Nautical use of the new Apple iPad

[baz]

Bruce:

Looking forward to the Active Captain enhancements. I wonder if we can get to look at that "page of ideas".

I was on my boat today and started using the iPad / Charts&Tides for laying in and saving waypoints and checking/validating the tide info for my location at the Edmonds Marina.

 

[JamesTXSD]

Interesting survey results about the iPad.

Only 2% were either "somewhat or very unsatisfied". While 74% were "very satisfied".

http://www.investorplace.com/expert...ey-aapl-stock-demand-amzn-kindle-amazon.html#

Bunch of Kool-aid drinkers... 🙂

The iPad is currently outselling the regular Mac line of computers, nearly 2 to 1. Pretty impressive.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/05/21/ipad ... l?hpt=Sbin

Seems to me that the iPad with the Navionics app and charts will make an ideal back-up/co-pilot plotter. Joan was considering one of the eReaders, but this seems to do all that and more. I've only played with one at Best Buy... maybe they didn't have the native iPad apps loaded; when increasing the size of most of the apps, the display didn't appear as crisp (2x vs 1x). Has Navionics released an iPad native app yet?

Best wishes,
Jim B.

 

[baz]

The Charts & Tides is iPad native and is full screen. It's glorious...

 

[Bruce Moore]

There are many apps with names similar enough to cause confusion. Navionics makes a nice app on the iPhone, and they have recently released a series of Navionics HD apps written for the iPad. Charts & Tides, the subject of this thread, is made by Navimatics, and is also native for the iPad.

iPhone apps will run on the iPad, and you can "pixel-double" them to use the full screen. But, they don't really utilize the capabilities of the iPad display. The Navionics and Navimatics iPad apps are the same price. I used the former on my iPhone, but have installed the latter on our iPad, largely because of the Active Captain data integration.

 

[ActiveCaptain]

Looking forward to the Active Captain enhancements. I wonder if we can get to look at that "page of ideas".

You tug nuts are lighting up my Google alerts with all this talk about ActiveCaptain and iPads and all the good stuff! Thanks for discussing it. I can definitely tell you what's coming next...

I'm working on a new Captains card. The idea of it is to keep track of more information about a captain - info about their boat, location, etc. Through that card you'll be able to see all the reviews a captain has written. So if you see an anchorage that a captain was at, you'll be able to see other anchorages he was at too. There are some people onboard with incredible experience and seeing the places they like to go can be a lot of help. Many people ask for this. Obviously, you don't have to fill in all of the special info - it's all optional.

There will also be a way to send a message to a captain. The receiving captain will have to allow it and it's off by default. If they'll allow others to contact them, a captain can send a message to another captain on their captain card. The server sends out the email so no email addresses are passed between each person although each captain can write their email address if they want to go around the whole system in future messages. The whole point of this is to give people the ability to ask a question of a captain especially with regard to a review that they wrote, or to ask more questions about a particular anchorage, hazard, or marina.

Following that will be a new Routes card. The Routes and Captains cards go together. Basically, each captain will be able to upload their routes from a variety of software programs and have them stored and shared on ActiveCaptain. We'll provide mechanisms for moving those routes from-and-to other software as well as importing/exporting them to chartplotters. You'll be able to copy another captain's route, change it on the web site, and distribute it to all your devices. Software from our partners will make it especially easy to import routes since they are already synchronizing with our web site.

Today there is no real common way to freely share and archive routes. Every time each of us goes from one port to another, we start from scratch and create each waypoint. This should help make that process easier and safer by having tested routes that others have used and commented on.

There are some really interesting things possible once we have those capabilities. Tying routes and markers can provide some added capabilities that have never been possible before. Things like automatic bridge timing calculations, mid-route tide assistance, and even automatic hazard warning indications (plus fuel deals enroute, slip specials, and on and on).

So that's what I'm doing this Summer!

 

[baz]

ActiveCaptain: Thanks much for responding here. If one wants to make suggestions and feedback to you is there a conduit for doing this ?

 

[ActiveCaptain]

ActiveCaptain: Thanks much for responding here. If one wants to make suggestions and feedback to you is there a conduit for doing this ?

