USB GPS Dongle & Navigation software for laptop

CAPTAIN FANTASTIC

CAPTAIN FANTASTIC

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I am in the process of buying a USB GPS dongle to plug to the computer and able to use the computer as chartplotter for navigation and to plan the passages from home. (I also have a SH 300 which stays on the boat)

I have found three dongles so far; Maplin, Ncom, Bluenext. The Bluenext is half the price (£15) of the Maplins (£30).

I have not purchased the navigation software as yet.

Have you used any of these GPS Dongles? Which navigation software to get for a laptop?
 
Hi
any dongle should do, newer the quicker lock up.
Mines a Navman, works via a bluetooth dongle, can be charged while in use via usb but lasts 24hrs between charges.

THe Open CN s/ware.. if you can get the charts dloaded to go with it, and get it working, please tell me how, I've tried several times!

Nick
using Memory Map and Tsunamis
 
NickRobinson said:
Hi
any dongle should do, newer the quicker lock up.
Mines a Navman, works via a bluetooth dongle, can be charged while in use via usb but lasts 24hrs between charges.

THe Open CN s/ware.. if you can get the charts dloaded to go with it, and get it working, please tell me how, I've tried several times!

Nick
using Memory Map and Tsunamis
Click to expand...

Which software are you using? i also seem to have a bit of a problem with the OpenCPN downloading the charts
 
Open Cn 1.3.6

But I've tried 1.3.4 and older ones too

(Never really sorted it as I have good alternatives)

It seems you have to dload more than a gig of linked compressed files whch I've done, but the chart sware can't seem to find/use/read them. I just get that dark crude East USA coastline

Wonder if this'll be the new mega post?

(hope not!)

Nick
 
i have the entire world maps on cm93 and it works perfectly first time.

great tool.
i bought the blue-next dongle as it was recommended by hurricane. came this morning and works perfectly and finds the satellites in less than 30secs
 
Don't forget google earth can be a useful for nav as well, look along your route while on wifi and the laptop should save the data so you can view it offline.
 
i love the google earth overlay in open cpn.
i used opencpn today but only between Apuldram and Bosham but worked fine and used an android app on the phone. Navionics at £18, works very well
 
CAPTAIN FANTASTIC said:
Which navigation software to get for a laptop?
Click to expand...

I suggest that you first need to think about what sort of charts you want and how you plan to obtain them. Vector or Raster charts? Are you happy to locate and download 'pirate' charts ?.... or do you want legitimate up-to-date ones? Or do you want to get into the game of scanning your own paper charts?

Next step is to decide just what functionality do you want within the plotter.
And of course how much (if anything) you are prepared to spend.

I personally mainly use Sealclear (free) with charts from visitmyharbour.com (£30 for entire UK).

I also have an (out of date) copy of Imray Digital Charts for my area which are great, but run under their own plotter software which I find a bit limited.

I like the functionality of ShipPlotter (free) but have not actually used it for navigation.

Vic
 
Try to check that you can configure the data rate from the USB stick. Most of these PC based navigational applications expect the gps data to be coming in in NMEA format - OpenCPN certainly does. Even though the gps is connected over USB, the device driver will normally pretend to be a serial port since that's the standard medium for NMEA. Trouble is that standard NMEA is at 4800 baud - which is very slow by modent standards. I bought one of those cheap USB gps sticks a couple of years ago and it was fixed at 38000 baud - far too fast for OpenCPN. After some complaints from users, the manufacturers released a little utility to allow the data rate to be reconfigured and it now works fine with OpenCPN
 
I like Seapro lite, it works very well. One downside I have found is not the software ore the dongle (which came with Autoroute). My laptop eats power, so I am now negotiating over a small cheap laptop which should use much less power!
 
VicMallows said:
Is this a case of ultimate redundancy back up? ... or do you sail separate boats? :D

Agree on the BU-353

Vic
Click to expand...

I had just bought SWMBO a new laptop and loaded it with programs, she didn't want to be left out! As it is we now have two standalone plotters with GPS feeds, plus the two laptops each with it's own BU-353. There are several pencils but only one pencil sharpener though.:)

We also have SeaclearII but it only does raster charts whereas OpenCPN does both and I find the chart library easier to set up and use. In fact we have both Raster and Vector charts for the east coast USA loaded into Open CPN (with thanks to Uncle Sam for providing free USA charts) and can click to switch between them instantly. Just to be really weird, I also have Tsunamis (old and clunky, no AIS) and Neptune C-Map Plotter and with the help of a free program called Xport which allows multiple ports to be fed the GPS data, can have them all up and running simultaneously with OpenCPN and SeaclearII.
 
Surely it can't only be me having a problem :(

I have OpenCpn 2.5 and cm93 maps. Whenever I try adding the maps to OpenCpn I get two messages.
The first one:

opencpn message: Unexpected parameter 'C:/CM93MAPS\cm93_v2wkol_Jan2011.part1.rar'
Second message:

opencpn message: Usage: opencpn[/unit_test_1]/unit_test_1

Can anybody explain how I can solve this (without being too technical), please?
 
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