This entry's title is not about cause and effect; my wind sensor testing may go incomplete, but that has nothing to do with Garmin's chart problem. And while I had a good time on the water yesterday, even if frustrated by details, the mood in Kansas seemed a bit morose. Imagine the satisfaction of introducing all the free and amazing enhancements in Garmin's 5.0 marine software (which I was enjoying immensely, as seen above), but then just a few weeks later realizing that there was a processing error in the creation of new and improved Bluecharts that was potentially so bad that you had to recall all the 2009 chart cards sold so far around the world. Ouch!
The photo isn't fair, because the shooter (me) is reflected in the Raymarine A57D's screen and the iPhone is in an Otter Box which includes a screen protector that muted its display in a way I don't notice in normal use. But there's some truth here, too; the screen on the Lowrance HDS 10 has been bright, crisp, and completely readable in all light conditions so far experienced on Li'l Gizmo's completely exposed helm, whereas the other two have sometimes been quite hard to read. Another truth is...
I don't usually write about rebates and sales, but 90% off!?! Navionics not only launched version 2.0 of its Mobile app yesterday, it's slashing prices. Here's the press release, and note above how the whole Gold USA East chart portfolio dropped from $50 to $5. Apparently all the chart region prices will follow -- at least to some degree (British Columbia now $10) -- in the next few days, and stay bargain priced for "a limited time this summer." A month ago I noted how fast iPhone/Touch navigation is moving, and it hasn't slowed down...
Fugawi & iNavX & Navionics & ??, the pieces come together
Apr 15, 2009
Wow, isn't an interesting crowd of chart, map, and data suppliers gathering rapidly around the iPhone/multi-other-platform X-Traverse service? I recently discussed the velocity of this and other iPhone-related developements, but was still surprised to learn today that Navionics is officially on board (Americas charts and U.S. Hotmaps available now, the rest of the world portfolio coming "in the next couple weeks"), that Hilton's Realtime-Navigator fishing overlays will go up on X-Traverse in May, and that "agreements are in place with several other chart manufacturers to bring expanded coverage and choice (raster or vector)."
Congratulations to Navionics for winning the DAME Design Award (marine-related software category) with Navionics Mobile. And it turns out there’s going to be more to this product than I first understood. In addition to large portfolios of vector charts to run in iNavX, Navionics will also offer a free viewer and inexpensive small area charts. In fact there’s already a preview of Navionics Viewer in the Apple Apps Store. It includes impressively detailed sample cartography of the area around Genoa, Italy, which is how I took the screen shot above, full size here (but it still takes Google Maps to see the hotel pool I once swam in ;-). Zooming and panning are reasonably quick on my iPod Touch, and I look forward to seeing the finished app. There’s no end to the iPhone effect.
When Furuno NavNet 3D was first teased, I didn’t get the “native 3D” part. How could a “true 3D environment” be based on decidedly 2D raster and ENC charts? But I get it now. Whatever you see in NN3D’s conventional top-down 2D view—including routes, AIS targets, radar overlay, etc.—you can also see in 3D. It’s the same data, just tilted and shaded, and easy to fly around in. Which feels different—more “native”, more “true”—than any other 3D navigation I’ve tried before, and much more useful. So I think it’s great that Navionics has apparently developed a way to bring this sort of continuous-zooming, full-detail 3D to a variety of platforms. It’s called Navionics TurboView and I saw the preview above, and bigger here, at FLIBS.
Everywhere I wandered at FLIBS, there was someone fooling with, or showing off, their iPhone. And that includes me, sort of, as I’m now the very enthusiastic owner of an iPod Touch. I’ve always stubbornly resisted the Mac/iPod/Jobs fervor/hype—in fact, this is my first ever Apple product—but, wow, today my propeller beanie is tipped toward Cupertino. Plenty of smart marine developers have also noticed the slick capabilities of the iPhone/Touch apps platform. Being demoed above, for instance, is MySiMON, an extension of Palladium Technology’s megayacht monitoring and control system. The link will give you a sense of how useful this could be to a Touch-toting crew within a yacht’s WiFi network, but picture too an owner able to network with SiMON via iPhone and his yacht’s satellite communications system. So many possibilities…
That strange graphic rendered on a laptop in a car trunk stuffed with cold weather clothing represents a terrific experience I had yesterday, and a wicked lot of work. Compare the graphic—which is actually hundreds of thousands of GPS/depth data points—to Lake Megunticook. After a few months and a lot of post processing that data will become a Navionics HD HotMap available on a chart card or for use with easy-on-the-wallet HotMaps Explorer. I don’t yet know how much Navionics will let me write about their specific data collection gear and techniques (Yachting revealed a bit), but here’s what it looks like:
It’s come to my attention that not every Panbo reader is obsessed with AIS! So how about a new charting app for the iPhone? That would be Navionics Mobile, which was just introduced at the Genoa Boat Show. It is, in fact, a relative of iNavX, the first iPhone charting app (why reinvent good code?), though obviously different. iNavX can’t download a NOAA raster chart of Genoa, Italy, for instance, and no raster chart can offer a choice of nav aid presentation as illustrated in the split screen shots above and below...
Above is the new home page at Maptech.com, and while it represents the end of the old Maptech, it sure doesn’t mark the end of the Maptech name. In fact, the blue “Marine Software” tab takes you to a new company called Maptech Navigation. It’s the creation of Peter Martin, who’s worked for Maptech, Chartkit, and as a professional mariner. Martin bought the rights to develop and market Maptech’s digital charts and software packages (except for The Capn, which found its own good home). Martin says his plan is basically “business as usual”…
(Psssst!…back at work but need a little distraction, preferably for a good cause?) The screen shot above is worth seeing full size, but even then doesn’t do justice to the highly dynamic GeoCoastPilot beta program I’ve been entranced with for the last hour or so. The concept is an interactive 3D map that integrates official NOAA Coast Pilot textual information with vector and raster charts, bathy data, and panoramic photographs of key features. In this particular scene I clicked on the Portsmouth Harbor Channel Lighted Range link and the program lined up and highlighted a picture that might make it much easier to actually see the marks. When I then use the screen gizmo above the photo to tilt or turn the scene the photo changes if there are multiple shots available. There’s much more to it, as suggested by the choices at lower right, and for beta software, it seems to work pretty well. If you have a PC running XP or 2000, you go the GeoCoastPilot site and try it yourself, and you should!
This week Maptech sold it paper chart and guide book division to Richardsons’ Publications, which was already producing similar products. In fact, a principal there was working at BBA/ChartKit when Maptech purchased it in 1997. “Things have come full circle.” A nice aspect to this deal is that most of the Maptech print staff will now work for Richardsons’. Sounds like the various Maptech chart books and guides will carry on nicely..
The U.S. Government has stopped distributing electronic updates to the official raster charts for up to 12 months? That doesn’t sound good. NOAA’s download site doesn’t mention a time frame for the “Interruption” but the U.S.C.G. internal bulletin shown in part above is more dire. (It’s published in full on Kurt Schwehr’s site, where you can also check out the Chart of the Future.) This is bad news for all of us who like using RNCs (Raster Navigation Charts) in the many charting programs that support them, not to mention Furuno, which decided to go with U.S. RNCs (and ENCs) in NavNet 3D and is already taking some heat for it. When NOAA decided to serve up RNCs free back in 2005, one of the big pluses was that they would be kept very current, and there were even little patch updates available. Besides, isn’t it depressing to any American that our government can’t even keep a relatively simple and inexpensive program like this going?
It’s wicked hot and sticky here, especially at this big computer, so what a fine time to receive a Panbot e-mail suitable as a guest entry! Richard Stephens—developer behind, and sometimes soggy user of, Memory-Map charting software—recently sailed aboard the Tripp 33TRPXPRS in the Bermuda Ocean Race and reports:
If you'll take a moment to read Ben's comments on Panbo, you'll understand the problem. There is data on the NOAA charts that is not on the NN3D raster chart view. There is a problem with the conversion from the Maptech format to TimeZero format.
Geez Louise! I may not have expressed myself well, but that’s not what I wrote about Furuno NavNet 3D chart issues last week. And the post above is just one of many that I think are way wide of the mark. According to some on Hull Truth the NN3D raster and vector charts for the U.S. are both useless, it was actually Navionics vectors that was shown at the boat show demos, the MFDs show less chart data than the Black Box because of video chip differences, etc. It’s mostly baloney, but Furuno USA has been paying attention to early user dissatisfaction with the vector charts. In fact, I got a call today from Camas with the news that Furuno will be selling U.S. NN3D vector charts based on Navionics data by early 2009. But let’s break that down:
The good news is that more Furuno NavNet 3D MFDs are getting delivered and installed; the bad news is that some of the first users aren’t happy with the charts, neither the rasters nor the vectors. For instance, the two empty MFD12 holes we saw a while back are finally filled, but now the owner—Hull Truth poster “PSW”—is wishing he could use Navionics cards in his MFD12s, as are fellow posters “srmote” and “snowpup”. And I know that our own frequent poster Russ was not pleased with his first look at the charts on his MFD8. My own NN3D experience off Cape Cod did not leave me nearly as negative, but I did note some weaknesses. It helps that I like raster charts and am used to plotting on them, but I didn’t think they worked very well on the 8” display, as suggested in the screen above. Some other levels of zoom/chart scale looked better, and some worse. 3D perspective can put more info on the screen—and fast panning/zooming make it all more tolerable—but there’s just no getting around the fact that you’re looking at a large paper chart through an 8” window. The rasters looked fine to me on the 15” display that was also on the test boat, and I’d guess they’d work OK at 12” (but the Hull Truth gang don’t seem to think so).
After I’d written my first impressions of the new E-Series 4.29 software and the Platinum+ charts it supports, I learned that I hadn’t done the “real” version of the recommended factory/master reset. You see, though Raymarine’s own FAQ is unclear about it, a reset done by powering up while holding down the leftmost soft key is apparently different, and deeper, than the one I’d done from the System Setup menu. I know for sure that this is true, as after a “real” reset yesterday, some of the problems I’d seen went away. For instance, I can pull up the System Diagnostics SeaTalkNG sub-menus now without causing a reset, though the device list there remains strangely empty (the new manual says it’s “for diagnostic use by authorized dealers” anyway). Much more important is how the test E seems be performing even quicker and looking better than what I’d noticed the first time around.
I’ve been bench testing Raymarine’s E-Series V4 software update (aka 4.29) for a while now, mostly with a variety of new Navionics Platinum+ cards I borrowed. If you’ve read the comments to that V4 post, you’ll know that some upgraders have had to revert to 3.31, and I’m not surprised. There’s lots of changes in 4.29, and even my relatively unstressed test E-120—just a bit of N2K input; nothing attached via standard SeaTalk, SThs, or NMEA 0183 right now—goes a little twitchy sometimes. Like suddenly the 3D rotary controls don’t work unless I do a reset. And it invariably resets when I try to query the new STng (N2K) diagnostic screen, no matter what’s on the backbone. Plus I’ve yet to see P+’s live tide/current icons or the now built-in Fish’N Chip bathy data, despite another 4.29 flash and master reset (apparently Raymarine and Navionics are working on that latter one). However, I’d certainly recommend updating; just be prepared to go back to 3.31 if needed, and be on the lookout for the update to the update surely in the works.
Panbo commenters don’t seem very interested in Spot sharing, but I think it’s a cool deal for long range cruisers like Milt and Judy Baker, not to mention working mariners like Capt. Richard Rodriguez. Note how the Baker’s custom message is displayed next to their anchorage on the French Riviera, above and bigger here . And today I notice that Mad Mariner apparently has arranged with West Marine for an extra special Spot deal ($132), and that West customer product reviews are all five star. Even the SSCA offshore guys are taking a cautious look at it
The old days may be something like the new days, but not entirely! Check out the full screen of this NOAA raster/Google maps mashup; it’s the work of Just Magic, aka GeoGarage, and is not only way slicker than what we saw two years back, but is one of the neater Camden Harbor images I’ve ever seen. Of course it helps that Google has high res photo maps for my area now, and they register so darn perfectly with the raster chart. Try it live yourself, fool with those sliders upper right, search out your own harbor, and perhaps join me with big tip of the propeller beanie to those crazy Frenchmen in their GeoGarage.
