We're in the process of buying a small second-hand yacht and it doesn't have a fixed electronic chart plotter installed, so I'm doing some research to choose one. In the past, I've always got along with a hand-held Garmin eTrex with Bluechart maps loaded. Now, looking at far more expensive - and more complex - devices, I'm surprised to find how poor the level of PC integration supported is - even in comparison with my little eTrex.

I had expected to be able to find a combination which allows me to have a laptop on the chart-table in the cabin, connected by USB or similar to the GPS enabled chartplotter in the cockpit with the two working together. I should be able to plan routes on the laptop using the mouse and keyboard and, at the click of a button, upload them to the chartplotter - even the little eTrex supports that! The GPS should be sending real-time data back to the laptop so that I can monitor my course from the cabin and keep an electronic logbook on the PC.

But no manufacturer seems to offer this to any significant extent. The Garmin salesman at the boatshow pointed me to their Homeport product whcih will certainly permit route planning at the PC, but you then have to pull the memory card out of your chart plotter, plug it into the PC, dump your plotted route onto it, then plug it back into the chartplotter.

Raymarine come a bit closer - but at a very high price and, since unlike Garmin they do not sell the maps, you are still at the mercy of the cartography supplier for licencing on the PC. As far as I can see, the other suppliers such as Lowrance and Standard Horizon don't even have this level of integration.

So, does anybody have any suggestions? Am I missing something? It really shouldn't be that hard - even the basic plotters have NMEA interfaces and you do not have to pay very much to get a device with various forms of high speed connectivity - why can't they offer the missing PC component to complete the package down on the chart table?

Martin

Thanks Gordon, your experience is useful. I've been doing similar using a Garmin eTrex Vista Cx plus Mapsource and it works OK - I just wanted to move up to a larger screen, fixed chartplotter and was disappointed to find that the new plotters are far less well integrated with the PC than the little old hand-held GPSs were.

I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that this is part of a marketing ploy from Garmin. Their device unlocking system has been cracked and you can unlock any maps to any device, so they have effectively abandoned the PC as a interfacing medium to the current generation of chartplotter and are forcing us to switch to maps bought on SD cards. When you bought Bluechart on DVD, it came with the right to use it on one chart plotter and a PC. You needed the PC to load maps onto the plotter - now you just plug a card in and the PC is fading away.


Martin

Yes I am trying to resulve such issues. My boat came with a Garmin 128 GPS which had a USB "tail" Keyspan set up by the previous owner who used a MAC. I have a servicabel XP laptop onto which I have loaded SeaPro 3000 Lite but I can not get the 2 to talk. I just want my position on the charts. No Joy from Garmin or SeaPro

At the risk of looking wet behind the ears may I tentatively suggest you look at the possibility of using an iPad at the chart table as your plotter, or at least backup plotter. With Imray Chart Navigator and iNavX Apps + the iPad has it's own GPS or can be configured to interface with most of your external instruments it comes in at much less than dedicated gear. It can even be used as an autopilot I think. Why not check it out?

Regards

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