MacSailing.net

Hi,

this season I will sail on a yacht which is equipped with a Notebook running Windows. As navigation software "Chart Navigator Professional" by NV-Verlag is installed.
As far as I found out, there is no way to connect an iPad to that application as it cannot serve NMEA data via TCP/IP.
Is there an easy and not too expensive way to get the iPad connected? Basically I need a software which only acts as a server. No navigational functions needed as that will be done by "Chart Navigator".
Does anyone know a piece of share- or freeware to accomplish this job?

Thanks in advance!

PS: Serial port replication is not an issue here as the AIS receiver/Multiplexer has a USB and a serial output - so there is one for each application.

I think you can use PolarNavy's PolarCOM on Windows and it will broadcast NMEA over TCP/IP (I have not tried this). Otherwise check out GPSGate. iNavX just needs any NMEA-0813 data via WiFi-TCP/IP.

Thank you. I got it to work with PolarCOM and my Garmin GPS - it will be interesting to see if it also repeats sentences from the AIS - but that will have to wait until April.

No reason it should not just pass through all NMEA-0183 data to the WiFi stream so iNavX can use it.

Take a look at NavMonPC (http://navmonpc.com/). It has a server function.

PolarCOM will forward any NMEA data including AIS. If you do connect AIS, make sure to un-check "Mux Out" on your GPS NMEA port. Otherwise, AIS messages will be forwarded to that port as well and, if you have a real NMEA system running at original 4800 baud, it could potentially be overwhelmed by AIS Data.

So, last Friday I had the chance to test this.
I installed PolarCOM on the laptop, and set up a server.
I then changed the input port of Chart Navigator Pro to listen to the server on localhost.
I also could connect to the server with iNavX on the iPad.
But after a restart of the laptop connection attempts with the iPad timed out. Chart Navigator worked well, though.
I only managed to reconnect with the iPad after deleting and re-creation of the server in PolarCOM. Ay hints why this happens? Is iNavX or PolarCOM to blame? Or is it just me?

Thanks a lot!

Best regards,
Jan

Make sure first you are connecting to the correct network in the iPad Settings, WiFi section before attempting to connect iNavX to the NMEA server.

The Wi-Fi network was provided by my huawei 3G-router all the time. So the network was on and the iPad was on all the time connected to the same network. I just restarted th laptop and then could not connect to the server again.

There is a free iTelnet app that will show the NMEA data on your iPad or iPhone. It's a bit buggy but does function enough to see the NMEA data.

Here is a PolarCOM configuration guide for iNavX ..

http://www.gpsnavx.com/iNavX/help/polarcom.htm