Well, hot damn! How about a full featured PC planning product that includes maps for 10,000 U.S. lakes, all on a $20 DVD? I just heard about it this morning, but my first impression of Navionics HotMaps Explorer is “who wouldn’t?” Well, I suppose if you never, ever go out on lakes, but I do and was pleased to see that the coverage list includes a lot of Maine lakes. Now my favorite, Lake Megunticook, is not covered by any digital map maker, I don’t think, though I keep hoping that Navionics will do one of its high definition surveys there and let me see at least some of their techniques. By the way, the download of one HD lake map is included in HotMaps Explorer.
So today I got a 512 Meg SD card and thus can now take screenshots on the Northstar M121. One I wanted to show you is this nifty “About” screen which includes the color coding for most of the unit’s possible input/output wiring, and which turned out to be particularly timely because C-Map just initiated a recall for certain Max chart cards if used with certain plotter software. If and when you go the C-Map Recall page, what you’ll need to know is the “cartridge code” shown in “Slot 2” above and the plotter’s software version, shown upper left. In fact, the recall only involves Max cards dated prior to October, 2006, and only certain plotters, mostly early versions of Si-Tex, Interphase, Standard Horizon, Cobra, Furuno, and European machines (that all run Max cartography).
One of my happiest discoveries at MIBS was not a new product or feature, but simply a matter of pricing and packaging. Maptech has radically reduced the hassle and cost of owning its international raster charts, really big time.
Yike. It seems that Nobeltec has guaranteed its support staff a busy holiday season by issuing the ominous sounding alert above along with update 9.3.2240 to its VNS and Admiral charting software. The exact chart regions/software combinations that have the problem are listed in the bulletin, and include the Northstar 972 but not the Simrad GB60. The good news for anyone who has trouble with the update is that Nobeltec recently extended its support lines to 13 hours a day during the week and 10 hours a day on weekends. The bad news for some is that with this update Nobeltec removes the ability to import S57 vector charts—for most people that means the free ENCs offered by NOAA—and even disables those already imported.
Sort of like repairing or upgrading old instruments, you could also spend some winter off water time getting your waypoints and routes in order. C-Map has put together a nice tip sheet on how you might do that using their chart cards along with the nifty PC Planner product that lets you bring home plotter data and work with it and your C-Map charts on your computer. (To get the PDF, click on the orange card reader here.) You may not be up for making “chart art”, like above, but doesn’t it make sense to sort through the waypoints, tracks, and routes you accumulated last season?
Navionics just announced its new Platinum+ chart cards, which I got a peek at along the coast of Cape Cod last month. As the name implies Plus, or “+”, takes Platinum’s numerous features up a notch, or two. The top down photo maps and panoramic port photos are higher res, the bathy data underlying the 3D screens is more detailed, and the coastal pilots are more tightly integrated. I was particularly struck by the photo maps.
Yesterday I got to spend a few hours on a Navionics test boat tooling around Bass River, Cape Cod (unfortunately damnable cars and planes were also involved in the trip). A few of us boating writers got to fool with eight chart plotters, and see first hand what Navionics is up to for 2008 (very cool, but I can’t write about it just yet). Another highlight was spending time with company founder Giuseppe Carnevali. This is not the first demo cruise I’ve taken with this gentleman and I’ve come to appreciate his fathomless enthusiasm for cartography, the technologies that make it better, and boating. He’s been a creative force in marine electronics since he and Fosco Bianchetti developed the first vector charts in the early 80’s. Yesterday it occurred to me that with Bianchetti selling C-Map and Darrell Lowrance finally retired, Giuseppe is one of the last of his generation still pushing this field forward. And he’s going strong.
Continuing on about how we’ve just gotten started with electronic cartography, check out the demo video at Perceptive Pixel showing the developers exercising two handed control over Google Earth and other imagery. Then there’s Microsoft’s new “Surface Computing”—also “multi touch”—nicely presented by Popular Mechanics on this video. It sure seems possible that the ‘surface’ could be one wizbang chart table…eventually. Meanwhile, Google has introduced Maplets, which means that users can now contribute mini applications as well as content. And Michael “heywhatsthat” Kosowsky has already created three, two of which I used in the mashup below (and bigger here). One very usefully overlays Michael’s topo lines and the other guesstimates new shorelines if sea level rises. Just add 150 feet and I’ve got waterfront!
PS 7/18: “…a quantum leap from our 2d/3d apps like Google Earth”? Check out this video about Seadragon and Photosynth (thanks, John!).
Pardon a slightly meta sidetrack, but two bits of the massive media flow got my attention. One is a Wired article about Google Earth which makes the case that the future of cartography is user data. “We're all mapmakers now, which means geography has entered the complex free-for-all of the information age, where ever-more-sophisticated technology is better able to reflect the world's rich, chaotic complexity.” Then there’s the news that scientists have calculated that the diameter of the globe is about 5 millimeters less than thought. Not even a quarter of an inch! Among other techniques, they used atomic clocks, quasars, and 70 radio telescopes to establish base lines, and they say that the precision they are after will help to better measure phenomenon like global warming, ocean currents, and tides. As amazed as most of are by all the information now available on a yacht’s bridge, I think we’ve just gotten started. (For some really interesting dope about related planet dimensions, and early cartography, check the beginning chapters of Nigel Calder’s How to read a nautical chart, which also has practical uses!)
PS 7/12: It turns out that Captain Richard Rodriguez, who has a thing or two to say about the Boston ferry collision (see his fine blog), has also used Google Maps to mark the most frequently hit rocks in the San Juan Islands. What I’m talking about!
Where is this bubbling geographic/Internet stew going to take us (like EarthNC), and, in particular, what the heck else is being created nearly under my nose (like ActiveCaptain)? The latest is a rather amazing service created by one Michael Kosowsky out in the Lincolnville hills west of Panbo HQ. It began with Michael wondering what distant bumps he was seeing from his yard and now--much programming later--he's inventor/proprietor of Hey, what's that. Check it out. Right off the bat you'll see what's what from Mt. Battie, which happens to be where I took the header photo of Camden Harbor above. You'll see it centered in Google Maps with each visible peak marked by an icon, along with a panorama view above and a list of the spots to the right, each interactively clickable. But you've just gotten started.
Following up on yesterday’s entry, here’s what the full EarthNC Plus looks like in my home harbor. Note the spot soundings and bathy lines. The 1:20,000 harbor chart has not become an ENC yet, but this represents all the essential data from the 1:40,000 coastal chart overlaid on what’s in many places (like Camden) the highest resolution photography available. But, of course, Google Earth’s photos live online, and as best I can tell, EarthNC Plus does not yet have a way to cache them to a laptop. Plus the suggested method of GPS navigation on these charts is Goops, which didn’t impress me.
EarthNC has come a long way since December. For one thing there is now an official Web site. And a few weeks ago the company introduced EarthNC Plus, a $50 CD package that can overlay all available ENCs on Google Earth. I’ve been testing it, and will write more about it soon. But today let’s look at EarthNC Online, the just introduced free viewer. You have to install a plug-in from GoogleEarthAirlines which lets you access G.E. from inside your browser. Sounds a little dicey, but it all worked fine for me (using Firefox 2.0).
I’m pleased to hear that ActiveCaptain, the “Point of Interest bomb!”, is active indeed. Yesterday developers Karen and Jeffrey Siegel announced that the free site now has over 9,000 marinas and almost 1,000 anchorages, with 35,000 updates and 1,000 reviews from some 2,000 registered users. (And, by the way, hats off to our own frequent commenter “b393capt”, who is the second most prolific “Active Captain”). You can see the informative results of all this activity if you register and scan the U.S. coastline, and pretty soon the Siegels are going to add a “Local Knowledge” marker meant for favorite restaurants, hikes, uncharted shoals, etc. Plus ActiveCaptain is going international. Already, for instance, there’s seed information for 500 marinas in the U.K.—as in Falmouth, Cornwall, above—ready for you Brit Panbo readers to elaborate on. Please do!
Yesterday another reader emailed, “What's new is the fishing electronics world? It is Spring time, and we just had the salmon opener here in San Francisco!” Well, how about a C-Map MAX Coastside Fishing Club chart card full of hi res bathymetry and other goodies useful for fishing from Pt. Conception, California, to Coos Bay, Oregon? Actually I’m a little confused by the press release’s mention of “exclusive Member’s Only fishing data like IGFA and state record information, local fishing regulations and favorite fishing spots of club members.” C-Map’s catalog seems to indicate that the card is available to anyone, the Coastside Fishing Club makes no mention of it, and, besides, it seems pretty similar to C-Map’s other Max Fish Bathy cards (see 2/06 press release). Maybe someone can straighten this out? And, if you go way off San Francisco, keep an eye out for the unusual radar semi-submersible SBX-1, spotted with an AIS receiver setup that’s purportedly seen targets 1000 miles away.
PS 4/12: It turns out that this card is available to the public, but what most distinguishes it from the Max Fish card covering the same area is the inclusion of hot spots provided by the Club. Thank you Coastside!
NDI, or Nautical Data International, just announced that it’s selling its exclusive right to produce and license digital versions of Canadian charts back to the Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS), effective on March 30. It sounds like that’s the end of a long and unpleasant affair I’ve discussed before, but who knows for sure? If you read the Q&A’s, you’ll find that NDI plans to stay in business, and to continue its suits against C-Map and Navionics. I haven’t followed this dispute closely, but have noticed that both those companies are now offering very reasonably priced Canadian charts, especially when compared to NDI’s PC charts. In fact, I know boats that have gone from PC to plotter mainly because of that price difference. Here’s hoping that CHS will make Canadian rasters and ENCs more affordable and easier to use.
As noted earlier today, the deal went down. Above is the scene this morning at C-Map USA’s Mashpee, Massachusetts, office as Operations Manager Chris Cox and General Manager Ken Cirillo unveil their new sign. Similar events took place at other C-Map offices around the world, and a press release went everywhere. The latter is a bit vague, but a Jeppesen spokesperson at the Denver headquarters gave me a little more color on what this acquisition may mean to marine electronics. The most specific item is that Jeppesen Marine’s recreational division, i.e. Nobeltec, will be integrating C-Map cartography into its products, though it may take six months or more, and the fate of Passport Charts is “yet to be determined”. Otherwise C-Map will be “business as usual”—i.e. same partners, sales outlets, and customer support facilities—at least during the six months it will take to integrate the company into Jeppesen. And the notion that C-Map’s hardware manufacturing facilities were not part of this deal, posted here back in August, was also confirmed. As for that distinctly non-marine logo, the spokesman said they are working on a new branding scheme, but it’s hard to give up the plane after such longterm success serving that market. In fact, Jeppesen supplies 80–85% of commercial aviation operators with not just cartography, but weather, routing, and other essential data. At one point, the company printed two billion sheets of paper per year (!), though now, of course, this data has largely gone digital. Jeppesen is obviously an aviation powerhouse (and so was C-Map in the marine world), which is why the ad they’ve been running in some of the commercial marine magazines—now modified for C-Map’s home page—has weight. It reads, “What happens when a company with more than 70 years of experience pioneering navigational and operational information management solutions for aviators enters the marine market?…The game changes.” But, despite the hints, I guess we’ll have to wait to see exactly how.
It’s a happy day for navigators when C-Map is running out of adjectives to describe how large an area is covered by its latest chart cards. The press release is not online yet (update), and C-Map’s Web chart catalog doesn’t yet show them, but last week the company announced that in 2007 Wide-size cards will cover about five times the area for the same price. That means, as shown right, that $199 will get you every chart from the Canadian border through the Bahamas and up the west coast of Florida, with all Max features like animated tides & currents, custom marina charts (which I like a lot), and photos of inlets/harbors. $249 MegaWide cards will also get super-sized, one purportedly covering the entire East Coast, Caribbean and the Gulf Coast. Another covers the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean and all of South America, and a third covers the entire West Coast of Canada and the U.S. If you visit C-Map this morning you’ll see that the Jeppesen deal is now official, which I’ll have more on later today.
