PC onboard - Can you help?

[Jeva]

I've been writing a small windows program to log and chart the NMEA 183 (DBT string). The idea is to chart the bottom profile either to see channels and underwater cliffs as well as tendencies towards deeper or shallower waters.
I've set everything up using a second PC with a NMEA generator, but I'm away from the boat and can't check it in real life.
Is there anybody out there who who has a boat in the water, with a PC connected to a depth sounder who could check if the program is working as I planned it and possibly give feed back.
PM me with your email and I should be able to send the files through n the next few days.
N.B. The program was written on Win XP and I've checked it on Win 8.
Thanks in advance.
P.S. No scams or viruses are attached to this mail

 

[sarabande]

these pages are scanned by webbots which will note your email address and send you lots of Nigerian scam letters and invitations for enlargement.


Best to remove the address and ask people or contact you by PM, then you can go to telephone to give them the email.

 

[Jeva]

Thanks for the advice - done.

 

[rogerthebodger]

The program NavmonPC has a facility to monitor log and chart moat of the NMEA messages including depth

Just Google it and have a look

 

[Tiller Girl]

If you can pm me I can send you a log file with various NMEA strings. But I can only be available in the next couple of hours for the pm

 

[rgarside]

Have you seen the TeamSurv site? http://www.teamsurv.eu

Depending on where you are you may need to apply tidal corrections to the depths recorded by DBT. If you need information about that, Tiller Girl can probably tell you all you need to know.

You'll also need to check the offsets from the surface if you want to correlate your readings with chart depths.

If you didn't get an NMEA file from Tiller Girl, send me a PM and I can send one.

 

[bats]

Jeva,

Interesting post.

I have been working on a plugin for OpenCPN, called "Survey", which attempts the same thing.

And have you looked at OpenSeaMap recently: http://depth.openseamap.org/#maptracks

Zoom right in to see the individual soundings.

OpenSeaMap is truly open-source and I believe this may be a good route for open crowd-sourcing of depth data. KAP charts can be downloaded.

http://openseamap.org

Data format is one consideration. Do you intend to make export files from the program? Could these be NMEA? Or is xyz format a better way to go, and ask OpenSeaMap to look at that for an import option? Will your code be open-source?

I will send you a PM tomorrow.

Mike