IPad with Android on board????

[CatNewBee]

I agree to all said. We use our tablet side by side with the onboard electronics, merely inside the vessel and approaching anchorages / the coast / harbors and marinas outside too.

Chart plotter break, my raymarine had a problem with the touch panel, and I have replaced it by a more recent model to be able to use the radar and all other seatalk / seatalk NG / n2k stuff on board plus I have a second B&G plotter with forward scan integrated into the system.

I would not rely only on the apps alone. I have openCPN on my laptop but do not use it, the UI and the charts are too complicated and cluttered / pixeled for my taste. Both raster charts and vector charts look ugly and the overlapping is awkward. I prefer the clean, seamless zoomable and easy to read Navionics charts.

OpenCPN raster charts are ok for planning ahead instead of paper chart stacks, but it is not what I would use at the helm (yet). The other 3rd party navigation apps have weaknesses with the chart material, some rely on internet connections, offline download is not always easy, the quality of the software is not very good yet. Even the apps from the professional players are quite limited in functionality.

The apps of mirroring and remote control of the plotters are also not yet 100% where they should be. They still require ad-hoc direct wifi connection between two single devices and the connection is not stable. If you connect the plotter to your router you cannot use the mirror app in the network.
This is not what I call integration. This applies to both Raymarine and B&G plotter I have, I guess Garmin and Simrad are not any different regarding their WiFi integration.

It may improve in the future, the processing power of the recent tablets is much better than the dedicated plotters, but the software is not yet there, where it should be.

I think in 5 to 10 years charts will be cheap and available in universal formats, google, microsoft and open source projects are providing meanwhile quite good online charts and this will hopefully break up the monopolies and will be avalable to more app developers.

[katoema]

Originally Posted by mjscottinnc

Sorry, but I think your view is out of date.

Alas, not sir! It is the lack of content of the material in Navionics as to why they should not be used for Navigation. Navionics will tell you that themselves. There are data that hydrographic departments' charts, when building up their countries' charts, which are missing from Navionics and also in C-Map.

They are great for pre-planning, in a recreational environment, then use the GPX file to load into your chart plotter or ENC.

My emphasis is on professional/commercial usage, not recreational. The OP had a specific topic and I have both a phone and tablet running on Android, albeit that I use licensed UKHO licensed charts that run into several thousands of GBP on them. That aside, it is obligatory to have appropriate scaled charts for the passage undertaken and that they are up to date.

[daletournier]

Originally Posted by katoema

Alas, not sir! It is the lack of content of the material in Navionics as to why they should not be used for Navigation. Navionics will tell you that themselves. There are data that hydrographic departments' charts, when building up their countries' charts, which are missing from Navionics and also in C-Map.

They are great for pre-planning, in a recreational environment, then use the GPX file to load into your chart plotter or ENC.

My emphasis is on professional/commercial usage, not recreational. The OP had a specific topic and I have both a phone and tablet running on Android, albeit that I use licensed UKHO licensed charts that run into several thousands of GBP on them. That aside, it is obligatory to have appropriate scaled charts for the passage undertaken and that they are up to date.

Many, many world cruisers know longer carry paper charts, I would guess very few are using them these days. Some like myself carry them due to fear but never look at them.

The world is changing.

[mikedefieslife]

Originally Posted by katoema

Alas, not sir! It is the lack of content of the material in Navionics as to why they should not be used for Navigation. Navionics will tell you that themselves. There are data that hydrographic departments' charts, when building up their countries' charts, which are missing from Navionics and also in C-Map.

They are great for pre-planning, in a recreational environment, then use the GPX file to load into your chart plotter or ENC.

My emphasis is on professional/commercial usage, not recreational. The OP had a specific topic and I have both a phone and tablet running on Android, albeit that I use licensed UKHO licensed charts that run into several thousands of GBP on them. That aside, it is obligatory to have appropriate scaled charts for the passage undertaken and that they are up to date.

But the charterplotter most likely has chars from similar sources, so the data claimed to be missing, is still going to be missed. Perhaps it's even missed on the paper charts too.

[mjscottinnc]

Originally Posted by katoema

Alas, not sir! It is the lack of content of the material in Navionics as to why they should not be used for Navigation. Navionics will tell you that themselves. There are data that hydrographic departments' charts, when building up their countries' charts, which are missing from Navionics and also in C-Map.

They are great for pre-planning, in a recreational environment, then use the GPX file to load into your chart plotter or ENC.