Following my whining about the clumsy POI interfaces seen on many plotters and charting programs, Navionics sent up a powerful handheld they make (but would rather not advertise here, as it’s only available in Europe). They’re proud of how easily POIs can be found and browsed, and well they should be. There are at least two ways to get a list of local marinas, for instance, and the one below graphically points them out as you page through. Once selected, the particular marina's phone # goes into the title bar at top and right arrowing through the categories shows you what photos, Pilot book, or other info is available, and then you can drill down. When you get to, say, “other services” in the “info” section, nearby businesses with their own POI info are in blue and clickable. There are almost no dead ends, i.e. the interface doesn’t let you click for more information about something if there isn’t any (a gripe I have with Raymarine’s access to this same POI info). At any rate, Navionics made its point; a much better way to get at all this data is possible on even a small plotter. But that doesn’t make the data any more accurate. For instance, that’s not exactly where the Camden Yacht Club is (below). But some good news on that score is coming later this week. Posting will be jagged, though, as I’m on the road to points south (a little south).
It seems obvious that Google Earth and similar online mapping systems that allow users, individual and otherwise, to create their own overlays will somehow figure in the future of marine navigation, at least for sharing POIs and planning. But, get this, a small Florida company, DestinSharks.com, is already translating NOAA vector charts (ENCs) into Google overlays they’re calling EarthNC charts. I heard about it (thanks, Rich and Rich), signed up for the public beta test, and am impressed. I was getting fancy in the screen shot above (bigger here), using GE’s tilt mode and 3D buildings, but check out how neatly the nav aids, bottom contours, and dredged channel lines lay out, and how (left) you can control overlay elements in familiar GE fashion. But I do hope they figure out how to round the depth soundings back to their original paper chart equivalent (a vector issue I’ve complained about before). And I did see registration issues between some EarthNCs and GE satellite photos (though in this case, Miami’s Sea Isle Marina, the charted pilings seem to line up perfectly). DestinSharks, by the way, is “planning a DVD edition which will offer the full chart set for offline use”, and Google recently added photo maps of my home harbor that are almost as detailed as the most zoomed-in marine panoramas I’ve seen (so far). What else will 2007 bring?
PS 12/28: I came across the fact that Google Earth was downloaded 100 million times during the ten month period following its June, 2005, release as a free program. Yow!
EliBoat made a good catch last week, spotting this Bushnell ONIX400CR GPS and XM handheld. The specs, as spied out by the sat radio blog Orbitcast, look impressive—waterproof, 3.5” screen, XM weather & audio, aerial and satellite photo overlays—and all supposedly retailing for $500 when the product ships in February. That’s a big discount from the Garmin handhelds that offer this same great ability to carry your XM subscriptions from boat to car to house, etc. Mind you that Bushnell shows no interest in the marine market; its thing is hunting, as shown by its Web write up for sister product ONIX200CR. Still, I want to try one and see if it might make sense, even without nautical charts, as a boating accessory. This product, by the way, is an ‘honoree’ in the Wireless Peripheral category of the 2007 CES Innovations Awards, always a geekerrific list.
More good news on the cost of marine electronics front: Navionics is apparently going from XL3 to XL9 Gold+ chart cards, three times the area for the same $200 price. That’s the whole East Coast and Northern Bahamas on one card, with full NOAA chart detail (unlike the Silver all-one-cards), plus “enhanced port services” POIs (flawed though everyone’s may be), coastal roads, and a mail-in coupon for a free Fish’n Chip bathy card. This price drop is not on Navionics’ Web site yet, and may not be effective until 2007, but Peter James of Jack Rabbit Marine has the scoop on his new blog, askjackrabbit.com. A blog by a guy who professionally installs marine electronics? Now there’s some really good news.
I’m working on a column about the “Points of Interest” we get on electronic charts these days. I think they have wonderful potential, but these days are often inaccurate, plus hard to use. Above, and full screen here
, is an example of an interface that seems to work pretty well, Fugawi ENC’s new ability to work with Navionics Gold+ (Platinum too, but many features aren’t supported yet). Note on the inset how you can easily search for harbors and marinas by distance from your present position, or (inset) narrow your search by multiple service criteria. Some other charting programs, and particularly plotters, are clumsy to search, lead you to empty data screens, etc. Plus, like every other electronic chart I’ve seen (all available, I believe), there are numerous errors/ommisions in the POI location and details presented here. Where, for instance, is info on the Camden Public Landing, possibly the POI of highest interest to visiting boats? So I have some questions for you all:
* Do you use electronic POIs when boating, or do you prefer printed guides, or both, or do you just ask around? * Which electronic charts have you tried and what’s good or bad about each’s POI data and the particular interface used? * What’s the future of POIs. I see a lot happening on land—like automated (Bluetooth) POI calling, user generated POIs and georeference photos, sites dedicated to sharing such info, etc. Not to mention Google Earth, Microsoft Live Local, etc. How and when will these advancements come to boating?
Argonaut 15" monitor under $1,000, and other good new$
Nov 7, 2006
In a way, this photo, bigger here, doesn’t do Argonaut’s new Tflex-G615 monitor justice, but then again I took it at the NMEA Conference with a Canon XT flash aimed directly into the poor thing’s LCD. Try that with a conventional lap– or desktop screen! It is indeed noteworthy that Argonaut has come up with a “waterproof sunlight readable” monitor under a grand, but do note that its claimed 2,000 NITS transflective equivalency is figured in direct sunlight. I’m going to test one soon and will be interested to see how it does in bright situations without direct light. Note, too, all the added features—optical bonding, multiple inputs, wider range dimming, PiP, etc.—that you get with the Tflex-G515, the same underlying LCD, I think, but costing nearly three times the money.
More good pricing news: * Apparently due mostly to lowered memory card costs (all the data for an XL3 size region usually requires two Gigs of space), Navionics has dropped the price of Platinum cards from $499 to $299. Plus there are more Platinum regions available, like in Europe, and US cards still include the right to a free Fish’n Chip (which, by the way, deserves better Panbo coverage). * And, get this, Captn. Jack’s is now offering Maptech’s U.S. Boating Chart DVD for $19.50, still with free ground shipping, money back guarantee, and technical support. And here I thought this a great value at $50. But this special holiday price may not last long; I guess ‘Jack’ wants to get noticed.
Man, that’s a long time in planes! I’m back in Maine, briefly, and experimenting with Google Earth to scrap book my trip. Here’s the full screen image, but it would be far better to open Google Earth and zoom around with me. 1 marks the touristy V&A waterfront, said to be the most visited spot in all Africa, and still worth visiting. Naturally that’s the hang out of the hot daysailing cats—Fuji and GQ—as well as visiting yachts. If you zoom in close you can see the canal that leads to the big hall (2) where the Boat Show was held and I met the Whisper builders. Pan further west to the commissioning docks (3), where the Magnum 32’ was parked. You’ll also see a line of cats getting ready for their long delivery trips. It’s said that in the wee hours of almost every night another big multihull is trailered through the streets of Cape Town. Finally, just for fun, the 4’s show where an elevated highway was once going to bypass down town, but one property owner held out, and now it will never be finished. “This is Africa!” my hosts explained. Speaking of GE, MacENC can now neatly export tracks, waypoints and routes to it, as shown below and bigger here. And recall that Vessel Tracker can plot live AIS targets on it, and Just Magic has created all sorts of interesting mashups. Now we just need a reasonable way to get broadband underway. That’s the sort of surprise I’m hoping for at NMEA (Thursday) or Ft. Lauderdale.
U.S. Boating Charts DVD...nice, but what about updates?
Sep 13, 2006
It’s really worth clicking here to see the full screen showing Maptech’s Offshore Navigator Lite (ONL) program included on this $50 DVD I first mentioned last April. I don’t know why I didn’t write more about the package sooner—we’re a little scattered here at Panbo!—but I certainly was impressed with it, particularly the professional level Notice to Mariner updates illustrated in this screen shot. See that orange circle around Northeast Pt. light just right of the Camden Harbor label. Clicking on it brought up the NTM dialog box that fully explained the what and when of the change. I find that very useful for keeping up on the changes in my local waters, waters where I tend to think I already know what’s what! They moved NE Pt. light a little ways; good to know! On this particular chart (learned via the other dialog box), I can see every NTM change from its Base Date of 4/29/2003 through 3/25/2006, shortly before Maptech sent me the DVD. Now I’m wondering if there is an easy way to keep these charts updated, easier than going to freeboatingcharts.com (which also markets the DVD, along with Captn Jack’s), and downloading lots of whole charts. Are the update files online somewhere? Is there any software that can semi-automatically keep a specific portfolio updated?
By the way you can simply turn off the NTM feature in ONL, so you only see the latest chart, no circles. Also note the “Navigation Panel” at the bottom of the screen. Those blue bars represent different charts available at this location, the light blue meaning that I’m at the largest scale (smallest area). Mousing over the other bars would show me their titles and scales. I’ve always liked that. Altogether this DVD—which includes every NOAA raster plus the Corps of Engineers river rasters, all organized by region, plus a GPS wizard—is a hell of a deal. But if you are looking for all the charts on DVD, you might also consider a new product from Managing the Waterway, a $40 2–DVD set that also includes the ENCs and demos of various charting programs. I’ll be checking it out soon.
I’m very glad that BoatU.S. keeps a boater’s eyeball trained on the government, but, man, it must be hard to understand what’s going on sometimes. The organization’s latest concern is a Congressional budget proposal that cuts “the President’s request for Mapping & Charting and virtually zeroed out any funding for converting existing paper charts into electronic files.” Say what? The piece goes on to lay out all the reasons why that is a bad idea, including the idea that conversion to ENCs will save money eventually. Anyone guess why congress thinks this program a waste?
I just got the new Captn. Jack’s catalog, which seems pretty quick given that Maptech just took over the operation a few months ago. The online Captn. Jack’s is also back in business, which means I can link you right through to some of the more interesting offerings:
* The fictional Jack is indeed bundling Maptech Chartbooks with Garmin plotters, as above, including putting all the on-paper waypoints into the plotter. Just the product combinations themselves look like decent deals, the waypoints a very useful bit of frosting. (I’m hoping to try the feature out).
* The Capn software (no previous relation to Captn. Jack, and different spellings retained) has now become CAPN Integra AIS, and there’s some more detail on how Maptech plans to market it. Jack is also selling the U.S. Boating Charts DVD, which I have tried (it’s excellent), both alone and nicely bundled with Memory Map.
Note that Captn. Jack’s is offering free ground shipping and a money back guarantee (though a tight one). Altogether it’s a pretty neat catalog, and probably the one most focused on marine computer navigation, though it still doesn’t thoroughly cover the products available. Isn’t it strange that Captn. Jack’s once offered almost every major ECS except the Maptech ones, and now it features Maptech’s even larger roster but is missing major products like Nobeltec, MaxSea, and RayTech?
“Navionics welcomes Boeing’s escalated commitment to the marine electronic charting market. No doubt, this will help both the technological and the regulatory part of the business mature and provide a better service to the mariner, ultimately increasing safety of navigation as well as expanding the market.”
Mind you that for over 20 years Navionics and C-Map have each been run by their respective Italian founders, Giuseppe Carnevali and Fosco Bianchetti, two gentlemen who were once partners and seemed to compete both enthusiastically and graciously. This is a big change in the little industry the two dominated. It could mean new opportunities for Navionics, or it could be challenging, but I think we can safely translate the statement above into a simpler term — “Game on!”
Intermittent WiFi in Cuttyhunk, fog in Fisher’s Island Sound, a greasy scallop and bacon pizza, one engine overheating…it was a hell of a cruise, really! I’ll share more later, but I’m tickled to arrive home and find that two Panbotes e-mailed me about the late Friday news that Boeing has bought C-Map. Wow.
