August 6, 2010 13:37
I was sailing for two weeks this summer (from the Bay of Lübeck via Kiel Canal, Helgoland and IJsselmmer to London) and would like to post my experiences with GPSNavX and iNavx and my Hardware. At that time I was still running iPhone OS 3.x on the iPhone and the current version of iNavX in the second half of June. So some aspects I am going to raise here might be obsolete now with current versions of iOS and iNavX.
First my hardware setup:
On the yacht I normally sail there is (amongst other essential equipment) a Furuno GPS.
In addition I brought:
- Comar AIS multi
- PowerBook G4 (400 MHz)
- iPhone 3GS
- iPad 3G+WiFi
- Huawei E5 3G-wireless router
- Garmin Geko 301 for reliable track logging
The AIS receiver was connected to the radio antenna (it has an antenna splitter built in). As it also has a NMEA multiplexer I connected the NMEA out from the Furuno to the NMEA in of the AIS receiver. The AIS receiver has two NMEA outputs: USB and serial.
The PowerBook is admittedly very old but currently the only laptop I could spare. Next year I will get a new MacBook or iMac for work and then I can use my current MacBook Pro for sailing. But this switch will also cause more expenses: I will need a new 12-V-power supply (MagSave) and new charts and probably an upgrade from GPSNavX to MacENC. Not an option this year. :-(
As GPSNavX cannot serve NMEA data via TCP/IP I would be stuck with my PowerBook and not be able to use iNavX as an TCP/IP client. Fortunately I was told that the Miniplex configuration tool has a TCP/IP server built in. This is where the second output of the AIS multi comes in: I needed two input ports: one for GPSNavX and the other one for the Miniplex configurator. (I could not find a way to split one physical port into two virtual ports nor did I succeed in setting up a virtual null-modem)
So I was happy that I could connect the serial output via an USB-2-serial adapter to the PowerBook as well.
I set up the Huawei as router for my mobile WiFi network. Providing 3G internet access to all three devices.
GPSNavX is a very proven product for me (I have been using it for years, only AIS was new this time). It just worked even on this old machine. The only thing I found irritating first was the AIS window taking a lot of screen real estate. I missed a simple way to hide that window. But later I just dragged it right to the bottom of the screen so only the title bar was visible. ;-)
The only thing that was unacceptable for me was that it took literally several hours to download a few hundred track points from the Garmin. But I attribute this to the 400 MHz of my PowerBook as I do not have this problem on my MacBook Pro at home.
BTW: does anyone know another tool to download tracks from a Garmin Geko? GPSBabel does not seem to work nor does the software provided by Garmin. (I often use the Geko for tracking my travel and for geotagging my photographs.
iNavX on the iPhone has evolved. I already used it last year on the iPhone with the NV-charts on the Baltic Sea. I found it quite useful at that time. As I used it standalone I had some minor issues with finding the current position after the iPhone being locked. So this year I wanted to use it via TCP/IP.
Setting up the TCP/IP client mode was no problem at all. The position was there as well as the AIS targets. But I noticed the following unpleasant things:
- while maneuvering narrow channels or port entrances I noticed that there was a lag between our current position and the position displayed on the chart. Basically on the chart I could see where we had been almost a minute ago. This can be confusing. :-) First I thought it was due to the slow PowerBook but later I compared the reading of the Furuno's display to the instruments view on the iPhone. The lag was less than a second. So I figure the Furuno displays an "old" position (probably resulting from calculating a mean position to improve accuracy).
- When the iPhone is locked it loses the WiFi connection. Upon unlocking it, it takes some seconds until WiFi is reconnected again. This time is enough for iNavX to lose connection to the TCP/IP server. It used to be complicated to reconnect as one had to go back to the settings panel. Sometimes it even would not let me toggle the switch back to on. Then I had to leave iNavX and restart it. In the middle of my tour there was an update which allowed to access the switch from the instrument view. This made it a little easier to reconnect. But it is still annoying.
iNavX on the iPad is a completely different story. If I did not know better I would think it were two different applications. (I thank the developers that this is not the case, though! ;-) ) iNavX on the iPad makes iNavX on the iPhone look like a toy. (sorry!).
If one looks at the pricing of the Navionics charts, for Mac and for iPad it is a real bargain. What can a Mac/PC do which an iPad running iNavX cannot?
Now I would like to comment on iNavX in general:
1. I really like how it is continuously improving
2. It would be great if there was a way to transfer waypoints, routes and tracks directly to/from a mac without x-traverse. It can be hard to connect to the internet when one is too far away from the coast.
3. a bug: I noticed that when navigating to a waypoint and then the screen is locked, navigation is off when unlocking. iNavX seems to forget that it was navigating to a waypoint
4. suggestions:
- I would like to see the estimated time of arrival (ETA) in instruments view
- It would be great if I could import a track into iNavX (I only have the North Sea charts on the iPad and would like to check how far or close we really passed the TSS ;-) )
- as being used to metric units I would not mind the option to have AIS target dimensions displayed in metres. ;-)
- AIS information: Is it possible to display more information of AIS targets (like draught, rate of turn...)
- AIS: would it be possible to store the AIS database when leaving iNavX? So that upon relaunch the last data is still available and then updated when new messages come in? Otherwise it might take some time until the data is complete again.
