Touch Operated Chartplotters - Operating When Wet

[Neeves]

B&G have just released, or announced the release, of their new Zeus 3. It will not be available, at least in Oz, till March next year. It looks pricey (but the A$ is particularly weak) and maybe if you are in the market and want B&G then the Zeus 2 might be cheaper, now.

Its dual control dials+knobs and touch screen and you can apparently disable the touch screen for extreme conditions - which suggests the message that touch screens are not yet the answer might have got through.

Jonathan

 

[vyv_cox]

Its dual control dials+knobs and touch screen and you can apparently disable the touch screen for extreme conditions - which suggests the message that touch screens are not yet the answer might have got through.

Jonathan

The description of the Zeus2 is the same but it is misleading. There is no facility that I know of to add a waypoint or edit a route using the dials and knobs. The touch screen can be disabled but that only allows you to scroll the screen as far as I know. I hope you are correct about the Zeus3, not that I am likely to be buying one, but it is this problem that is the Achilles heel of my Zeus2.

 

[tudorsailor]

This is a true each to their own question, but I personally think touchscreen is the way to go and I suspect that it will become absolutely dominant in the near future. I currently have two touchscreen Raymarine plotters, one with a remote RMK-9 manual override. A 7" mounted on the fwd cockpit bulkhead has by far the most use, but it is just too small for normal fingers and a PITA bouncing around - if Giblets is watching this thread he will prob confirm this. The 9" down below is a better size and I will prob swap them over.

I have spoken with the software developers in a couple of the big companies and they all say that TC is the future, with the caveat that TC interfaces are currently at a point of exponential improvement. So is the screen technology itself -- and I think one can see this in the latest gear. The point here is that TC optimised software (smartphones, iPads, etc) is hard to make retro compatible with knobs and one can easily demonstrate this by attaching a keypad to an iPad -- it is hard to resist the desire to touch the screen!

Moving forward, the more TC optimised software become the more clunky knobs will feel and I suspect what you are regrettably witnessing is a generation of gear which has neither fully sorted out the screen tech, the TC interface, or silky manual override routing. Prob best just to live with it for a couple of years and then replace with something which will make all our current gear seem a bit prehistoric.

I have a newish C125 Raymarine plotter. When I was deciding whether to get the touchscreen version, the local agent advised against it as he said he'd had more problems with the touchscreen than the non touchscreen.
I warmer climes, I think that avoiding a touchscreen is better. No sticky fingers to leave marks. No fingers leaving sunscreen on the plotter. However, I do also use a Android table linked by wifi to the plotter and of course the tablet is touchscreen!

TudorSailor

 

[jwilson]

I have a touchscreen Vulcan at the wheel and a button-joystick SH at the chart table. The Vulcan touch screen seems to cope with rain, but I don't own gloves so can't comment on how it works with those.

 

[Lucky Duck]

I have a newish C125 Raymarine plotter. When I was deciding whether to get the touchscreen version, the local agent advised against it as he said he'd had more problems with the touchscreen than the non touchscreen.
I warmer climes, I think that avoiding a touchscreen is better. No sticky fingers to leave marks. No fingers leaving sunscreen on the plotter. However, I do also use a Android table linked by wifi to the plotter and of course the tablet is touchscreen!

TudorSailor

I also had a C125 and the main snag was that the software appeared to be written primarily for touch screen 'e' series so some aspects like data entry was a bit of a pain using the 'joystick'. However, as you say, linking a tablet via the wifi solves this issue!

 

[Snifter]

I sailed a boat back from Greenland to the UK in October in wet and windy weather, and found the Raymarine touchscreen plotter on the binnacle a real pain in the rain. On a previous ocean crossing boat I became used to a good sprayhood with a Navpod on the coach roof under the hood, and a repeater on the binnacle, but this boat had no sprayhood, and so on watch in the cockpit at night in the rain with a touchscreen that didn't respond to touch it was a novel and entertaining (!) experience, and it was not a quick exercise to get to the main plotter at the chart table.