I didn’t see this coming, and am not sure how it will work. The strategy stated in the press release is that C-Map will help Boeing’s Jeppesen subsidiary, already huge in aviation mapping, grow its marine division. I find it a little odd that the release never mentions Nobeltec, which seems to be the only real meat currently at Jeppesen Marine, even if it’s only listed under “Recreational Solutions”. It’s obvious that C-Map’s commercial vector charts will fit nicely into Jeppesen’s commercial goals but what happens to Nobeltec’s Passport charts? And what about the various recreational electronics products, like Standard Horizon plotters, that are actually built by C-Map? And does this affect BNT ME, i.e. Navman/Northstar, for sale and fairly committed to C-Map cartography? Your comments welcome (and a big thanks to Aaron and Milt for the head’s up).
PS, 8/21: I’ve called the various companies involved and no one can really say much during the “quiet period”, i.e. the 90–120 days it may take to have the deal OK’d by various regulatory bodies. But I did learn a little: * C-Map’s hardware manufacturing, as well as aviation/land navigation products, are actually separate companies, and are not part of this deal. * Jeppesen says it has every intention of continuing and improving C-Map’s existing OEM operations, i.e. no worries if you have a plotter using C-Map cartography. * The folks at C-Map and Nobeltec (and, of course, Jeppesen) all sound excited about future product strategies (that they can’t really talk about yet).
I promise I’ll stop writing about this ledge soon! But it does turn out that Garmin’s optional BlueChart G2 cards, first discussed in May, look good in terms of the great Burnt Coat Harbor bent prop incident. That is the guilty ledge just showing in this photo, taken at approximately mid tide; you can even make out the Can right (east) of it, especially nearer full resolution. Note too the trees on the little islands, a helpful detail that the Cruising Guide chose to emphasize in its sketch chart. Below you can see how the photo icon shows this shot’s view angle. Notice the multitude of photo icons! There’s also a straight down of this same ledge, a view from the north, several pulled back views of the whole channel, something like 12 pictures all together. By contrast, neither Maptech nor C-Map Max has any panoramic photos of this harbor, and Navionics Platinum has 3, but much more pulled back. Could I have missed a photo? You bet; no one seems to have the perfect photo interface yet, and with such a large inventory, Garmin has further to go than most. They’re working on it; the improved icon just arrived in a recent release. Mind you that Garmin’s cards are fairly pricey (especially considering that users already have the G2 charts themselves build in), but I do believe them when they say they’ve spent heavily on helicopter photography.
Why haven’t more people who use Navionics charts experienced a C “5” ledge misfortune? Certainly one reason is the Taft/Rindlaub Cruising Guide to the Maine Coast, which contains the sketch chart excerpted above and is consulted in biblical fashion by many cruisers. Notice how useful those dashed arrows are, especially as the overall bouyage—if you happen to be passing right through Burnt Coat, as many do—changes from red right to red left (or vice-versa, because both passages are returning from the sea to a harbor). Heck, my 1979 Duncan and Ware Cruising Guide to the New England Coast talks about how an “able vessel can beat through” this passage “leaving the two cans to starboard”. And that was before chart plotters even existed (and sailors were gnarly navigators, especially Roger Duncan!) Going to the other end of the spectrum, look below how Navionics’ own Platinum grade chart shows the ledge, if you have the top-down photos turned on, including the “land & sea” option (full screen here). There are many ways to get by that Can without damage. But before anyone starts judging yesterday’s ledge leaper a fool, they should take another look at the plain Navionics chart image, excerpted at right. It’s a clean-looking, easily-read chart, just what we’ve been asking for. But not only did Navionics leave out the ledge, the very vector gods (who actually ‘draw’ these charts) conspired to worsen the error. Look how the extra big Can symbol (which I like) hides the fact that there’s any water at all between it and the little island (though, mysteriously, not below). My point? Vector charts are “smart”, they really are, but sometimes not as smart as a cartographer placing a Can just so on a paper chart, or someone who’s been there simply sketching some guidance.
This is what the gentleman saw on his Raymarine plotter, bigger here, which is why he says he cut between Harbor Island and Can “5”, and that’s why he’s now hauled out having his bent props, and maybe more, repaired. Ouch! Navionics missed a ledge, a pretty important one. In fact, the thing is vaugely drawn on the official NOAA raster chart, heavily zoomed below (and also showing my fortunately uneventful track through the same beautiful area last summer), but still every other brand of vector chart I looked at did manage to get it right. (The images futher below—C-Map, Garmin, and then Nobeltec—all show the ledge and are interesting to see side-by-side, but note that how they display varies a lot from one device to another and also according to how variables are set). Now, I believe that electronic charts are pretty reliable (the Lowrance NauticPath and ENC display issues aside, probably all fixed by now anyway). But I also suspect that every vendor—even NOAA (by the way, the 1:40,000 ENC for this area hasn’t been issued yet)—makes mistakes. Just like the splash screens and navigation manuals say, reliance on a single data source is not a good idea (especially when the bouyage appears confusing, which in this case will get another entry). In the meantime, I’ve learned from Navionics that this error has been reported and will be corrected in the next regular annual update if not before.
While I’m back on the subject of charts, Curtis Island in particular, I want to correct an error I made last Winter. That’s when I made note of how my borrowed C-Map Max card seemed to have lost track of Camden’s largest aid to navigation, the Curtis I. light. It was confusing, as I noted, but it turns out that I wasn’t completely wrong; the early versions of Max had an overly aggressive decluttering algorythm that could sometimes declutter something as important as that light. However, what I did not understand was that C-Map had discovered and fixed the problem quite rapidly. The reason I didn’t know about the fix was that I had a card that didn’t come through normal channels, plus I didn’t call C-Map to ask. And there, friends, is one weakness of Panbo. I kind of shoot from the hip on this blog. When I write a magazine article I have the time to make calls and check facts, but here I’m hoping that readers will notify me of mistakes and I’ll correct them online. Please feel free to note those mistakes, and hopefully I’ll correct them faster than this one! At any rate, C-Map’s Max card not only shows the Curtis Island Light at every appropriate zoom level, it also has a picture of it.
I first heard about Navionics Silver all-in-one card last October, and the whole Silver/Gold+/Platinum (plus Fish’n’Chip) strategy was revealed in February. You can now buy a Silver card—at $116 (discounted) for coverage of the entire continental U.S. coastline, Great Lakes, and Bahamas—but are the charts as detailed as the ones on the more expensive cards? Above, on top, is what a Platinum or Gold card looks like at 1/2 mile range on a Raymarine E or C-Series plotter. It’s a pretty faithful copy of the 1:20,000 harbor chart of the Camden Rockland area (which, by the way, is not included in the paper ChartKit). Underneath it is a 1/2 mile range using a Silver card; the dots indicate that you’re over-zoomed and, in fact, the spot soundings are based on the 1:40,000 coastal chart of the area, seen below. However, the critical rocks and coastline detail come from the 1:20,000 chart, as you can see off Dillingham Point and the west end of Curtis Island. It also seems that some deep water contours have been removed from Silver and the extra data like marina information is minimal. But, still, Silver is “almost as good as Gold” (as Navionics told me). (The Bahamas are excepted as Silver uses the old, crude HO stuff rather than the private data that Navionics is now using on its better cards.)
Navionics kindly sent me soon-to-be-shipped version 3.13 of NavPlanner, but I’m afraid it’s not going to satisfy the critics (some of whom ganged up on this software rather fiercely at The Hull Truth). The screen shot above shows all the plotter file formats it supports, as well as some interesting bathy detail off Key West on a Fish’n’Chip. 3.13 does seem faster, and it handled every kind of chart card without crashing, and I was able to build, save, and open various route types without trouble. However it’s still pretty clunky software. For instance, there is no simple hand grab tool to position the chart just where you want it, and when you try to move off the visible chart while mousing a route it doesn’t even know to pan without getting additional commands. Also you can’t change the type of depth unit used (usually an advantage of vector charts) and most U.S. charts are thus shown in Meters.
I could go on, but suffice it to say RayTech 6.0 handles Navionics charts much better, especially Platinum ones. In fact, even, say, Northstar users might want to do their planning in RayTech and then just use NavPlanner to convert the routes to their format. That’s possible (I checked), but there may be other ways to make the transfer, especially as RayTech will export routes to coma delimited or Excel formats. And note that Fugawi is just about to add Navionics card support to its ENC software. (Both Raymarine and Fugawi will sell the special reader needed for about $75).
But if you are using NavPlanner, I can help you out with one annoying detail (that I’m told will be fixed in a future version). Right now NavPlanner (unlike most every other chart viewer out there) does not automatically, or even semi-automatically, register charts and then graphically show you what’s available. Instead you have to find the "Charts" folder and then pick your desired region from a coded list, like below. This is an extreme example as that’s a Silver card with the whole U.S. Coast on it, but even a regular XL3 card has 3 XL files on it. Which is where? Navionics doesn’t have an online code list but I found one at Boaters Land.
Georeferenced panoramas, and happy to be home again
Jun 9, 2006
I’m pretty sure that Maptech was the first to add panoramic photos to its electronic charts, but now they’re everywhere. Nobletec Passport Deluxe, Navionics Platinum, C-Map MAX, and Garmin BlueChart G2 all have their own (or licensed) panoramas. But Maptech has upped the ante, at least on the SRN/i3, figuring out how to georeference the whole photos, not just where they were taken, so your boat can be overlaid on them. It is not critical for navigation, but it is cool. Check out the larger size image of the above panoramic showing Quincy’s Marina Bay with Boston in the background. I’m not sure the overlay always works out as neatly as this, but there in red is the Sea Ray I took this picture on, perfectly positioned in her comfortable home slip. Speaking of which, I am now comfortably back in Maine, my apartment and treatments in Boston all history. Hallelujah! I don’t care if it rains all weekend, and I hope you’re feeling the same.
Garmin G2 cartography was announced in November, more detail came out in March, and now I’m actually looking at it, both versions. Yes, remember that G2 (or g2, as Garmin spells it) comes in two tiers. The 3210 I’m testing has G2’s of the whole U.S. built in; they are full detail charts with added major roads and some port info. But you have to buy and insert a G2 chart card to get all the photos, full street maps, and multiple POI’s seen above, and bigger here
. Pulled back a bit you’d see that there are about a dozen photos just for Camden, which rather amazed me. Some are oblique, some straight down, many are higher resolution than you’ve ever seen in a navigation product before. For instance, I can make out my 14’ Gizmo tied up in the shot below (bigger here). Garmin has a ways to go to make all this photographic wealth easily accessible—like making the icons more indicative of what the picture shows, and making it possible to page through all of a port’s pics without going back out to the chart—but I’m sure it will happen. I also see a few errors in the port data but that’s nothing new. For instance, almost every electronic chart shows Willey Wharf and the Camden Town Landing as one place with a common phone number, but they are quite separate operations (there’s either been a lot of copying or data licensing going on). Also “Reseller Marina” is completely new to me and I’ve been in this harbor for 35 years and am on the Harbor Committee! I’m looking forward to trying the 3210 and G2’s, both versions, on the water soon. (The cards, by the way, retail for $215 in Garmin’s regular sizes, and $321 in large sizes. And speaking more generally of chart data sources I was interested to see this list of hydrographic offices including what Garmin has signed up for.)
Gizmo rides again, and the SoftChart color palette appreciated
May 15, 2006
I took my first Maine boat ride of ‘06 yesterday (yahoo!), launching my 14’ power cat Gizmo at Broad Cove Marine Services in Bremen and exploring Hungry Island. The salty Maine expression for waters like these—i.e. lumpy with lots of hidden ledges—is “bony”, and I was a bit frustrated navigation wise. The only plotter screen onboard (silly me) was a tiny, poor-in-direct-sunlight Magellan. We did have a paper chart, but it was the reduced Waterproof Chartbook version of the most detailed available (1:40,000 scale), handy but hardly good enough in place like this where you where you really wish there was a high detail chart, like 1:20,000. At any rate it got me thinking about the SoftChart color palette I spoke of last week. Check it out: here’s full screen of the SoftChart above, and full screen of the standard NOAA RNC below. Don’t those rich colors clarify some of the important cartography? I wonder if Maptech will adopt these colors for paper as well as digital charts? I also wonder if the company will expect premium pricing for more richly colored charts?
