using a laptop for charts aboard

S

steve yates

Well-Known Member
Joined
16 Oct 2014
Messages
4,102
Location
Benfleet, Essex/Keswick, Cumbria
Visit site
I saw somewhere a photo and link of a handy sounding gadget, around £30, which added gps to your laptop. Was reckoned very quick to pick up and worked without sight of sky.
Anyone any ideas what it could have been? I presume you need something like this to actually use your laptop for live navigation, as fairly sure mine doesn't have it built in.
ta.
 
Managed very well with a lap top and a GPS dongle from Maplin - about £20 inside. Meridian software - useful if you are used to Imray paper charts. AIS from a NASA engine. All OK if you are satisfied with working at a chart table and a laptop is a useful thing to have on a boat anyway. all very cheap compared with dedicated plotters, but things have moved on and there is a lot more choice now.
 
Thank you gents, tranona I have a laptop aboard anyway for work, its a short term solution, though always useful as backup. I need to replace most of the instruments aboard and decide on a system, there will be more posts on this anon. :)

Graham, out of interest, any idea what the chartplotter is that comes with meridians uk chart pack? Is it a piece of software? I'm assuming it cant be an actual plotter as used aboard.
 
For software, Opencpn must be as good as there is even amongst paid programs, up to date charts for uk/europe available now as well at o-charts.org

And..... Looks like it should be possible to turn an android phone gps into an nmea stream over wifi which Opencpn can read. Using node-red which can run on Android using an app called termux. Shouldn't be too hard to create a nmea sentence and send it out over udp or tcp.

rJK84Jl.jpg
 
steve yates said:
Thank you gents, tranona I have a laptop aboard anyway for work, its a short term solution, though always useful as backup. I need to replace most of the instruments aboard and decide on a system, there will be more posts on this anon. :)

Graham, out of interest, any idea what the chartplotter is that comes with meridians uk chart pack? Is it a piece of software? I'm assuming it cant be an actual plotter as used aboard.
Click to expand...

Steve I don't have this, but am looking into it hence my interest. I pointed you there because they offer a GPS stick:

https://www.meridian-chartware.co.uk/product/navistick/

They have two plotters both software, that runs on your (Windows) laptop. SeaTrak and Easychart. These display and manipulate the chart folios that you have purchased from Meridian. Hopefully someone will be along soon with practical experience of this.

https://www.meridian-chartware.co.uk/category/chart-packs/
 
If you want to get into laptop chart plotting, as said above the best software to start with (and it's free) is OpenCPN. Both raster and vector charts are now available for OpenCPN. Raster (Admiralty paper copies) are available from VisitMyHarbour and, recently, the latest Admiralty vector chart (S63) have been made available from o-charts as mentioned above. The charts do cost money but are quite reasonably priced.

OpenCPN is an excellent plotter and still has the best AIS presentation of any that I have seen. It also has lots of additional 'plug-ins' that will give you give instrument display, tide vectors, logbooks, radar display etc. etc. A very comprehensive and easy to use package.
 
steve yates said:
Thank you gents, tranona I have a laptop aboard anyway for work, its a short term solution, though always useful as backup. I need to replace most of the instruments aboard and decide on a system, there will be more posts on this anon. :)

Graham, out of interest, any idea what the chartplotter is that comes with meridians uk chart pack? Is it a piece of software? I'm assuming it cant be an actual plotter as used aboard.
Click to expand...

Meridian sells electronic versions of Imray charts with a plotter software to use them on a laptop. Advantages over a dedicated plotter are the charts which are raster are familiar to many who use them in paper format, have tides and regular updates. Using a laptop is also familiar to most of us and the bigger screen is much more usable.

It is a good first step into electronic charting for a beginner - which is why I chose it.
 
Playtime said:
If you want to get into laptop chart plotting, as said above the best software to start with (and it's free) is OpenCPN. Both raster and vector charts are now available for OpenCPN. Raster (Admiralty paper copies) are available from VisitMyHarbour and, recently, the latest Admiralty vector chart (S63) have been made available from o-charts as mentioned above. The charts do cost money but are quite reasonably priced.

OpenCPN is an excellent plotter and still has the best AIS presentation of any that I have seen. It also has lots of additional 'plug-ins' that will give you give instrument display, tide vectors, logbooks, radar display etc. etc. A very comprehensive and easy to use package.
Click to expand...

+ 99999999999999

No contest between OpenCPN and any other laptop/tablet software that i have used.
 
Last edited:
Steve, you originally asked for a simple plug in GPS receiver for a laptop, I was in the same position a couple of years back and went for a Global Sat BU-353 (SiRF Star III) £29.99 off Amazon June 2013. I used it with Open CPN and it worked great, even below at chart table - it has a sucker to stick it to a window. I suppose, with the advances in technology it has been upgraded since, but worth a look. Andy
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top