Active Captain

[Irish Mist]

Has anyone connected their chart plotter to the new Garmin Active Captain app ? Just wondering if it shows all the Active Captain info as an overlay? I have the 5215 on the boat and wonder as well what success anyone has had adding WiFi to this unit. I will not be upgrading the electronics so that is not an option, but it would be nice to clutter up the screen with some additional information, if I could turn that information on or off as desired. I am hesitant to start messing with updates etc as I seem to remember problems posted in the past. In the end sticking with Active Captain on a separate device is for sure going to be the easiest, but thought I would throw this out there.

Thanks Team

 

[Kathy H]

The Garmin ActiveCaptain app notified me that the software on our 7012 needs to be updated before I could connect and download our charts. A Garmin representative had just updated our electronics at the September rendezvous. The notification also had instructions for updating and a link was emailed to me. I'm hesitant to update as well, but would like to try using ActiveCaptain.
http://www8.garmin.com/support/software/marine.html

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

 

[Admiral S]

I updated everything last week and it works great. Love not needing to pull out the SD card to do updates, the phone downloads and then transfers to the plotter to update. Works great, Garmin has already released a new update and used this method to upgrade. The other neat thing is Smart Notifications. You will have the option to see your phone notifications pop up on the plotter screen and read them.

 

[Irish Mist]

Sounds like it is working well. My biggest issue at this point is my GPS being older has no WiFi I know there is an add on I need to explore that more.
Thank you both.

 

[rackline]

Please share what you learn about setting up your 5215 with WiFi. I'm interested in doing the same thing but haven't started the research with other projects to tackle first. Thanks!

 

[knotflying]

If my memory is correct you had to buy a router from Garmin and then it was a matter of plug and play. You will need power and then hook into the NEMA backbone. The Garmin router was proprietary and not cheap, but there was a work around if you bought a standard wireless router. I am sure a call to Garmin tech support will help. I actually prefer to keep my ipad and chartplotter separate so I have redundancy.

 

[knotflying]

Just found this on the Garmin site. There is also a tab to open the manual. https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/129410