Absolutely - I'm wired into this thread.

And for what it's worth, my wife and I took out an R25 in NH a couple of years ago - loved it. We talk about it as our next boat when we want to trailer a boat to head to places we can't get to now. I'm very familiar with it and the rest of the C-Dory line - even read River-Horse!

 

[Bruce Moore]

Welcome to Tugnuts Active Captain - let's get more Tugnuts contributing to the local knowledge you do such a fine job a delivering.

 

[ActiveCaptain]

Welcome to Tugnuts Active Captain - let's get more Tugnuts contributing to the local knowledge you do such a fine job a delivering.

You know, it's funny. A writer was just interviewing me and asked, "how did you get all of that data onto your site?" I told him that I had nothing to do with it. We just created some tools and let them loose. The data all came from everyone else!

It's been a great joy to watch develop. And we've met hundreds of wonderful people along the way - hailing us on the VHF, knocking on our hull, and emails - about 50 a day and 200 after a newsletter is released.

 

[baz]

One of the first things I found I needed to be included with the ActiveCaptain enhanced info was a legend placed on the chart display (a corner of the chart would be suitable IMO) that gave the meanings of the orange, green, blue and red markers. Without the legend or a cheat sheet I find I get confused and end up tapping far too much. I'm sure my wife will get confused & frustrated as well.

Also, I find that tapping on say an orange marker (Hazard) or any other marker for that matter, that I will get a typical "Features" panel or a "Waypoint" panel rather than the "Features" panel with the "Hazard (ActiveCaptain)" list item presented. It takes several finger tap attempts to get the ActiveCaptain data or worse still, a Waypoint brownish circle appears on the display which then has to be removed/deleted with more unwanted finger tapping activity being required.

I'm sure with time and use things will get easier with less finger tapping being required to undo mistakes -- however, these early experiences tend to be annoying for the user. The early experiences need to be as positive as possible.

 

[Bruce Moore]

ActiveCaptain wrote

You know, it's funny. A writer was just interviewing me and asked, "how did you get all of that data onto your site?" I told him that I had nothing to do with it. We just created some tools and let them loose. The data all came from everyone else!

I used to work at Amazon.com. Jeff Bezos constantly reminded us of the value of OPW - other people's work. Imagine Amazon.com without all those reviews to provide decision support, and all those lists which help drive the recommendation engine...

Just provide the tools, yes, but in a meaningful and contextual way. Nice job.

 

[baz]

There are many apps with names similar enough to cause confusion. Navionics makes a nice app on the iPhone, and they have recently released a series of Navionics HD apps written for the iPad. Charts & Tides, the subject of this thread, is made by Navimatics, and is also native for the iPad.

...snip...

Hey Bruce: I find turning off "Track Vessel" doesn't stop the vessel tacking feature. My local area is filling up with a crazy mess of dotted lines as I travel about with my iPad -- from home to office, office to home and every where else I travel about. Is there a icon or setting that I can use to erase all the dotted lines ?

I know if I remove/delete the Charts & Tides application from the iPad that will erase all of the data associated with Charts & Tides (including the vessel traking dotted lines) as well as all the ActiveCaptain downloaded data. 🙁 ...but that's a PITA and me taking a hammer to resolve the issue.

[EDIT]
Ok Bruce -- I found where to turn the tracking dotted lines off. It's in the "i" Information -> Settings Past Track -> Past Track Visible -> ON/OFF and all can be Cleared as well.

 

[baz]

According to my calculations the ActiveCaptain download consumes around 210 MB of storage space on the iPad. This is just under 50% of the size of the Charts & Tides application. :roll:

 

[ActiveCaptain]

One of the first things I found I needed...was...the meanings of the orange, green, blue and red markers.

Really good point. That's one of those things where I'm too close to it to notice. I'll talk to Bill (the author) about it.

Also, I find that tapping on say an orange marker...

There's a bug right now - it isn't you or the way you're tapping. There's an update in Apple right now awaiting approval. I had problems too and Bill suggested that we wait until we see how other people work with it. About 50% of people have problems with it. It turns out that the "hotspot" is at the lower left corner where the pointy thing is. But normal people (like us) tap on the center of the symbol. Well doing that automatically makes you start a good 20 pixels off. The window is only 32 pixels right now so a little mis-aiming and you miss the marker. Until the update, think about aiming for that pointy thing. I've noticed my hit rate goes way up by doing that.