I am looking forward to my next trip in a few weeks - this time we will stay on the Baltic Sea, though...
Thank you for reading this quite elaborate post!
First my hardware setup:
On the yacht I normally sail there is (amongst other essential equipment) a Furuno GPS.
In addition I brought:
- Comar AIS multi
- PowerBook G4 (400 MHz)
- iPhone 3GS
- iPad 3G+WiFi
- Huawei E5 3G-wireless router
- Garmin Geko 301 for reliable track logging
The AIS receiver was connected to the radio antenna (it has an antenna splitter built in). As it also has a NMEA multiplexer I connected the NMEA out from the Furuno to the NMEA in of the AIS receiver. The AIS receiver has two NMEA outputs: USB and serial.
The PowerBook is admittedly very old but currently the only laptop I could spare. Next year I will get a new MacBook or iMac for work and then I can use my current MacBook Pro for sailing. But this switch will also cause more expenses: I will need a new 12-V-power supply (MagSave) and new charts and probably an upgrade from GPSNavX to MacENC. Not an option this year. :-(
As GPSNavX cannot serve NMEA data via TCP/IP I would be stuck with my PowerBook and not be able to use iNavX as an TCP/IP client. Fortunately I was told that the Miniplex configuration tool has a TCP/IP server built in. This is where the second output of the AIS multi comes in: I needed two input ports: one for GPSNavX and the other one for the Miniplex configurator. (I could not find a way to split one physical port into two virtual ports nor did I succeed in setting up a virtual null-modem)
So I was happy that I could connect the serial output via an USB-2-serial adapter to the PowerBook as well.
I set up the Huawei as router for my mobile WiFi network. Providing 3G internet access to all three devices.
GPSNavX is a very proven product for me (I have been using it for years, only AIS was new this time). It just worked even on this old machine. The only thing I found irritating first was the AIS window taking a lot of screen real estate. I missed a simple way to hide that window. But later I just dragged it right to the bottom of the screen so only the title bar was visible. ;-)
The only thing that was unacceptable for me was that it took literally several hours to download a few hundred track points from the Garmin. But I attribute this to the 400 MHz of my PowerBook as I do not have this problem on my MacBook Pro at home.
BTW: does anyone know another tool to download tracks from a Garmin Geko? GPSBabel does not seem to work nor does the software provided by Garmin. (I often use the Geko for tracking my travel and for geotagging my photographs.
iNavX on the iPhone has evolved. I already used it last year on the iPhone with the NV-charts on the Baltic Sea. I found it quite useful at that time. As I used it standalone I had some minor issues with finding the current position after the iPhone being locked. So this year I wanted to use it via TCP/IP.
Setting up the TCP/IP client mode was no problem at all. The position was there as well as the AIS targets. But I noticed the following unpleasant things:
- while maneuvering narrow channels or port entrances I noticed that there was a lag between our current position and the position displayed on the chart. Basically on the chart I could see where we had been almost a minute ago. This can be confusing. :-) First I thought it was due to the slow PowerBook but later I compared the reading of the Furuno's display to the instruments view on the iPhone. The lag was less than a second. So I figure the Furuno displays an "old" position (probably resulting from calculating a mean position to improve accuracy).
- When the iPhone is locked it loses the WiFi connection. Upon unlocking it, it takes some seconds until WiFi is reconnected again. This time is enough for iNavX to lose connection to the TCP/IP server. It used to be complicated to reconnect as one had to go back to the settings panel. Sometimes it even would not let me toggle the switch back to on. Then I had to leave iNavX and restart it. In the middle of my tour there was an update which allowed to access the switch from the instrument view. This made it a little easier to reconnect. But it is still annoying.
iNavX on the iPad is a completely different story. If I did not know better I would think it were two different applications. (I thank the developers that this is not the case, though! ;-) ) iNavX on the iPad makes iNavX on the iPhone look like a toy. (sorry!).
If one looks at the pricing of the Navionics charts, for Mac and for iPad it is a real bargain. What can a Mac/PC do which an iPad running iNavX cannot?
Now I would like to comment on iNavX in general:
1. I really like how it is continuously improving
2. It would be great if there was a way to transfer waypoints, routes and tracks directly to/from a mac without x-traverse. It can be hard to connect to the internet when one is too far away from the coast.
3. a bug: I noticed that when navigating to a waypoint and then the screen is locked, navigation is off when unlocking. iNavX seems to forget that it was navigating to a waypoint
4. suggestions:
- I would like to see the estimated time of arrival (ETA) in instruments view
- It would be great if I could import a track into iNavX (I only have the North Sea charts on the iPad and would like to check how far or close we really passed the TSS ;-) )
- as being used to metric units I would not mind the option to have AIS target dimensions displayed in metres. ;-)
- AIS information: Is it possible to display more information of AIS targets (like draught, rate of turn...)
- AIS: would it be possible to store the AIS database when leaving iNavX? So that upon relaunch the last data is still available and then updated when new messages come in? Otherwise it might take some time until the data is complete again.
I am looking forward to my next trip in a few weeks - this time we will stay on the Baltic Sea, though...
Thank you for reading this quite elaborate post!