whole concept.
 
Nicholas123 said:
I checked out one of the links to visitmyharbour & they seemed to charge for charts.What I would like is some free ones of the Solent say as I'm fairly familiar with it so that I can evaluate the whole concept.
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If you use Imray paper charts then the Meridian package that I suggested earlier is easy to use. The charts are identical to the paper ones and the charting software is as simple as it gets. However it is not free for obvious reasons. You don't need to have used another chart plotter - indeed it may be a disadvantage, but you do have to understand all the symbols on the chart and how to use waypoints. Tides are in real time in both tabular and graphic form.
 
Spi D said:
Search this forum for "CM93".

Charts do not neccessarily cost money.
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Thanks for that.PS: Can you be a bit more specific,that in itself seems like a minefield!
I'll try this out & if I find a practical option for the type of sailing I enjoy with a view to expanding my horizons I may well take a closer look at Tranona's suggestion :encouragement:
 
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Well, the suggested search on this forum will reveal hits of which at least one is free from PUP.

Scanned by Malwarebytes and antivirus program regularly. On a known good server, no torrent or download managers forced on people (don't ask how I know ):anonymous:)
 
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