My emphasis is on professional/commercial usage, not recreational. The OP had a specific topic and I have both a phone and tablet running on Android, albeit that I use licensed UKHO licensed charts that run into several thousands of GBP on them. That aside, it is obligatory to have appropriate scaled charts for the passage undertaken and that they are up to date.

Now that's kind of funny, most of the commercial vessels I've been on provide greater protection for their electronics then recreational boater do, everything is typically in a protected wheelhouse.

I used two tablets in an open sailboat cockpit with only a Bimini, daily for 6 months, never had a failure of electronics or navigation. In every kind of weather you can imagine.

As has been said, the key is the charts. There are some Nav Apps which supply only basic functions and others which have all the bells and whistles. The beauty of Tablet navigation is that you can pick the best App and accompanying charts for your needs, which may change as you travel from place to place. That is something that is not easily done with a dedicated Chart Plotter.

As I said I used iSailor and accompanying charts for the Bahamas, and Garmin Bluechart and Navtronics for US coastal and offshore waters. Mostly based on chart quality.

The other part of this is personal preference, in the case of dedicated Chart Plotters you have little input about how it will interact with you or how it will present the charts, some engineer has made that decision for you. Whereas Apps can change quickly, adjust and adapt to users needs, and under the best of conditions becomes more intuitive.

Just one man's opinion.

[p435]

"iPad with Android"

sounds to me as a contradiction because I cannot imagine that the (Operating System) OS Android, runs on iPad which is designed for iOS.



The only 3rd party OS I know running on Android tablets is Linux. There are tablets available which can run Linux, but I don't know details. I assume that non of the Android develop maritime apps will not run on Linux but only on Android.

The same should be valid for all iOS developed apps.

[ranger58sb]

Originally Posted by p435

"iPad with Android"

sounds to me as a contradiction because I cannot imagine that the (Operating System) OS Android, runs on iPad which is designed for iOS.

I think OP is just asking whether there's utility in carrying an actual physical iPad along with his various existing Android and Windows platforms.

-Chris

[fieldmedik]

We have an IPAD, Galaxy Tab2 (android) tablet, and a Windows laptop. The laptop is necessary for somethings but the droid gets the most use
The IPAD is a pain because it doesn't "speak" the same language. At least Windows and droid and talk to each other.

[CatNewBee]

I would chose one system and stick to it.

It is like religion, you make a decision and stick to it, you not worship all of them, just to be safe.

You can usually use a purchased app on different devices, but not across on different platforms.

If you have Android and are happy with it, stay on that OS. Otherwise you have to learn a total different system with different Apps for the same tasks and double the costs.

[damianham]

Here is my perspective as an app developer. I develop an app that displays instrumentation data from onboard sensors, wind gauge, anchor alarm etc. I develop and test primarily on the Android platform. I publish my app which is free on Google play store. It costs me nothing more than my time to develop the app.

I previously paid for an IOS developer subscription so I could give IOS users my free app. I came to think why should I pay Apple a fee every year so I can give an app away for free ? The Android platform does not charge developers a fee in order to publish their apps. Granted the IOS developer subscription isn't a great deal of money but it sticks in the throat none the less.

I am also developing an embedded software system for connecting up onboard devices to a Raspberry Pi and doing all kinds of fancy stuff with the data including an AIS display with collision risk assessment, performance analysis and a simple chart plotter - details at Smart Boat Network. This system is where I eventually hope to make some money from the development.

When I am in a position to make some money from my endevours I will again pay for an IOS subscription but until that time all new updates for the free app will be available for Android only. I respond to emails from users and try to add the functionality they ask for. IOS users won't get any new updates for quite a while yet.

For my own navigation I use multiple Android devices with navionics. With one navionics subscription I can use the charts on all my Android devices. It works absolutely fine for me but possible problems I forsee are using the GPS on the device rather than the (more reliable) ships GPS and not using the ships compass, hence the development of my embedded system with a navigation feature which uses the ships sensors. Finally, one of my android devices is a Huawei phablet (well just a very big phone really which was $75 USD new. With Android you just can't beat the prices so why bother with iPad ? If all your other devices are Android I don't think it makes any sense to buy an iPad. They cost a lot more, they aren't really any better than android devices and there is only 1 button!!!!

[p435]

@damianham


It is hard to believe that Apple charges developer fees for an FOC app. Well on the other side it is Apple and Apple always cost more money simply because it is Apple and not because it is better.


I am glad I use Android on my mobile phone and my next tablet and on my PC only Linux Mint.


But as someone wrote before it is religion...