USB GPS's and Electronic charts

[tuffish]

USB GPS\'s and Electronic charts

Hi,
Hope I am on the correct forum. Trying to work out if it is possible to work one of these USB GPS's with Maxsea or C-Map. The C-Map and Maxsea work fine with a "normal" GPs via a serial port, any ideas? Email appreciated. david.tuff@bigpond.com

Regards,
David.

 

[bobgosling]

Re: USB GPS\'s and Electronic charts

You can get USB to Serial port converters. Try Maplin.

 

[Malcb]

Re: USB GPS\'s and Electronic charts

I use a USB GPS on a laptop with Neptune C-Map Planner. No problems. It also works with AutoRoute.

 

[decdeb]

Re: USB GPS\'s and Electronic charts

I have a USB GPS working with my version of C-Maps on my laptop.

 

[Guest]

Re: USB GPS\'s and Electronic charts

Yes of course ....

But I am not greatly in favour of the USB Mouse GPS ... as it only works with PC and has no independent capability. What it does is good .... but I prefer a small Hand-held GPS that works with and without PC .... Mine being a bog-standard eTrex .....

 

[Talbot]

Re: USB GPS\'s and Electronic charts

I have one of those as well
and a stand alone plotter

Cant have too many toys!

 

[Guest]

What we have ....

I have PC with eTrex via USB or Serial ........ Magellan that can also feed via serial. So that is one hand-held eTrex that is good for boat, in-pocket stuff and in the car for Autoroute. The Magellan long time no good on internal batterys - 12V ship supply only.
And of course the Plotter recently bought ....

All bases covered !!

 

[goneballistic]

Re: USB GPS\'s and Electronic charts

I've got the set up that your talking about. It's Maxsea and C-Map NT charts with a USB 'mouse' GPS.
I'v e had the Maxsea for a while and used it with a handheld GPS, worked well but set-up was a bit clumsy. So I bought one of the USB GPS off ebay, about £20.

When I got it I wasn't sure if I was expecting it to work or not - get bitten by doing stuff 'on the cheep all the time' - but when I got it all set up it worked fine.

There was one problem; sitting with computer at my kitchen table the GPS could not 'see' the satelites, had to move it outdoors, then no probs. Also the GPS installed itself in 'COM5', whatever that means so it took me quite a while to find it.

Hope that's helpful.

 

[Black_Pearl]

Re: USB GPS\'s and Electronic charts

I have a USB GPS mouse with Maxsea working great after a few tweaks, as previously stated the Com port settings do need to be set up.

If it still doesn't work the mouse may need reprogramming to send out the correct data

Your GPS dongle should come with a small app which enables you to check signal levels, this program may also enable you to view & reprogram the data string being sent from the unit, if it is not sending out the "GLL" sentence you can program it too.

For my Nemerix chipset GPS I used the program Nctlite, without enabling the GLL output Maxsea wouldn't work

Just a few tweaks to get ours to work /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

Good luck!

 

[qetoo]

Re: USB GPS\'s and Electronic charts

I purchased a USB GPS for $65 USD. It plugs into the USB port. No additional power connection. When I installed the software, it installed as COMM port #5. Then I had to go into my plotter setup and set it for COM 5. Works great.

 

[Oldhand]

Re: USB GPS\'s and Electronic charts

I think you will find MaxSea to be much more effective if you can input all available environmental, performance and positioning data on a single NMEA input via serial port. Don't know anything about your boat's electronics setup but just feeding it position data from a stand-alone GPS is a bit of a waste. For example, without input of boat speed through the water and comapss heading, MaxSea won't be able to calculate set and drift and thus compute the correct course to steer to the next waypoint.