The electronic chart-table.

[Guest]

Sorry if this has been covered ad infinitum in the past but I would appreciate some advice. What is the best way to power a lap-top efficiently at sea and also in a marina with power available? How is the lap-top connected to the GPS? Is there a best machine on the market? Does anyone have experience of MaxSea Marine Software? Is there a better system out there? What electronic charts are best? I think that is all for now. Ta.

 

[seahorse]

Power your laptop from the "mains" whenever possible as this will also keep the laptop battery charged. Use an inverter connected as near to the boat battery as possible to reduce voltage drop then use the 240v output for the lapto. You will need a dedicated lead from the GPS to the 9 pin socket on the laptop, easy. I use Oziexplorer ( a trial version is available from their web site) Charts can be commercial or home made scanned, always have paper backups just in case the chips go down!

 

[IanPoole2]

battery life

Most modern laptops have very good colour screens, these "eat" laptop battery life so if your using it for navigation you need to keep it plugged in, using up your boats battery life.

 

[cp99]

Best nav app: like the best car, you´ll get a lot of opinions. But for what it´s worth, I´ve used all the UK and US apps, a dozen or more, and the best by a long chalk IMO is NavMaster with ARCS charts. That´ll cost you, of course, about 3 or 4 hundred for the app and a hundred or so for each folio of charts. Alternatively, get hold of something like MaxSea or OziExplorer ´the right way´and it´ll cost you next to nothing. You can scan charts into Ozi, so that´s a big advantage cost wise. See some user´s advice at Yahoo e-groups / sailing / GPS group. You can often find ´files´that you need if you hunt around... Using a laptop on board: I would upload your waypoints to a GPS so you can use that most of the time rather than having the laptop on. Most users find they don´t run it too much after they´ve sorted out a route. You must have paper charts of some kind or other. The hard drive on any computer is vulnerable to damage from vibration, so the longer you leave the computer on, the more risk of it dying; they often do, coming off a wave and so on. For pity´s sake don´t leave it on the chart table - at some stage it will hit the deck and you´ll be crying (unless you're just pottering around the solent). Make a special shelf for it, perhaps folding down with some piano hinge, pad the surface with foam but don´t obscure the vents, and strap it down with bungees so that it CAN´T move - otherwise you´ll be sorry. Laptops with removeable hard drives and floppy drives are the best as these bits usually go before anything else, and while fixing a PC is dirt cheap now, if you need to send a laptop in for a service the cost will make your eyes water - e.g. a new floppy 1 hundred pounds against ten for a PC.

 

[Miles]

I would strongly endorse the comment about Navmaster though I know people who are equally hooked on Maxsea. After using it for a year I have found it to be an excellent, stable product. It does however take a little time to learn well enough for the commands to come naturally when at sea. There's also excellent tech support from PC Maritime. I like the ARCS charts as they are basically the same as the paper ones we carry (same conventions etc). They can be updated weekly, quarterly or annually. Whilst vector charts theoretically zoom better the ARCS raster charts work fine in practice.

The PC is a Sony VAIO notebook which is powered from a 12v 'cigarette lighter socket' using a Targus Plane/Car power supply. The display is 1024x768 which is fine as you can switch off all the menus in Navmster and use the whole screen for the chart. Newer pc's have higher res screens but tend to use more power. The pc sits on a non-slip mat which came from a shop that specialises in products for old people and whch is designed to stop plates slipping about on the table. In combination with a velcro strap (B&Q) around the pc and around the chart table top it has proved rock solid without us having to cut into anything. We have a 220v socket at the chart table so can swith the pc to AC when on shore power.

GPS can be either from the handheld GPS (though ours doesn't work below deck) using the supplied pc cable or from the boat's Seatalk network via Raymarine's Seatalk NMEA converter.

All waypoints are entered into Navmster (and are checked against the ARCS charts) which hoilds the master waypoint database and are then transferred to the handheld GPS and to the Radar/Chartplotter so there is no danger of different waypoints in different devices.

With pc and chartplotter we effectively have two systems that have to go wrong before we need to fall back to the paper charts that we carry and the log which is updated at least hourly. I'm not sure how susceptible modern hard drives are to motion damage but I saw on TV that Emma Richards has a similar notebook in the Southern Ocean at the moment. If I had to choose I'd take pc screen and ARCS chart every time over the C-Map chart plus chart-plotter display.

For sure there are cheaper ways to do this but it wasn't an area I wanted to skimp on.

There's a bit more in the Gear section at www.veramara.com especially wrt some problems we had interfacing Seatalk and NMEA. At some point there will be water proof tablet pc's that can be used in the cockpit with a wireless LAN link to the chart table pc but they're no where near economical yet.

 

[pandroid]

I'll endorse the above. I have both Navmaster/Arcs and a Raymarine Radar/Plotter which unfortunately uses C-Map. The ARCS are more expensive but IMHO opinion, superior.

I measured the current drain of a laptop powered by a Targa adaptor and found it to be about 1.5 Amps, which is less than the Radar/plotter. (As long as you use it with a fully charged battery from the off. i.e. the batteries not charging).

Also, the ST50 Multi display on my boat has an NMEA outut, so no special box/hardware is neccessary, I just terminated the lead that cames with the ST50 with a serial plug. Works fine. Other units (e.g. Autopilot) also have NMEA outputs.

