Recommend me a basic tablet for AIS

My recommendation would be to hard wire your AIS receiver to a Piipo X9, 10, or 12 windows set top box/ tablet hybrid get a USB stick from VMH and download Open CPN. You might also need a feed from your chart plotter for GPS. Cheapest way to get a simple 10 inch AIS plotter with one of the best collision avoidance displays available.. Plug it into your TV and you get a 20 inch plus plotter screen. We used this for a 13 hour trip back from Ireland in 20 yard visibility. It also plays all our music collection, can be used as a fully functioning boat computer when back in harbour with Wi-Fi,and Bluetooth capabilities.
 
An old iPad is cheap and functional. My old iPad 2, which you can pick up for about £40 now, works great as an anchor alarm, chart plotter and with AIS displayed.

If you wipe and old iPad and don't install loads of games, photos and other crap on it, then it runs perfectly fast for any navigation purposes. Remember to get the version with a SIM card slot as you may wish to use it in the future.
 
northcave said:
An old iPad is cheap and functional. My old iPad 2, which you can pick up for about £40 now, works great as an anchor alarm, chart plotter and with AIS displayed.

If you wipe and old iPad and don't install loads of games, photos and other crap on it, then it runs perfectly fast for any navigation purposes. Remember to get the version with a SIM card slot as you may wish to use it in the future.
Click to expand...

You do need the one with the SIM slot, but not in case you need it in the future. If it doesn't have the SIM slot, it doesn't have inbuilt GPS (in the case of an iPad).
 
down...2 greens said:
That looks interesting - are you using it with a GX2200 radio, or is there any way to tell if it would work properly with mine? And do you find it draws much current?

I could also live with a wired connection...
Click to expand...

No, I do not use it with that vhf but as long as you have an nmea output from the vhf to feed into the yakker you will receive the output via wifi on your tablet. The problem with using a hard wired connection is that you can't have that and also keep the tablet charger connected. I do not use a separate chart plotter, my android tablet is my chart plotter and with max screen brightness and gps running full time the battery life is unacceptable so i keep the tablet plugged in to power full time underway.

Www.solocoastalsailing.co.uk
 
Thanks for the advice everyone.

As it happens I already have an oldish iPad, but I had been under the impression that an Android/Windows tablet would be necessary for what I want to do (maybe because I had been thinking of a wired connection and therefore would need a USB socket). If the Yakker would do the job with an iPad that might be handier, but the iPad isn't 3G and therefore doesn't have its own GPS. The radio does have built-in GPS though - does anyone know if it would send this data as well as AIS in a useable form for the iPad?

And if we're talking iPad, is the charting software very limited? I don't think OpenCPN and some others work on IOS, so what do people find good? I've used Navionics but it seems not to handle AIS.

Sorry for all the silly questions!
 
got this or something like it
tablet

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Motorola...h=item363fe5d4ea:g:5CYAAOSw1u9byacA:rk:1:pf:0

ais - quark
plus a quark for the AIS. they do a quark with gps over wifi as well as ais (so you can use the ipad) - but the trick will be getting ipad software which integrates an ais overlay (but it's harder to find a nice waterproof case whereas you can get a lifeproof case for the ipad - hey ho)

raster chartsets
http://www.visitmyharbour.com/

their website is having issues - it's also a slightly bewildering layout (I think they are programmers and sailors and not web design types). when they fix it, click on the thing on the right that says buy and keep products as you want the UK/France chartset - admiralty raster for about £17 for a year with a mid year upgrade

it all works very well :) and the motorola 10.1 tablet has a nice clear screen

charting app - marine navigator - does ais as well
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.kemiro.marinenavigator2&hl=en_GB. can integrate AIs

charts for about £18 whole of UK through this lot - sorry about the website but it's there when you find it!

my favourite charting app was the raster ipad timezero tz-iboat https://mytimezero.com/tz-iboat
really nice app and worked well on the ipad but sadly no ais overlay
 
Last edited:
PaulRainbow said:
You do need the one with the SIM slot, but not in case you need it in the future. If it doesn't have the SIM slot, it doesn't have inbuilt GPS (in the case of an iPad).
Click to expand...

Depends which one. I understand the ipad 1 and 2 had gos even without the sim slot. But yeah to be absolutely sure get the sim version.
 
PaulRainbow said:
For a cheap tablet, look on Ebay for a Lenovo, "refurb" units sold by Argos. 10" models for less than £100..
Click to expand...

I bought a Tab 2 that way. It's OK, but start-up is horrendously slow. I don't know what it's doing, but from cold start it's somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour before it's much use. Other than that, or if you never switch it off, it's fine. They are selling refurbished Tab 3s now, and I may have a punt.
 
JumbleDuck said:
I bought a Tab 2 that way. It's OK, but start-up is horrendously slow. I don't know what it's doing, but from cold start it's somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour before it's much use. Other than that, or if you never switch it off, it's fine. They are selling refurbished Tab 3s now, and I may have a punt.
Click to expand...

That's a bit odd, sounds like my overloaded laptop, takes forever to start, so i don't turn it off :)

I had a couple of those 10" Lenovos and they worked OK, though i probably wouldn't want to load them up with too many app's. Battery life was reasonable too.
 
Dare I suggest getting a Standard Horizon plotter to go with your radio.
Plug and play
Sunlight readable screen
Waterproof
Powered up for as long as the boat has power.
 
RAI said:
Dare I suggest getting a Standard Horizon plotter to go with your radio.
Plug and play
Sunlight readable screen
Waterproof
Powered up for as long as the boat has power.
Click to expand...

Good in its day, as a stand alone unit, but a bit dated now. Besides, been out of production few a few years now.
 
As suggested earlier speak to Dave at london chart plotters he is fairly flexible
I got a telecast 10” with quark which works great
Never got round to hardwiring it but even with the antenna just placed vertical down below is ok
Came with phone card installed
“
 
PaulRainbow said:
That's a bit odd, sounds like my overloaded laptop, takes forever to start, so i don't turn it off :)

I had a couple of those 10" Lenovos and they worked OK, though i probably wouldn't want to load them up with too many app's. Battery life was reasonable too.
Click to expand...

It's fine when it's running. I guess it's launching all sorts of services when it starts. I don't even have many apps on it - just half a dozen or so.
 
Thanks everyone, I'm getting closer!

I think I'll take a punt on the Yakker, to get AIS (and maybe GPS?) info from the GX2200 into a tablet. The next thing is whether to look for an Android tablet or a Windows one (or whether my old iPad with no built-in GPS would do) - which is maybe governed by which charting software I want?

I think I'd prefer raster charts since I already have a vector version on the (non-networkable) cockpit plotter. Most popular contenders seem to be Marine Navigator or OpenCPN - is there anything much to choose between them?

Thanks again...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top