NOAA ENC (electronic charts) viewer?

[Peter]

I was following up on a conversation I had with a local sport fisherman and went on line ot look at the charts here:

http://marine.geogarage.com/routes
After the i-phone splash screen click on the chart image in the area you'd like to see to zoom in. In the box on the upper right there is a "full screen" button. Close the "not for navigation" warning box and hide the "press F11 for full screen" dialog box.

That got me curious and I went to NOAA to look into things further here:

http://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/staf ... spubs.html

You can see that they have a number of chart products available. Look at the links on the top left of the listings in blue:

Paper charts; Print on Demand (POD) charts; Raster Scan Charts (look like papaer charts); and ENC Charts (electronic navigation charts.)

the ENC charts require a viewer to display. So you'd thik they would provide one. Instead they provide a series of links to other suppliers of viewers most of which you have to purchase.

Questions: Has anyone used any of these products? Are there any freeware viewers that are sufficient for at home desk-top planning?

Here is an article I found that is interesting, but I don't know how old it is. There is a box on the page that was updated in 2006... so older than that for sure:

http://www.coastalsailing.net/Cruising/ ... harts.html

I did try the Fugawi link to their free viewer but it isn't compatible with Win7 on my laptop. I haven't tried it on my older XP desktop... maybe it would work there.

One last thing.... back on the previous link at the NOAA page, in the center column of the blue links, are links to historical charts. Some of them are pretty cool if you are into that sort of thing, but the file sizes can be very big.... too big for many simple photo programs to open. Still it is pretty nifty and if you find an image you like you can do a screen capture and get hard-copy via a program like MSPaint.

Peter

[Peter]

I suppose if none of the faithful use ENC's (electronic navigation charts) they are not main stream. Maybe that is why no operating system after XP is supported? i.e. not Vista or Win7.

I needed a new cell phone and wound up with the iPhone gen 4 which has a built in GPS.
Here is aninteresting app for the ipad and iphone to make it a chart plotter.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/inavx-ma ... 6280?mt=8#

The iPhone display is not bright enough to be used effectively on the bridge so it isn't going to replace a chart plotter.

Note that is says it can interface via NMEA. (WiFi and TCP/IP so you need stuff that also outputs wirelessly using that protocol I guess....)

This app is for the raster scan charts which are the ones that look like paper charts. So I am guessing that the ECS format is yesterday's news?

Peter

[mike ohlstein]

The iPhone display is not bright enough to be used effectively on the bridge so it isn't going to replace a chart plotter.

Not bright enough, not big enough, not suitable for marine use, etc.

[Sean B]

Not bright enough, not big enough, not suitable for marine use, etc.

Forgive the thread hijack, but I couldn't help pointing out that you also just described most of the people I run into on a daily basis

[PeterPalmieri]

I have an app on my iPad called seamap HD. It is great since you can download NOAA charts and zoom in and out for planning a trip.

It's a cool item to have in the cabin and while at work and stuff. I don't see anything for the iPad being used for navigation. And sunlight viewing is bad, just checking email in a lawn chair is poor.

[34Hatt]

Doug

I know of two one free one that's very reasonable.

The free one is Open CPN
http://opencpn.org

The other that is like $50 is polar navy which also interacts with Active Capt which is very handy. Used it for a trip in May then again in July and its very handy you have all sorts of info available to you that is not on Charts.

http://www.polarnavy.com/

So I have it on office machine, laptop and a machine on the boat it works well and the license is good for 5 machines.

Dan