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Just noticed that Expansys (who ship internationally) are doing a special offer on the Socket Bluetooth GPS + car charger.... for $97!

http://www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=119717 (UK)

I might have to order one for use with the Mac / Treo 650...

Bob Geldof, he of Live Aid, and more recently Live 8 fame, as asked for UK sailors to sail across to France to pick up French fans to go to the various gigs and demo's around the time of the G8 summit.

I don't necessarily share all of Bob's politics, but if Dame Ellen supports it then it most be OK!

Sign up / more info at http://sail8.ybw.com/sail8/

Anyone else UK-based feel like going? Could be a once-in-a-lifetime experience...

Does anyone have some good suggestions for 12" - 14/15" screens with a 12 VDC power option? This would be for the nav station below, so no need for a sunlight-viewable, though of course as much brightness as possible is good. Google gives me products such as Xenarc but I'm wondering what others anyone might have found.

After months of using GPSNavX on other people's boats with my PowerBook, I have a 30' sailboat in my sights ...

I have picked my Mac, I am planning on installing a Mac Mini in the nav station. I found a site describing how to install a Mac Mini in a car which means there is a 12v power supply for it. This, along with a 17 or 19" LCD screen, will be mounted in a plexi enclosure that can be opened to insert CD/DVDs. The MacMini will have GPSNavX and (assuming I can figure out the best way to get it hooked up) Rusalka instruments. I will be using the blutooth keyboard and mouse so that when the water hits the keyboard it just kills the keyboard, not the whole computer.

The final piece of the plan is to be able to hook this machine up to a nice LCD TV screen (no bigger than 20") using the S-Video out and to a stereo. I have begun the process of converting my DVD library to H.264 encoded MP4 files and will be putting them, along with my iTunes library, onto a RAID 5 of 5 100GB notebook drives (total of 400GB storage) which will be bus powered. The final piece of the puzzle will be my EyeTV 500 which will allow me to watch HDTV broadcasts.

I hope to be able to (afford) install a daylight viewable (ideally transflective), marinized, touch screen (anyone know of one) 10-12" panel in the cockpit. It would be ideal of there were 4 or 5 programmable buttons on the screen but if no one offers that kind of functionality, it would be pretty easy to create some kind of 5 button doohickey that could be mounted next to the monitor. I think I would really only need command-tab, command-shift-tab, +, -, and mute.

I will eventually need all of the various and sundry other instruments and I am leaning toward using the micronet products from Tacktick products ( http://www.tacktick.com/products/mn100_index.asp ) because they are wireless and individually solar powered and as such I expect them to be easier to install. While Tacktick makes a multiplexer, I am wondering what wireless protocol they are using. It would be nice if it was bluetooth or, even better, 802.11 and there was some way to forgo the multiplexer and just have all of the wireless data feed into the mac without another device. Does anyone have any experience with Tacktick products or have any brands that should be avoided for Mac compatibility reasons?

With the exciting or shocking news that Apple is moving to Intel there is some good news and some bad. The good news is GPSNavX will be offered in new "Universal Binary" format that will allow it to run on both Power PC Macs and Intel Mac's. GPSNavX is developed in platform indepenpent ObjC/Cocoa (unlike most of the other GPS apps that are ported from Classic and use the old Carbon API's). The bad news is that the drivers for USB GPS and the Keyspan USB to serial adapter will have to be ported by their respective companies (FTDI, Prolific and Keyspan) to the new Intel platform.

Time will tell if this is a good move for Apple. I think they are now pitting themselves against the low cost Wintel clone makers. It's just a matter of time before someone has OS X running on a Dell. So then the question becomes why pay extra for Apple hardware? Maybe that is the goal is to offer an alternative to Windows and Linux.

The next release of GPSNavX will support [control] [clicking] anywhere on the chart. Select "Mr. Tides" from the context menu. Mr. Tides will then be launched and open to the nearest station.

Screenshot

Development is progressing well. The expectation is to have support in less than 60 days. I hate promising dates, but will do my absolute best to meet that deadline.

I do believe S-57 Vector charts are the future for marine navigation so that will be the focus for the forseeable future.

Is it possible to reduce the waypoint arrival distance to less than 0.1nm in a future release?

It appears as if the next waypoint is automatically selected when the arrival distance is reached (about 600 feet before the waypoint). I have not tested this yet but suspect that the autopilot will also change course prematurely using "Auto Next". Normally this is not a problem, but in some of the tight channels in my area, I would prefer a closer range...say about 0.01nm instead of 0.1nm.

Thanks again for creating and supporting GPSNavX™

Here is the scenario: I would like to buy a PDA with GPS facility (or GPS with PDA facility) and use it on board and in the hills. Specifically, this means buying the relevant electronic chart for marine use, but also being able to scan a map of my local mountains and download it via my Mac to the PDA. Does such a beast exist?

The setup guide has been revised (starting page 11) to show how to setup a Bluetooth GPS for OS X 10.4. The Rayming/USGlobalSat TN-206/BT-308 use a pass key of "2003". Other brands may have different pass keys..

http://www.gpsnavx.com/pdf/TN-206OSX.pdf