Note to Coastal Explorer/CNP users: did you realize that right mouse clicks neatly change the scale of the chart overview window (as shown)? And finally, for a nice picture of Gizmo at Hungry Island, click here.
All U.S. raster charts and a charting program, fifty bucks!
Apr 14, 2006
Maptech’s freeboatingcharts.com is now offering a DVD with all current NOAA raster charts, all Corp of Engineers river charts, and a real charting program for $50. The charts are organised on the disc into 23 ChartKit-style regions, and this deal even includes technical support. The software is Offshore Navigator Lite, the same program that now comes free with Maptech’s printed ChartKits and Waterproof Chartbooks. It’s not great, but it’s not bad either. I’ll try to write more about it soon, as well as the Zeus thing I started! Have a great weekend.
I suppose it was predictable, but it’s still amazing. The Garmin 478 above has all the XM Weather and Audio abilities that distinquished the 376C, and it comes loaded with all U.S. charts and all U.S. and Canada road maps. It’s fast too, even the ‘Find’ command is not slowed up by what must be a zillion POIs, nav aids, intersections, etc. stored somewhere in that little casing (and hence I’d bet that Garmin has sped up Find in the first all-U.S.-charts 192C I tested last summer).
Not that the 478 is perfect, even if there is nothing like it out there. For instance, these are the new G2 charts, but apparently the 478 will not be able to show the vaunted perspective view. I do gather from the spec page that it will show the photos available on G2 cards, and the screen above (bigger here) does look richer than regular BlueCharts. But, as good as this screen is, I find myself wanting to plug the 478 into a bigger monitor, maybe use a wireless keyboard and mouse with it too. The unit lets you use an expensive XM subscription anywhere you go but in some of those places, like a boat, you may want to expand the system. Just a thought, probably inspired by how rapidly this unit has evolved over the years.
I should also add that the Panbo reader who recently complained about the “Surface Wind” coming from XM to this machine was right; it’s old. He tells me that Garmin has acknowledged the problem and is working on it, but I also noticed this time around that you don’t get predicted wind and wave model data, something the new Sirius Marine Weather is very good at.
Garmin also announced a new pair of radar scanners this week, this time inside a smaller, 24” diameter casing, and with more emphasis on the digital processing going on in there. Finally, though Garmin hasn’t yet promoted it, many of its new plotters apparently do support AIS. The 478 is not one of them but I think I’ll soon get the chance to try it on a 3210.
Today I realized that Garmin has put up more information about their second generation BlueCharts, including the screen shot of the perspective view above, and the unusual top-down high-res photo below. Garmin announced G2 in November along with a boat load of new gear, which is all now coming to market. I’m on the list to see the G2’s on a couple of new plotters, and, of course, will report here. I also came across some surprises on Garmin’s Web site, some seemingly only accessible by randomly appearing links: a new blog; a very cool looking Smart Phone mapping software/data system with combo Bluetooth GPS, speaker phone, and cell mount (whew!); and a mapping program for certain cell phones already GPS enabled. There’s also Nuvi. No location awareness stone unturned!
Does it strike you as peculiar that Navionics is packaging their new NavPlanner software with a special multi card reader? Heck, didn’t Navionics spearhead the move to standard memory cards? Aren’t all its current products on either CF or SD formats? Wasn’t there once a rumour spread by the likes of me that Navionics was thinking of putting a free planning program on every card? That’s true, but dates to the days when Microsoft had assured Navionics that its chart files could be simultaneously protected and read using normal MS file features. That turned out to be untrue, and that’s why you need a special reader to view Navionics charts on a PC. I think the same is true of C-Map, whose charts now come on SD cards too. So it goes. Using standard memory cards in plotters still makes it easier to do firmware updates and save waypoints, and also reduces overall chart card costs. NavPlanner, by the way, is still not shipping, but “very close”.
There are two aspects of the above screen shot that you have probably never seen before. One is the chart itself, which is meant for fishing, not navigation; hence no shore detail or nav aids, but way more bathy data than you’ve ever seen for this area. Navionics calls the card Fish’n’Chip and is giving it away with regular Platinum cards and its new Gold+ cards. It’s all part of their Silver/Gold+/Platinum product strategy, noodled about here and fully revealed here. And note that the screen shot was taken using a beta of Navionics’ much awaited PC planning program, NavPlanner, shipping soon. Here’s the cool thing: I’m in Miami filming two PMY videos about Navionics’s whole chart line and today will my second of trying all the cards aboard a charter sportfishing boat. I have a lot more to report, but no time right now.
Are you old enough to remember Superman on TV? “It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!!!” That’s what came up in my fuddled brain when first presented with Standard’s first-of-its-kind what-the-heck-is-that? VHF and chart plotter combo machine. If you look close, the screen above is an obvious dummy, but I saw the unit running in Miami and was impressed. That screen is a 7” wide style—hi res (800 x 480 pixels) and hi bright. The CVP fully supports C-Map Max and its interface looked quite polished up compared to the old CP series (which wasn’t bad). The radio is full Class D DSC with a 30 watt hailer/horn built in, and you can add two RAM+ or telephone style mics if desired. You can also hang a black box fishfinder on this ($1,100 MAP priced) thing, making it quite the all-in-one for, say, a center console fishing machine or a tuna tower, or a sailboat helm. The designed-in ‘handle’ on the right side might be useful in those places too. Of course all the DSC benefits of interfacing GPS/plotter and VHF come built-in, just add an MMSI to get position with distress call, plot your buddies, etc. By the way, that area of marine communications is about to get a boost as Sea Tow rolls out an interesting new marine operator service called Sea Smart. More on that in few weeks.
* Happy to report that FreeNavCharts.com—torn into pretty fiercely here last month—really has cleaned up its act, and is now an informative Web site and a useful service.
* I’m told that Lowrance does acknowledge that certain rocks are missing from NauticPath charts, and says they will reappear in NauticPath version 2, coming out in about 6 months. Also added will be drying heights, seabed composition, anchorage areas, obstructions of uncertain depth, and more. Lowrance does not usually offer an upgrade path for cartography (it is very reasonably priced, after all) but is “considering” a special policy regarding NauticPath.
* The new 3.1 version of MacENC will now properly display those same rocks, as shown here. And I’ve heard from The Capn folks that they’ve not only solved their ENC rock display issue but have also figured out ways to display certain other valuable ENC chart details that “no one else is showing”. Examples are coming. This whole experience has made me a little leery about ENCs, if not all vector charts, but Panbo does indeed rock!
Enroute to Miami today; will report on the Boat Show this week as possible.
A French software company called Just Magic has created some neat Google Earth placemark files (.kmz) and has links to others of nautical interest. That’s part of a NOAA chart above (slow loading as you might expect) plus links to world wide XTide tide stations and bouy weather stations (you can click and go to predictions in both cases). And here’s a page that uses Google Earth to track the Volvo race. Will we be navigating on GE eventually?
Geez, yesterday’s request brought in some wonderful feedback about charting programs, not to mention some good material for future Panbo entries and even a candidate for my Helm Shot column (if he’s not too shy). This blog is helping me with my day job as a magazine writer, and it’s a delight to make contact with such interesting readers. But what really tickles me is that Panbo may play a small role in improving marine electronics and software. The latest evidence is the way RosePoint modified Coastal Explorer so that ENCs will always display those rocks we’ve been worrying about lately (even though, for reasons unknown, that’s contrary to the ECDIS standard). Gregg from RosePoint exclaimed the issue nicely in comments yesterday, and later a reader pointed me to a thread at Trawlers-and-Trawling which suggests that the customer who motivated RosePoint referenced Panbo. At any rate, hat’s off to RosePoint for responding with amazing speed.
And so let’s complain when we see a problem. Below, for instance, is Fugawi’s ENC display of Camden Harbor. Fugawi already has the rocks right; no matter what display options you pick (full screen shot here), you can not make them disappear. But, damn, why can’t they get the depth soundings right? What is 9subscript8 feet anyway? 9’8” or 9 and 8/10ths feet? And who cares…10 is what the original says and that will do just fine. These messed up soundings take up precious screen room and confuse the eye and brain (and I’ve seen the same problem on other vector chart displays).
PS. I’m aware that all charts will supposedly go metric eventually, and that the underlying soundings in the ENCs may already be in metric, but note how some ENC screens below display feet in nice natural numbers.
NavSim sent me a screenshot (above, and full size here ) from its latest BoatCruiser software, which now supports C-Map Max charts…and there—unlike the shot I put up yesterday—is the Curtis Island light. That got me investigating. I discovered that if I zoomed in tighter in PC Planner the light suddenly appears. So it is there in the data, though it certainly should appear in the zoom level I showed and in even larger area zooms. I also found a picture of the same Max card being used in a Standard Horizon plotter last summer (below), and the light is showing. I don’t have a C-Map compatible plotter here to see if disappears inappropriately as you zoom out. It’s nice, by the way, to be reminded of those tracks I made last season.
Geez, I’ve got companies (and individuals) sending me screenshots to prove that their charts show the rocks in my harbor! That’s Garmin BlueChart on a PC above. You’ll notice it’s based on the 1:20,000 harbor chart, like the NauticPath I first showed, only the obstructions are clearly marked. (Garmin seems particularly big on this obstruction symbol, keeping them onscreen even as you zoom out). More good news: the rocks also show clearly on Navionics’ and C-Map’s vector charts, and on NOAA ENCs as displayed by Nobeltec and Fugawi, neither of which will even let you turn them off. Dennis Mills, developer of the very able Capn, told me the reason that some software, including his, can turn off the rocks is screwy but official S57/ENC object prioritization. But then, doh!, I discovered that the Capn is not showing the obstructions that cover symbol on at least some of the SoftChart style ENCs it uses, even when in the well-described “Full Navigation Info” mode. Mills was surprised, blamed the software they use to create the ENCs from the NOAA raw data, and signed off “we’re working on it!” I think MacENC is also working on making its rock display more conventional.
At any rate, I think we should all take a careful look at the different electronic chart types we use, perhaps especially the ENCs. Look hard, and send me examples of important details that are missing or badly presented. I doubt that anyone is tracing the paper charts perfectly, and even the paper charts have errors. For more inspiration, check out this C-Map Max image of Camden Harbor. It’s one of the nicest vector displays I’ve seen, and the rocks are right…but where the hell is the Curtis Island Light, the biggest navigation aid in the area? Doh! Have a nice weekend, but don’t completely trust any chart.
Panbo friend Jeffrey Siegel sent over an excellent example of how important those chart asterisks can be. His raster chart clip above “shows a very nasty rock just outside Castine that is exposed by two feet at low tide (and thereby lurking just out of sight for most of the day). I know of 10 boats that have hit this rock - one guy even installed a pole on it after hitting it because he was so angry (it has since fallen off). It would be completely unacceptable to have that rock missing on any chart.” Well, I’m sorry to report that this “obstruction that covers” (official NOAA designation) is completely missing from the NauticPath charts I’m testing. Query the area with the cursor and it shows a minimum depth of 12’. Not good!
Moreover I’ve come to realize that NOAA’s own ENC vector format can be a little dicey about showing these same obstructions. There is no detailed ENC for Castine yet, but when I open the Camden 1:40,000 chart in Chart Navigator Pro (aka Coastal Explorer), the obstructions only show if I’ve set the ENC format to “Full Object Display”.
Then there’s MacENC, whose developer has for some reason chosen to show the obstructions by writing out “rock” instead of using the common symbol. I find that confusing as such words usually describe bottom composition, plus the point location of the rock is lost. At any rate, I’m going to check out how some other programs display the ENCs, and how other vector formats handle the obstructions, but right now I’m feeling very fond of familiar raster charts!
I’ve done more testing of the Lowrance ExplorerC handheld, and still like it a lot, but there are some real issues with the NauticPath charts. The main one is the absence of “obstructions that sometimes cover/uncover”, i.e. the damn rocks marked with asterisks on the paper chart below! Compare the two charts—soundings, bathy lines, high and low tide shore lines are all exactly the same…but rocks that may be just below the surface at any tide have vanished from the NauticPath (though I’m quite sure they were in the original Transas chart database). Those asterisk symbols are critical information, and they seem to be missing from NauticPath wherever I look around the country. The same is true on the LCX-111C downstairs, with a different copy of NauticPath on its hard drive, though on that machine the aids to navigation do not show double as they do on the Explorer (above). At any rate, I dare say the folks at Lowrance may be a little distracted right now, but I am going ask if they intend to put the rocks back in NauticPath.