The REALLY good function of the Navmaster is the Proudman Tidal Atlas. This is an add-on which has all the tidal flows around the UK (not just diamonds like the charts, but real readings every half-mile or so). This allows the PC to make decent calculations about tide set and drift, and hence CTS, ETA calculations, and work out the best time to leave etc. Its the one thing I wish the C-Map had.

Having said all that, I now use the Plotter as the main unit and just reserve the ARCS to allow the proudman to do tidal planning. This is mainly because the plotter has no moving parts and integrates with the Seatalk bus better (i.e you can set waypoints on it which are seen by all the other displays)

 

[MartinGPerry]

In a year or two we may all be using a waterproof Smart Monitor in the cockpit
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/smartdisplay/
my son has just emailed me from the CES show in Las vegas and is very impressed with these

 

[Mirelle]

And another vote for ARCS

By the way, a little bird in the business tells me that the UKHO are cooking up something, in conjuction with the RYA. The something will involve ARCS and a PC, will not be expensive and looks VERY interesting.

 

[qsiv]

I'd agree (but I havent found any rugged smartdisplays at better than 800 x 600)

 

[Guest]

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[rhinorhino]

Re: And another vote for ARCS

Old news!
Pity the RYA are so out of date, no doubt they have never heard of vector charts?

 

[ean_p]

Just a good waterproof touch screen would do........any ideas anyone????

 

[claymore]

Endorsing much of what has been said below.
I have an inverter running off the boats system via a circuit breaker which gives me the ability to plug my laptop into the 230V system.
The laptop sits on a cushioned pad and has a bungee across its hinge when the screen is in the vertical.
The GPS is connected via an NMEA cable to the serial port on the back of the laptop
I dont have room for a separate mouse so use the one in the middle of the keyboard which can be a bit of a faff.
I use Arcs charts which are absolutely brilliant and can be bought in folios of 10 at a reduced price and the software package is from Dolphin Maritime who are based in Lancaster and have website.
I have a bundle of Imray and Admiralty charts tucked under a bunk which seldom see the light of day and the whole setup is a joy to use.
The laptop is ageing gently - like its owner - and the battery life is not long so we always run the system off the boats battery which has never been a problem.

regards
Claymore

 

[qsiv]

Those are relatively easy to source - but what size, what resolution? How far from the PC (longer distance will mean LVDS rather than simple video driver - that implies a desktop rather than a portable as you need ISA slots). Do you need daylight viewable (MUCH more difficult as bright screenstends to mean bright backlights, implies more power and heat, which is difficult to lose from a waterproofed screen). An alternative is transflective technology (uses the reflected daylight instead of backlights - but they can be limited in night use). A final issue can be power - many screens actually draw more current than a PC itself! My Sony Vaio power supply is rated at 80W (my Dell as 90W) - the 15" Sony screen I sue on the office desk is rated at 95W ....

 

[steffen]

Since we are on the subject; has anybody found a cure for the interference that the laptop causes on the hf-ssb receiver?
When i feed both the receiver and the laptop from the ships batteries there is this whining sound interfering with the reception of f.i. weather maps and Navtex.
As soon as i run the laptop from its internal battery things get better.

Happy sailing, Steffen

 

[steffen]

Since we are on the subject; has anybody found a cure for the interference that the laptop causes on the hf-ssb receiver?
When i feed both the receiver and the laptop from the ships batteries there is this whining sound interfering with the reception of f.i. weather maps and Navtex.
As soon as i run the laptop from its internal battery things get better.

Happy sailing, Steffen

 

[Guest]

Re: Or try to be different

I have a 300W inverter which is located very close to the batteries and the output is terminated with a standard marina shorepower plug. At sea I plug this into the mains distribution box which has an RCB. In the marina I unplug and use the standard marina supply. This allows me to use various battery chargers, mobile phone chargers etc at all times and to power a TV.

The TV is an LCD variety which is the cheapest available that allows a PC input. I do not really believe that the majority of sailors require a ruggedised screen and this is as robust as most laptops and can be securely mounted very easily.

For a PC look at mini.itx.com and choose the cheapest PC you can find. These come in all shapes and sizes and can be custom built for any application. It does not even need a hard disc. For this use a USB hard disc now widely available. You can unplug this and take it home with all your chart software for planning etc. These devices are also sold as MP3 players so you can have a complete jukebox of music on board for the time you are not watching TV. You can even load the photos from your digital camera on some and review the at your leisure.

With this set up you will have so much entertainment on board you will not require much in the way of charts as sailing will be the secondary pursuit. I like scanned charts as I am used to BA charts and too old to learn anything new. Maptech are relatively cheap at £100 per folio and include tidal info but do not appear to be updated as regularly as some of the competition. Not too major a problem as you can annotate them and will have paper variants on board. Apparently they can be used with more mainstream packages such as Maxsea and Raytech but I can not verify this.

On the other hand if you sail over a wide area the c charts offer a superwide area at less than £300 which is actually cheaper than buying the same coverage from Maptech. Winchart uses these and has a very simple interface compared with most.

The low end packages will normally take a GPS input and display on the chart but will not drive your autopilot. You then need to spend more serious money though most autoilots can take their info directly from the GPS. Thus you can download all your waypoints and still use the cheaper software version.