The new update puts the "hotspot" at the center of the symbol and opens it up to 40 pixels. That should correct most of those issues.

When you find things like that, absolutely, positively mention them to me or Bill in public or private. This was clearly a bug that needed to be experienced by multiple people before Bill had enough knowledge to go back and figure out what was happening.

You'll see the update pop up in the next few days. It won't require re-loading the ActiveCaptain data.

 

[baz]

Thanks for that "hotspot" tip -- never really noticed that "pointy thing" -- but now it's really visible in the bottom left corner. It makes a HUGE difference and now I find my 'hit' rate is close to 100% by tapping in that "pointy thing" area. 😀 THANK YOU.

 

[ActiveCaptain]

According to my calculations the ActiveCaptain download consumes around 210 MB of storage space on the iPad. This is just under 50% of the size of the Charts & Tides application.

One interesting thing is that the entire world of data from ActiveCaptain is currently downloaded. We had a lot of debate about that. The API I wrote for synchronization on the server does allow for regional updates but we decided to leave everything in - so all of the Croatian marinas are in there (we do a killer job in Croatia for some reason). So if you have the east coast, you can pan up to Nova Scotia and see all of the markers on the base map there. Same for BC on the west coast. Actually, you can pan to either coast no matter what you have and see all of the markers - it's a pain to pan across the US though.

I've suggested that a much higher resolution basemap be used (and I provided the data to Bill to look into). If that were included, you might miss out on having the real nautical charts for those areas, but you'd have all of the POI data for everywhere along all coasts (Europe too). I'd also like to see the ability to add chart data to the app instead of different apps. There's a lot being thought about for all of this and Bill is quite interested in expanding it. He's a fabulous ex-Microsoft developer.

I forgot to mention something else in my previous post about the coming update. The new version also changes the icons for tide, current, and weather stations. I don't think anyone can notice them today - they're there! The new symbols really make them stand out. Most people don't even know that the NDBC weather buoys are all included for each region - tapping on them gives a live weather report from the buoy. Things like that are really practical for use on a boat.

 

[ActiveCaptain]

Thanks for that "hotspot" tip -- never really noticed that "pointy thing" -- but now it's really visible in the bottom left corner. It makes a HUGE difference and now I find my 'hit' rate is close to 100% by tapping in that "pointy thing" area. 😀 THANK YOU.

Just remember to switch back to the center when the new update comes out or else you'll be missing again!

 

[baz]

Here's another suggestion. When you provide a URL in the panel that opens up after tapping the 'Chevron' symbol it would be very convenient if this was immediately tappable to launch Safari and display the web site. I was hoping I could copy-paste this but alas that was also not possible.

The same suggestion holds for an Email address -- allow a finger tap on it to launch Mail and display an Email note for user to enter some test and send/mail it off.

BTW -- do you spell check the Reviews "Rev(#)" ? I found several spelling errors -- no big deal -- just curious.

 

[ActiveCaptain]

Here's another suggestion. When you provide a URL in the panel that opens up after tapping the 'Chevron' symbol it would be very convenient if this was immediately tappable to launch Safari and display the web site. I was hoping I could copy-paste this but alas that was also not possible.

You're right - Bill ran out of time and wanted to get it out. I wouldn't let him release it until the phone number was tappable to dial - that just HAD to be in there (it wasn't for a while). The URL didn't make it. It's a known issue.

 

[baz]

Here's another suggestion. When you provide a URL in the panel that opens up after tapping the 'Chevron' symbol it would be very convenient if this was immediately tappable to launch Safari and display the web site. I was hoping I could copy-paste this but alas that was also not possible.

You're right - Bill ran out of time and wanted to get it out. I wouldn't let him release it until the phone number was tappable to dial - that just HAD to be in there (it wasn't for a while). The URL didn't make it. It's a known issue.

...but my iPad doesn't have a phone feature -- at least I've not found it yet. :lol: