Marine Charting .... self-made maps ?

[Guest]

Has anyone had success with such programs as :

Mapedit

LCMapedit

cgsMapper

Map Maker

NRDB

etc. ?

I've been playing with sat-images and captured screenshots of maps / chartlets etc. to produce own maps for my plotter .... limited success only ... but some people as in Mapcreate Yahoo group are having quite good success in creating local area road maps, lakes, rivers and marine stuff.

Anyone out there playing with this stuff as well ... as I see it - you could make a specific chart to display for your own mooring / favourite area with detail not found on commercial etc. if you plug away at it ...

 

[StanFolds]

Take care that you dont infringe any copyrights, lots of sites charge for the use of data. Check this link for some general information on mapping from GPS http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Main_Page

Stan

 

[Guest]

Copyright ......

I already know about CR - having run GPS Nav for a number of years and also the ongoing discussions in Mapcreate group .....

It's a grey area in many ways - as it is possible to argue that making a picture / data available to download by right click save as and not coding that out - may actually weaken a CR defence.

But anyway its a weak argument and one I don't wish to get strung out on ........ I keep to sites and archives where the authors / providers do say you can download parts or whole etc. Many of the Sat Image sites allow downloads along with various other sites. The US is the best place of course for this with Govt. providing mapping / charting as a Public material ... ie GIS etc. But so far Europe / ROW has resisted US making available free data for outside US regions.

What I am provoking is others to start looking at producing their own small maps / charts for specific areas of interest to them personally - to produce large or commercial stuff is way beyond capability of the programs mentioned etc. In that way - the map is little interest to others except those in immediate vicinity using same equipment maybe ... therefore no loss to any CR owner...... Let's be honest - who's going to produce a line-art chart when a commercial full detail job is probably available ? And if they did - who's going to be interested in using it other than creator ?

 

[StanFolds]

Re: Copyright ......

I am charting the Norfolk Broads from my GPS on my ancient laptop with a programme that was given away in PBO many years ago. It gives me the incentive to go places I haven't been before.

Stan

 

[Guest]

Free program ....

Now here's an interesting bit ....

Charting Norfolk Broads ...... a person after my own heart ! PBO gave away a program ?? I would most certainly love to see / try it out ....

At present I have all the navigable section of my river set-up in Ozi-Explorer and Seaclear with PC .... even on my PDA via Ozi-Ex CE ...... but having difficulty converting it to my Lowrance plotter.

PM me and I would love to discuss methods / ways .....

 

[DeeGee]

Re: Free program ....

Mapping my area - too lazy to do such a thing. But I do take screenshots from Google Earth with me to aid u/w visualisation when navving some rocky shortcuts.

 

[Guest]

Denbigh .... what a waste of resource ...

Ok so you screen-dump Google earth or WHY ....

Ok then make some georeference marks and note Lat / Long ....
Load into Seaclear / other program that accepts scanned bmp / jpg / png files and calibrate those marks to Lat Long ..... bingo - you now have personalised chart for area ...

Follow my thread and maybe go further .... actually get that scan to display on your plotter ?

Ok - I live in an area that not so many years ago - no road maps / topo stuff etc, was allowed to be public..... (Soviet Military secrets .... being nearest Soviet point to West). So mapping tends to be a bit scarce.
You can obtain Norfolk Broads area maps quite easily .... but the Venta River where I live ? Only recently has a Latvian Co. made available a "scale" topo / road map that is actually indicative of the size of the river ... before all showed it as a line only !!

 

[Guest]

Example of \"daft\" gps charting ....

I have Tidal Stream charts for areas ....

I scan and then calibrate them for lat / long. That is each hourly chart. I then load into Seaclear .... so I have a land / sea area drawing and my position indicated accurately by GPS ... I also have the tidal stream data immediately on screen as text on map .... all I have to do is change map each hour to keep current (sorry about pun !) ....
As we are not in shallow water with risk of grounding - I dfon't feel need for greater chart detail - but the tidal stream is important ....