PDA & Smartphone GPS mapping software and maps

charles_reed

charles_reed

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Though I've been using GPS and electronic charting for the last 14 years, I've only recently become the possessor of a Nokia E70, with the facility of using it as a plotter as well as PDA/mobile phone.

Finding a Bluetooth-enabled GPS unit has been no problem, but the software and maps seem to be rather more of a challenge.

Tom-tom 5 is rather long in the tooth and has certain problems (so I'm led to believe) with Symbian software, the Swedish Wayfinder appears to be more slick, but maps appear to only be updated over GRPS rather than ADSL. (The E70 can be used as a wi-fi terminal).
Neither of these two offer any marine charts and Garmin's Bluecharts software doesn't appear to yet be smartphone compliant.

I'd be grateful for any experience or observations from anybody with knowledge or experience of the field, obviously it would be a benefit to be able to use the unit as a backup when atr sea - not essential as I've got two fixed units in any case
 
I know this sounds suicidal !! but does the pda have to stay withy the software installed - or is it WIN CE / Pocket PC OS that can take another plotting software such as OZiexplorer CE etc. Maybe if it can take memory cards etc. you can install a second GPS plotting system - not use the already installed one ?
 
Ozi-Ex ... dunno ... it was just a thought - as there are other pacakges out there ... but if smartphone doesn't have Win CE or Pocket PC - then it's going to be a struggle to find a good package ....

mmmmmmm /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif
 
Rather depends on what you want to do.

Charting C-eMAP
Logging/planning/tides and more Navstation

I have only recently discovered Navstation; this does everything I want to for a very modest cost.
I use it on a Navman PIN 300, this gets its gps data inside the cabin, at the chart table--balsa cored deck.
 
Again drift ....

The guy mentions TomTom5 ..... this is not Marine charting ..... etc.

Boy OH Boy .... can no-one read a post nowadays ?


The guy has a smartphone ........... he wants to know if there is any possibility to get it suitable for his needs ...........
 
I currently use a Motorola A1000 which is a Symbian phone. Don't know what your Nokia is though. I have something called nhgps on it and a load of maps (road maps) on a Transflash memory card. It works prety well.

http://www.nhgps.com/

Don't see why it shouldn't work with charts but unless you can find a free downloadable electronic chart, you might have to scan some and stitch them together.
 
In answer to your question, no, the software can be in a separate miniSD card - these are now up to 2Gb capacity.

There are two main smartphone/PDA software systems - Microsoft Win CE and Symbian (which is developed from the EPOC system in Psion PDAs).

Symbian 90.2 is the most recent version and (here I go again surfing on the techy crest and drowning myself), it's so new that there's little software available for it. The earlier Symbian 60 has lots, including a surrogate MS Office and lots of GPS software.

The only two available GPS software for Symbian 90- are (in the UK) a beta-version of Robin Lovelock's GPSS, with lots of downloadable maps from his site and, from the US, SmartCom 2.52 which takes all the maps in Ozi-Explorer format, which gives you all of Texas Uni's free ones, Imray, Maptech and many others (any if you care to scan your own).
Trouble is that all the maps on offer are in raster rather than vector format, a definite backward step.

Most of the readily available systems are either for WinCE (totally incompatible) or writ for Symbian 60 (probably snag-ridden).
 
Interesting ....

But just to refresh ... what coverage are you looking for ? Terrestial or Marine ?

If s/ware is so scarse ? Would the Ozi-Ex compatable be a short term answer until better appears ? There are plenty of formats that can be brought into Ozi-Ex and exported out ... especially if you go back to the earlier Ozi versions. I'm not a fan of Ozi-Ex on PC .... but on PDA - it is good. I don't know SmartCom 2.52 .... but if it does take Ozi-Ex stuff .......I assume only after Ozi-Ex has exported as PDA format .... OZi2f or whatever the format is called ...
 
I'm exploring the market right now. So far the 3 shareware programmes I've downloaded over the internet have all given the phone indigestion and final installation steps aborted.

That included the MapCom2.5, which is the one which reads Ozi-Explorer map-files.

Looks as though only Wayfinder 6 is the only one that will work with this release of Symbian.

I think that time will correct that problem - the release was only May/June this year.

Still the phone is the same size as the 8220 it's replacing, accesses my local WLAN, allows me to modify Word docs (only in portrait), Powerpoint presentations and Excel spreadsheets and has a middling-good fixed-focus camera - so even if I can't use it as a backup chartplotter it's not the end of the world.

Oh! I tried an Office lookalike, which should allow initiating *.docs, *.xls, but that too failed on final installation on the phone.

All good fun whilst I await the hull drying out in Malta and the replacement engine being fitted, before my return on 04/09.
 
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