Above is the NauticPath version of Abaco (right around Whale Cay), not any better detailed than the boat’s older Navionics charts, but a bit easier to understand in color, even on a handheld. NauticPath uses the same Transas chart database that Garmin BlueCharts and Nobeltec Passport charts are based on, but both of the latter have upgraded to private data for the Bahamas. Still, Lowrance’s charts are useful, and an incredible value. You see the little $109 NauticPath chip in this handheld includes not just the Bahamas but the entire U.S. coast including AK, HI, and the Great Lakes. That really got the attention of my two shipmates, each of whom had a Garmin 76C. Which, of course, is a very good handheld, but charts for it have gotten quite expensive compared to Lowrance and others like Navionics Silver. (I wonder if Garmin will lower BlueChart prices for existing models?)
Lowrance’s handheld (bigger here) is a hell of a deal too. This is the new Expedition C, $309 retail with a 2.8” transflective screen and built-in electronic compass and barometric altimeter (with weather predictions). It will even play MP3 music files, though I don’t think you can do that and still use the NauticPath SD card as there is only one card slot. The screen is quite readable in all conditions, though I wish there was more than one level of backlighting to save batteries, and night vision, when it’s really dark. The unit is fast and its WAAS GPS performance is extraordinary, able to quickly and easily acquire a 3D position with just a plane window sky view. In short, about $400 gets you a pocket plotter ready to use anywhere in the U.S. and Bahamas. Amazing.
Oy, while I’m sleeping, a comments war breaks out over cheap charts (here and here). The main issue seems to be whether or not Maptech and NOAA’s free download sites are offering the same sets of raster charts, and therefore whether or not the various repackaging operations are offering the same chart DVDs. I don’t yet know the truth, but I am very dubious that Maptech is serving up a 1,000 more charts than NOAA is. Especially since the main source of this info seems to be a dubious site called FreeNavCharts.com. FreeNavCharts is offering a good service, and has lots of correct info about electronic charts, but, man, is it hyped up! Does a simple region of raster charts really have a retail value of $249.95, as suggested above? Hell no! Even when Maptech did sell $250 Digital ChartKit regions—before NOAA changed its chart policies—the package included much, much more than just the raster charts. And I’m afraid it gets worse at FreeNavCharts:
“It's interesting to note that Maptech still sells the BSB-3 charts in a collection called Chart Navigator Pro for $499.95. The 'Chart Navigator Pro' collection includes 13 DVDs. While this sounds like a lot larger collection, they fail to tell you that all of the BSB charts on the 13 DVDs could easily fit on a single DVD! They are packaged with 13 individual DVDs to liquidate leftover inventory of Regional Collections.”
I have one of the very first copies of Chart Navigator Pro (CNP) and can tell you that the charts are updated into November 2005. In other words, the “liquidate leftover inventory” line is pure bullshit. Moreover, I just opened a random CNP DVD—St. Augustine to Crystal River, Florida—and here’s what’s on it besides for the RNCs and ENCs: 1.2 GB of 3D bathymetric data, 688 MB of topo maps, 1.7 GB of photo maps, 70 MB of panoramic photos, plus tide tables, pilot books, and lots of POI’s. Of course CNP also comes with a copy of Coastal Explorer software, which makes accessing all this data very easy (and also makes FreeNavCharts’s much hyped index meaningless).
Bottom line: FreeNavCharts—like ChartsDVD.com, and I’m sure there will be lots more—is just packaging and selling stuff that anyone can download. The true retail value of the disks is quite low. Yes, repackaging is a perfectly honorable service because the downloading is a pain, but confusing consumers with hype—and especially with lies about another company’s products—is dishonorable. Here’s hoping the FreeNavCharts.com cleans up its act.
PS 1/7: As suspected, the 1,016 RNCs listed by NOAA are the same as the 2,077 RNCs listed by Maptech; it’s just a matter of whether you list, say, a 4 page small craft chart as 1 or 4 charts. My source here is Jack Webb, proprietor of FreeNavCharts, who plans to change his site to reflect this reality. Thanks, Jack!
* Panbo reader Dan Hinckley has put together a thorough and useful review of his experience running both GPSNavX and MacENC on a Mac mini, which is where the screen shot above came from.
* A couple of readers have pointed out www.chartsdvd.com, which is the work of a sailing couple living in San Francisco. They’re offering all of NOAA’s free raster and vector charts on one DVD for $30, shipping included, nice and simple.
* At the other extreme of computer charting is WECDIS, the Warfare version of Electronic Chart Display and Information Systems. Slowly but surely the world’s navies are dumping paper charts in favor of WECDIS, or similar systems with different acronyms. The company supplying the British Royal Navy and hoping to get the U.S. business is OSI.
C-Map owns this ‘historic’ machine, which is supposedly the first chart plotter (bigger here) ever sold in the U.S. That was around 1985, when Navionics founders Giuseppe Carnevali and Fosco Bianchetti developed the first crude vector charts and this Datamarine-labeled plotter to show them. (Bianchetti soon went off to found C-Map). Wasn’t it about 5 years later that the first PC charting program came out? At any rate, we’ve come a hell of long ways in 20 years, and Carnevali and Bianchetti—who still run their companies—deserve some of the credit.
Now, would anyone care to predict what marine electronics will look like in another 20 years? 10? 5? With that, I wish you all a wonderful new year.
The chart game just gets more complicated, and interesting. There’s nothing on the Web yet, but last week C-Map announced the Pro version of its Max chart format. A couple of weeks ago I got a peek at it running on Northstar’s amazing new 8000i system, about which I will soon tell you a lot. One claim of C-Map is that Pro “delivers the most ‘paper chart like’ display ever seen from a vector chart.” I’m not sure how they’re doing it—new fonts, colors, object arrangement, maybe all of the above—but the charts looked really good. I didn’t get to see the photo map blending and 3D views seen above and below (in company screen shots), but look forward to at the Miami Boat Show where Pro will officially debut. Other features include “one button” chart updating and a weather overlay data system. Of course, all the regular goodies in Max are also included. Pro will be a premium product costing about $390 for 'MegaWide' areas, and so far only the 8000i supports it.
I recently took some screen shots of DAME award winner Navionics Platinum, which is surprisingly simple to do on the Raymarine E series. You just hold down the ‘data’ button until you hear a beep, and a full resolution (800x600 pixels, in the E120’s case) .bmp file will be saved to the CF card. At any rate, the full res version of the image above is here. That blue line on the left side marks the angle of view that I’ve set in the 3D image to the right. You can rotate and move around in that 3D view all you want, plus change its zoom and pitch, or you can simply synch it to the chart view.
Note too how the area around the channel is much more detailed than the chart soundings; it looks like you can even see the bite marks of the dredge. Navionics, like everyone else, is pretty tight about where it sources data, but I know that the Corp of Engineers does extremely high resolution surveys during dredging projects, and I think that’s what we’re looking at. {Wrong, it turns out; after speaking with someone at Navionics I think that it’s more likely that this is just an ‘effect’ that Platinum applies to any dredged channel.} The left window, by the way, is a blend of photo map and chart, as I discussed earlier. I’ve notice unfortunately that all the photo maps north of New York State are black and white, exactly like Maptech’s, which are based on USGS files (which probably explains that source). Below (and bigger here) is an illustration I made trying to show how the variable blending works. On the right side you can see how nice the color maps can be.
A C-Map question this morning reminded me that I’d meant to comment on my experience with the company’s latest PC Planner product. I’ve always liked the concept: bring home your chart card, stick it in Planner’s reader and use it to do fast, detailed route making on a PC, then bring the routes back to your plotter on a user card. These days Planner is a pretty mature program and also nicely shows off the goodies in C-Map's newish Max chart cards. Check out the streets, detailed harbor info, multi-shaded contours (land too), and even a yellow real time current arrow in the screen shot above (bigger here). The program can also display Max’s perspective view, animated nav lights, and harbor photos. I may have razzed C-Map last spring for its Max marketing, but I like the charts and PC Planner.
And I’ve wondered why Navionics has not yet introduced a similar product. (I have been told it was “about to happen” several times, including quite recently.) Even Garmin users can’t plan on a preprogrammed data card, though they can get the same effect by buying BlueCharts on a CD and making their own card (note that the new G2 charts will not be available on CD, at least at introduction).
At any rate, the question asked this morning was the cost for Malaysian C-Map charts for use on a PC. One reason for the long introduction is that PC charting programs supporting C-Maps can generally read them either from the CD version or from a card via the reader (SOB has a good explanation of the hows and whys here). A "Wide" size CD unlock code for the Malaysian area, either Max or regular NT+, costs about $250 and includes maybe 100 charts (you can drill down to name, scale, etc. detail using C-Map’s online catalog). I’m still working on prices for the applicable cards, which come in two possible sizes for the area; they’re likely a little higher, but can also be used in a dedicated plotter. I was surprised that I couldn’t find these prices online; I think Bluewater usually has such info but their system is down. Any suggestions for other online sources of worldwide electronic charts?
Honestly, I’m a little surprised that NOAA got its RNC ChartServer up and fully populated so soon. (And thanks to GPSNavX for the head’s up). I tried it yesterday, and here’s what I noticed:
* According to the official verbiage, NOAA RNCs (™ yet!) are considered “official” but redistributed copies are not (yet). “At a future date, NOAA intends to establish a program under which distributors may be certified to redistribute NOAA RNCs™ such that they will retain their official status and meet chart carriage regulations.”
* While the underlying charts seem to be the same, and fabulously current (updates applied through 2 weeks ago in many cases), NOAA is using different server software than Maptech’s freeboatingcharts.com. Since each site has unique ways to search for charts, there are now lots of ways to find them. NOAA zips them up for immediate downloading; freeboatingcharts sends you an email when the self-executing zip file is ready.
* Most interesting, I think, is that NOAA is also offering small update files that I presume will make the latest edition of a chart current. This will be great for keeping a portfolio updated, especially for those with narrow-band connections, like on a boat. But I think that the .ptc update file format only works in older Maptech software so far (not, for instance, CNP/CE, yet). Can anyone illuminate me?
The good folks who make GPSNavX and MacENC just announced a $40 (plus $5 s/h) DVD containing all NOAA U.S. coastal charts, including Alaska, Hawaii, and the Great Lakes. They’re in BSB 3 file format and should work fine with any Mac or PC charting program that reads BSBs—which is just about all of them. Note that the BSB 3 format is not encrypted. Note too that these are the same charts available for free download at freeboatingcharts.com (but what a hassel it would be to order, download, and unzip all of them).
We interrupt the normal new electronics programming for a brief rant. I just read this in the November issue of Boat.U.S., reportedly the largest circulation boating magazine on the planet (and generally quite good):
“But before you have visions of hitting ‘print’ on your computer and getting a high resolution quality chart, boaters need to understand the terms ‘raster’ and ‘vector’ charts. A raster chart is essentially a snapshot of a paper chart, composed of a bunch of dots, like a newspaper photo. While the resolution is not good enough for printing, it’s fine for a computer program and screen display.”
Say what!?! Everything printed is a bunch of dots, and the native resolution of most raster charts is 254 dots per inch, very darn close to the 300 dpi standard for quality glossy magazine images. Just about any decent charting program can print rasters very nicely at full scale (the only real trick is printing from the file, not the screen image).
The BoatU.S. article, titled “Charts Go PC”, starts with a decent explanation of NOAA’s new free RNC (and ENC) download policy. But then it veers into shaky territory like the above and various other misunderstandings about vector/plotter charts. It’s a shame because boaters are confused enough about marine electronics, software, digital charts, etc. that the “expert” magazines should be going out of their way to provide accurate information.
I wouldn’t rant on this subject—and risk sounding like an arrogant ass—except that I regularly come across electronics errors in the boating press. Lord knows, for instance, how many times I’ve seen Ethernet and NMEA 2000 treated as though they were essentially the same (not!). At any rate, take care to treat printed words with appropriate caution (and if you’re an editor please consider having technical articles from uncertain sources double checked by an expert or two).
Whoa, things are happening even faster than enthusiastic yours truly thought possible. For $500, Maptech’s new Chart Navigator Pro (CNP) give’s you 13 (13!) DVDs containing NOAA’s entire portfolio of U.S. RNCs and ENCs, plus all of Maptech’s accessory cartography—photo maps, harbor panoramas, topos, bathy maps, pilot books, and information databases. But the real surprise inside is that Maptech ditched its aging, non-quilting, non-vector charting software in favor of Coastal Explorer. The name has changed, but CNP is CE 1.1 with nothing taken out and Maptech’s decent 3D contour engine added. CNP gets introduced today at the Fort Lauderdal Boat Show and will supposedly be in stores next month.
PS, 11/7: Thanks to Greg’s comment for a head’s up that Maptech has launched a new site, freeboatingcharts.com, where you can download all the U.S. RNCs you want. I don’t quite understand why Maptech is doing this before NOAA has a system in place, but it works fine. First you select the charts you want, then the site packages them up in a self executing zip file and notifies you when it’s ready for download. It only took maybe a half hour for me to receive the 15 charts that cover my area in all scales.
Rose Point Navigation just announced that Coastal Explorer is “the first program to include the entire NOAA chart collection covering all US waters.” What they mean is a sort of mulligan stew of cartography—500 ENC vector charts, 250 “Vector Coastal Explorer Charts” (which I think are actually derived from the DNC portfolio put together by NGA, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and also available from SoftChart for use with Capn 8.0), and 250 raster charts. In other words, they’re covering every bit of US coast at every available scale, but they’re not providing double coverage—raster and vector. By contrast, SoftChart is providing double and sometimes triple (two kinds of vector) coverage of many areas (at $200 per region), which can be darn useful for maximum detail and readability (I often cruise in Maine with both a vector and raster charts visible in split screen mode). I also noticed that CE has a little trouble perfectly quilting all three chart types, at least in my area, though below you can see how well it can do too.
But this is quibbling when you consider that Rose Point is including all 1,000 charts with its very able charting program, all for $400 total. The rasters will soon be on the shipping CD (DVD?) package, and are available for download now (though, as shown above, you need broadband). How did Rose Point get their mitts on these charts before NOAA has even started distributing them on its Web site? A good question, and the answer is about to reveal itself! And, by the way, can the worldwide portfolio of DNC vector charts, which seem to be downloadable, be used by the public? I really don’t know, but sure am curious.
Next week in Ft. Lauderdale I’ll get an on-the-water demo of the new Raymarine A65 along with its included Navionics Silver chart card…so details then, apparent strategies now:
* The A65 is a 6.5”, though full VGA, plotter/fishfinder (or plain plotter) that seems to incorporate Raymarine’s crisp digital sonar technology and some of the friendly soft key interface seen in the C and E Series. It does not support radar, a high speed bus, or even SeaTalk2/NMEA 2000, but it does seem to offer some bigger boat electronics goodness in a smaller package (and price, though I don’t have the exact numbers just yet).
* The A65 comes with a Navionics Silver CF card that includes full detail coverage of the entire US coast. My understanding is that this signals the beginning of Navionics’ three tier chart strategy—Silver, Gold, Platinum…good, better, best. All the details aren’t out but the idea is that users of at least some machines can upgrade through the tiers as desired; meanwhile Navionics can move features down through the tiers as competition dictates. Slick.
The total package seems like a big “hello” to Garmin’s 192/198 series, Lowrance’s NauticPath etc., and also, in a way, to NOAA’s imminent giving away of all U.S. raster charts. (And a note to readers from outside the States: sorry that your governments are not pushing vendors to provide more and better chart coverage for less money, but then again you don’t have a powerful politician trying to gag your met offices.)
Back in April I noodled about the historical precedents to some of the neat features—like “points of interest” ashore—now coming to electronic charts. I showed a bit of a fabulous 1650 map of New England and promised to one day explain how to get your hands on high resolution scans like these. Today’s the day! The source is the Library of Congress (LOC) Map Collection. Here’s a link to the full 1767 map of lower Manhattan snipped above, and here’s to 1650 New England. You can zoom around the online images but having the full resolution files on your hard drive is, of course, more fun, and they print very nicely. (Shown above, by the way, is the intersection of Broadway and Wall St. with Trinity Church, still there, keyed to a reference list with the “2”. Part of my strong interest in this particular area is that the dock upper left on Little Queen St., now Thames St. and 6 blocks inshore from the Hudson, belonged then to Ellisons. Wish the land still did!)
But there is a problem with downloading these images, even assuming a 7.5 meg file is doable with your Internet connection. Some, like these, are in JPEG2000 (.jp2) format and others are in an even more obscure format called MrSID (.sid). Fortunately there’s a nice freeware program called Irfanview that will read both formats and convert the images into .jpg or whatever. It’s all a bit of trouble, but the maps and charts available from the LOC are fascinating. I dare say that one day some terrabyte plotter or charting program will include them as a sort of historical overlay. And, finally, if you are interested in how Manhattan and America really got started, check out Island at the Center of the World, which also has a Web site that makes use of old cartography.
I’m back from Boston, where Navionics showed a bunch of boating writers what Platinum cartography looks like on the water, and also laid out its overall product plan for 2006. Panbo-wise, it’s all a little frustrating. I’ve been beta testing Platinum on a Raymarine E-120 all summer, and have tons of photos and screen shots to illustrate its features in detail. However, I agreed to Raymarine’s understandable request that I not use anything until the code is finalized. Soon, I’m told, very soon. (I got the shot above, and bigger here, during the demo; on the left screen you can see how big the oblique marina and port entrance photos are. Incidentally, when there was a chart on that screen, it was neat to see how well it could synchronize with the 3D screen at right, something I hadn’t seen in my testing).
Similarly, I can’t yet talk about what Navionics is up to in 2006 (very interesting). Instant Panbo publishing is a little too fast for these guys! I may run into this situation a lot this fall, as electronics companies reveal their new products, often timed to magazine cycles two or more months long. Plus my Panbo posting schedule is going to be choppy. In the next six weeks I’ve got a ‘research’ cruise with my daughter on the Hudson river, a press junket to the French Riviera, two trips to Florida (NMEA conference and Ft. Lauderdale boat show), and a completely non nautical but spectacular conference (Pop!Tech) where I volunteer so I can hear what some really large brains are thinking about our tech future. I think of this fall period as a regime of fattening my own brain for the winter ahead.
It was just last week that Rich Ray sent me this screenshot of MacENC, a new version of his GPSNavX charting program that supports NOAA’s free ENC vector charts. But after Tuesday’s news about free raster charts, it no longer seems like a big deal. Now we know that by about next spring Rich and other developers will probably be able to sell their charting software on a DVD that includes the digital equivalent of every single NOAA U.S. paper chart, without any encryption hassels and at little added cost. And users will be able to update those charts weekly if they want (making that easy will be another chance for developers to add value). But ENCs aren’t going away. They’re better than RNCs in many ways, and they’re definitely the future. Eventually—when ENCs are perfected and coverage complete—NOAA will drop raster chart production altogether, even printing paper charts from the vector database (if they print charts at all). Right now it’s quite useful to have both RNCs and ENCs for the same area; each has data or display features that the other lacks. In fact, if I was a Mac person, I wouldn’t think twice about paying the extra $35 for MacENC. I’m looking forward to inexpensive DVDs loaded with both types of free U.S. charts.
By the way, breaking the raster story generated a record number of readers here at Panbo, and for a moment made me feel like Matt Drudge (in a good way). A big thanks to whoever it was out there e-mailing Panbo links all over the planet!
Wow! The CRADA (Cooperative Research and Development Agreement) that made Maptech the only official source of NOAA Raster Navigation Charts (RNCs, like the snip above, which are like paper charts) is over, and the new plan sounds terrific. Maptech will continue to use its expertise to produce/update the RNCs, but will deliver them weekly, in unencrypted .bsb format, to the Office of Coast Survey (OCS), who will distribute them over the Web. Anyone will be able to download them for free, including commercial vendors who can encrypt, add value, and repackage them (within certain guidelines). While this development has been rumored about for some time, this is now the official word from OCS, though “No date has been set by which this distribution of free raster charts will begin.” A free portfolio of U.S. RNCs—which, unlike the ENCs, is complete—will really stimulate PC and Mac charting programs and I think has already motivated some of the price slashing and big value adds in the vector chart segment (just check out the “charts” section of Panbo). Above all, I suspect it means that eventually just about every salt water boat in America will have some sort of plotting device aboard. Hats off to NOAA, and let’s hope that some the world’s other hydrographic offices follow its lead (don’t hold your breath).
Update, 8/10: I’m getting questions about how “official” this news really is. My source is a fairly formal e-mail sent by OCS to a developer. It seems quite genuine and clearly states what I wrote above. But please note the one sentence I directly quoted; we do not yet know when this will happen.
Update 2, 8/10: Another developer I know called OCS and spoke with the gentleman who heads up the RNC division. He verified the above and also said that their goal is to have all RNCs online by the end of this year, if not sooner.
Update, 8/11: Alright already! I finally did what a better (and less busy) reporter might have done in the first place; I spoke directly with the Public Affairs Officer at OCS. He verified this story completely, but said that NOAA didn’t plan an announcement until free downloading is immanent. So, no, you won’t find this on an official Web site, but, yes, it is official.
There’s finally some good Web material up about Navionics Platinum charts. Not surprisingly it’s at Raymarine’s site, as the E Series will be the first to display it. Definitely check out the “Feature Tour”, whose Flash animation illustrates some of Platinum’s dynamic nature. Raymarine calls this all a “Preview”, with the actual chart cards and E Series software upgrade “Coming Soon”. My sense is that it will be quite soon, as I’m starting to see ads too. Plus I’ve been trying out beta versions for a while now, and the software seems darn solid to me. Raymarine understandably asked me not to comment on beta product, but hopefully that too will change soon. In the meantime, one word: outstanding!
I was out testing in bright sunshine Saturday morning, and the screen on the Garmin 192C stood up very well. In fact this is the worst image I got, and it’s still quite readable (bigger here…note the glare, reflected elbow, and gunk on screen—real world factors you’ll rarely see in ads or articles). The 192 is the new unit that comes with all U.S. coastal charts in memory and ready to use. They really are all there, along with large area charts of places like the Bahamas, a good world map, and tons of port information. It is true that you can not use these charts with Garmin’s MapSource to do planning on a PC, but the no-PC-needed simplicity will be a plus for many users; even updating the charts will be done with a card. The only other con I could detect is that the find function is slowed down somewhat by the massive amount of data it has to search through. Besides the brighter, more color saturated screen, I noticed numerous subtle improvements in Garmin’s already effective tabbed interface. I’d guess the 192 will appeal to smaller boat owners wanting ready-to-use simplicity and flexibility (trailer north or south for vacation, get a card for lakes), not to mention cruisers who do big sections of the U.S. coast and want a backup to integrated and/or PC systems. The 192 comes with internal or external GPSs, and there’s a 198 version with fishfinder. Garmin won’t say if it might bring the all-US-charts-onboard strategy to other models, but what do you think? (Especially as Lowrance is offering this feature on many units).
I have no tolerance for boaters who rip off electronic charts; the practice hurts decent companies and has understandably led to copy protection schemes the rest of us have to cope with. But one chart manufacturer, Nautical Data International (NDI), has earned its own reputation for pirate practices. It ticked off customers for years with extra high prices, flawed encryption code, and even a “time out” mechanism that rendered charts you owned useless after a certain period. Two years ago, a nasty royalty fight erupted between NDI and the two big chart card companies C-Map and Navionics. You see, in 1993 NDI somehow wrangled not only the exclusive right to market electronic versions of Canadian Hydrographic Office (CHS) charts, but also exclusive right to negotiate royalty arrangements with other vendors. Many lawsuits followed, some still in court, but last winter CHS announced that it would terminate its relationship to NDI. Hence the strange press releases featured on NDI’s home page (right) proclaiming its ability to continue “business as usual” and its success suing the government office it’s dependent on. I bring this up because I recently helped a friend prepare for a Newfoundland cruise and can confirm that charts he bought from NDI five years ago will not run or reinstall on his PC. He will use paper charts rather than ever do business with NDI again.
An on screen personality I am not, a fact I was reminded of yesterday when circumstances led me to some videos I did for PMY almost two years ago. I did try to be informative about Navionics Gold, above, even if I was terrified that the fancy camera bungee corded onto Gizmo would go overboard. Life was better with a real camera man for the shoot about DSC calling and plotting using Standard Horizon gear (still a way underutilized technology, I think). Plus there were stripers involved, which I’m pleased to hear may be headed to Maine early this year (thanks, Eli).
I’ve been getting requests to show more Platinum screens, so here’s one of what’s called Aerial Overlay. That means you can blend the regular vector charts with photo maps, which are straight down images that have been geopositioned so data (including your boat) can be plotted on them. Here the transparency of the photo map is set at 69% using the rotary knob on an Raymarine E120. Note how the photos improve your knowledge of what’s along the shore. Note too that the blending reveals descrepencies between the vector data and the photo map, a head’s up that one or the other is inaccurate. Platinum seems to include this resolution of photo maps for the whole U.S.; I understand the European version is lower res. Note too the camera icon, which shows you that there is also an “oblique” or “panoramic” photo available for this specific spot (wish we could all agree on nomenclature!). These are not geopositioned but do give you a useful perspective view of important inlets, marinas, etc. In Platinum they are quite high res (example coming).
I have an article about Navionics’ and C-Map’s new plotter charts in the June issues of both PMY and Sail, but unfortunately neither is online yet. C-Map Max is shipping and there are good images of it here, but Platinum—which by design, and pricing, is the more ambitious product—is still a mystery to most anyone who didn’t get a chance to see it previewed at the Miami Boat Show. Above is a screenshot of 3D mode, which really should be a video to do it justice. You can see (bigger here) that critical chart data like buoys and wrecks are overlaid on a composite of land photo maps and underwater bathymetry. The soft keys on the Raymarine E120, which will soon be the first plotter to display Platinum, indicate how you can adjust the pitch and rotation of your view. There’s much more. One indication of how much more is the fact that Platinum comes on 2 Gig Compact Flash cards!
U.S. Navy Submarine Captain Kevin Mooney takes full responsibility for crashing the San Francisco into a practically uncharted undersea mount in the Pacific last January. Yesterday the New York Times published a detailed story about the accident, particularly the drama of trying to treat and evacuate mortally injured Petty Officer Joey Ashley. Then CBS 60 Minutes did a “Who’s to blame” piece, which I happened to see. The interviewer drew out how Mooney was using a classified, best-available Navy chart and steering a route sent from headquarters, but still the Captain—who seemed like an very decent man—insisted that he should have been going slower, should have checked other charts (where there were just hints of the mountain). Most of all, he said, “I should have been more skeptical about the chart data.”
Those are words to remember, especially as there’s a growing disconnect between our super precise electronic navigation and the precision of the underlying chart data. It’s a phenomenon I wrote about here.
When Navionics Platinum chart cards come out this summer, 3D photo mapping will come to boat plotters. Platinum (still not much on the Web yet) is really going to turn some heads, as it did during the Miami Boat Show. If you want to see what the eventual possibilities are, take a look at NASA’s free program World Wind. It’s not quite as user friendly as Keyhole, but has higher resolution photography for much of the U.S. The screen shot above (bigger here) shows a Hilton in Clearwater Beach, Florida, where I’m attending a magazine meeting this week. In World Wind I was able to check out the beach and marinas, etc. before I got here. You’ll understand why posting may be irregular this week!
OK, I’m obsessed with charts, but I’m not the only navigator thus afflicted. Last week I used a snippet of a wonderful 1685 chart that’s available on the Net, and promised to tell more. The source is the U.S. Library of Congress Map Collection. The LOC has scanned scads of cartography at very high resolution for your viewing and downloading pleasure. You’ll see several categories, none of them “nautical charts” per se, but you’ll find all sorts once you dive into the search engine. Shown here, and larger here, is a bit of a 1921 chart of Miami. It’s interesting as an early example of color use, and also because it shows a Miami Harbor that’s damn shallow and missing some major features like Fisher Island and the whole cruise ship dock area.
You can zoom into the detail of these charts nicely on the LOC site, especially if you have a fast Web connection, but there’s a problem if you want to download one for further perusal or printing. Many are in an unusual format called MrSID that no standard graphic program I know of can read. The solution is IrfanView, an excellent freeware (or “beggar ware”) program created by a young Bosnian named Irfan Skiljan. IrganView can turn this 6.6 meg .sid file of Miami into a 90 meg .jpg file that would print nicely full size. The LOC offers some maps and charts for areas outside the U.S., but if there are richer sources I'd sure like to hear about them.
Another important feature of the new Max and Platinum chart card formats I wrote about earlier today is their vastly expanded POI (Points of Interest) databases. Click on an icon and you can find out a marina’s phone #, services offered, and much more. Ditto for hotels, grocery stores, and other services. One electronics wag predicts that eventually we’ll be able to check out the menu at a dock-and-dine restaurant before we tie up. But this stuff is not entirely new. Contemporary paper charts don’t include POI info, but old time cartographers were often artful with it. The snip below is just a couple of square inches from a panoramic of the New York City waterfront that fills one corner of a 1685 chart of New England. Many points of interest are labeled with letter keys, including the gallows (G), illustrated in use! Click here for a larger image of the chart (a new Panbo feature). I’ll write an entry soon on where to find high resolution antique chart images like this on the Web.
Why do C-Map’s full page ads for its new Max chart format feature a woman wearing a cartographic body suit? Even the model looks like she thinks it a goofy idea! Especially since Max has so many interesting and graphic new features — panoramic photos of harbor entrances, animated tidal current predictions and navigation light characteristics, street mapping, 15 levels of land contours and 32 of depth (now in 256 colors), and a perspective view that let’s a navigator see chart detail up close to the boat while still keeping an eye on what’s further ahead. And none of it has been seen on plotters before. C-Map has a dedicated Max site here. I wrote about Max and Navionics’ new Platinum format (not much on the Web yet) for the June issues of PMY and Sail, and we tried to use as many illustrations as possible. I think that both new formats are sexy, but not literally!
Lowrance started talking about its new NauticPath electronic charts last fall, but the details — cost, which plotters they’ll run on, and “where the heck did Lowrance get them?” — are still resolving themselves. You may still find Web references to regional cards at $99 apiece, but it’s definite now that Lowrance will ship (very soon) all U.S. coastal charts on one card for $109 retail! And a new page at Lowrance says that the Great Lakes, Bahamas, Puerto Rico, and USVI are also included! The same page indicates that most every plotter in Lowrance’s fast-growing line will run these charts, though a firmware upgrade may be needed. So one sweet possibility is backing up a boat’s plotter system with an inexpensive waterproof handheld loaded with charts, and also able to play MP3 music! By the way, at a Miami Boat Show press conference, Lowrance allowed that NauticPath is based on the same Transas chart database that Nobeltec and Garmin licensed as the foundation of their electronic chart formats.
Lowrance has a phenomenal number of new products this year, and the specs on many of them will likely prompt more exclamation points here.
Garmin’s new 192C plotter and 198C plotter/sounder come with full detail BlueCharts for all U.S. coastal waters, including Alaska and Hawaii, loaded in non-volatile memory and ready to use! This is remarkable news because until now you had to also buy either chart cards or a CD with which you burned your own chart card. Either way, getting charts for, say, a trip down the East Coast could cost more than the total $964 price tag on the 192C, and was more hassle. One possible downside of the pre-loaded charts is that you won’t have a card or CD that you can use with a backup plotter. It’s also not clear how Garmin will update these charts, or if they will work via USB for planning on a PC. I look forward to trying one of these five-inch diagonal units, which also boast “a new look and feel”, in the near future.
Garmin’s charts-included strategy, which will likely come to other new models as they roll out (just guessing), is only one of several major changes in the world of electronic charts that I’ll try to touch on here over the next few weeks.
I really like this cooperation between Marinalife and Maptech. It will make life easier for boaters by integrating lots of services with Maptech's interface. I hope this is just an example of what to expect in the (near) future.
"Marinalife has created a centralized Internet-based reservation system for marinas, kind of an Expedia for recreational boaters that it calls a "cruising concierge" system. The five-person company is combining its system with technology developed by Amesbury, Mass.-based Maptech to bring a range of navigation and communications tools to boaters on the water. Maptech has consolidated and simplified a range of electronic navigation technology that enables boaters to check the weather, access radar images and send and receive e-mail with a few touches on a computer screen. By joining forces, the two companies aim to become an online travel agent of sorts for boaters. They'll be able to create navigation charts and, from the water, reserve a slip at a marina and make dinner and hotel arrangements for after docking."
This entry's title is not about cause and effect; my wind sensor testing may go incomplete, but that has nothing to do with Garmin's chart problem. And while I had a good time on the water yesterday, even if frustrated by details, the mood in Kansas seemed a bit morose. Imagine the satisfaction of introducing all the free and amazing enhancements in Garmin's 5.0 marine software (which I was enjoying immensely, as seen above), but then just a few weeks later realizing that there was a processing error in the creation of new and improved Bluecharts that was potentially so bad that you had to recall all the 2009 chart cards sold so far around the world. Ouch!
. I’ve always stubbornly resisted the Mac/iPod/Jobs fervor/hype—in fact, this is my first ever Apple product—but, wow, today my propeller beanie is tipped toward Cupertino. Plenty of smart marine developers have also noticed the slick capabilities of the iPhone/Touch apps platform. Being demoed above, for instance, is 
, which also has practical uses!) 
It’s a happy day for navigators when C-Map is running out of adjectives to describe how large an area is covered by its latest chart cards. The press release is not online yet (
EliBoat made a 
mage.
, anchorage areas, obstructions of uncertain depth, and more. Lowrance does not usually offer an upgrade path for cartography (it is very reasonably priced, after all) but is “considering” a special policy regarding NauticPath.
Whoa, things are happening even faster than enthusiastic yours truly 
I was out testing in bright sunshine Saturday morning, and the screen on the Garmin 192C stood up very well. In fact this is the worst image I got, and it’s still quite readable (bigger 
I have no tolerance for boaters who rip off electronic charts; the practice hurts decent companies and has understandably led to copy protection schemes the rest of us have to cope with. But one chart manufacturer, Nautical Data International (NDI), has earned its own reputation for pirate practices. It ticked off customers for years with extra high prices, flawed encryption code, and even a “time out” mechanism that rendered charts you owned useless after a certain period. Two years ago, a nasty royalty 
When Navionics Platinum chart cards come out this summer, 3D photo mapping will come to boat plotters. Platinum (still not much on the Web yet) is really going to turn some heads, as it did during the Miami Boat Show. If you want to see what the eventual possibilities are, take a look at NASA’s free program 
OK, I’m obsessed with charts, but I’m not the only navigator thus afflicted. Last week I used a 
Why do C-Map’s full page ads for its new Max chart format feature a woman wearing a cartographic body suit? Even the model looks like she thinks it a goofy idea! Especially since Max has so many interesting and graphic new features — panoramic photos of harbor entrances, animated tidal current predictions and navigation light characteristics, street mapping, 15 levels of land contours and 32 of depth (now in 256 colors), and a perspective view that let’s a navigator see chart detail up close to the boat while still keeping an eye on what’s further ahead. And none of it has been seen on plotters before. C-Map has a dedicated Max site 
Lowrance started talking about its new NauticPath electronic charts last fall, but the details — cost, which plotters they’ll run on, and “where the heck did Lowrance get them?” — are still resolving themselves. You may still find Web references to regional cards at $99 apiece, but it’s definite now that Lowrance will ship (very soon) all U.S. coastal charts on one card for $109 retail! And a new 
Garmin’s new 
I really like this