coordinating the notebook with the plotter

[George Kornreich]

I have an autohelm gps/plotter/autopilot, running cmap/nt modules and a notebook running CD ROMS with The Capn software. Massive duplication of charts and costly to boot. Is there some way to get it to work together? Nautical Technologies tells me that Raytheon wont share the needed code, and Raytheon now has their own software that does it all but won't give a competative upgrade price. Also, is there some way to upload a route or at least its waypoints created on The Capn to the Autohelm Plotter? Thanks

 

[bill walton]

Raytech Navigator

George,Just my $.02 but I've been experimenting with Raytheon's software, now at version 2.01, since this spring. To tell you the truth, I'm not excited enough to change fulltime from Chartview Pro. Although it has improved dramatically since ver.1.0, it's still too slow and quirky when designing a new route. Also, unless one has the perfect graphics adapter in his computer, you have to turn the hardware acceleration off for graphics which slows the system down some more. I've never used the Capn but there's no quilting of charts together like CV Pro, panning from one chart to another is clumsy. When the second chart is opened. it opens at a different scale and location than the one you moved from. The integration of instruments is nice but it just shares the route and waypoint with the chartplotter not the whole chart, in either direction. The interface to be able to uplload these data points is via the seatalk converter not the high-speed bus. The HSB is what allows some of the new CPs and Radars to share CMAP data not CDROM data. I watch their web site for enhancements as I purchased the software at the v 1 level and have had all the upgrades at no charge, but it has a ways to go to be equal to some of the others on the market.

 

[Amos Cordova]

Autopilot

See reply to Peter Milne regarding autopilot interface.The Capn. software allows upload of route information only.As long as the Autohelm 4000 has a NMEA 0183 input, you can send route information to it.At this point there is no way to not duplicate the chart formats you own as each set of hardware uses a seperate chart format.RayTech navigator allows you to use the C-Map NT format with the purchase of a C-Map card reader.This allows the C-Map NT cards to work with the computer and RayTech software, also with the optional SEATALK/NMEA interface box for interfacing with other Raytheon devices.Amos

 

[George Kornreich]

Thanks, Amos,

I have the Raytheor NMEA/SEATALK interface box feeding NMEA data to my laptop so that the time of day and date, which apparantly are not available as seatalk sentences, and which the capn requires for tracking, are available. Will this interface do the job of passing the NMEA route information the other way, as you mentioned, from the laptop to the autohelm plotter. Wired as it it, waypoints set on the laptop (The Capn) do not appear on the autohelm plotter. What am I not doing right? Thanks again.George

 

[bill walton]

waypoints

George,Chartview on my PC will display the next waypoint in a route on my Raytheon 520 CP. When I reach a WP, the next WP will be displayed. The entire route is not uploaded to the CP. The PC is connected via direct NMEA interface from the serial port on the PC to the NMEA in and NMEA out terminals on the AP computer using an optoisolated cable from the CAPN people. This weekend, I will get a list of the NMEA sentances being sent to the AP and email to you.I have the seatalk to serial converter box that works with raytech navigator but this is not needed for the situation above. When I run Nav., it will transfer the entire route and all WPs to the 520. but as I said earlier, I find it too unstable and unwieldy.

 

[Amos Cordova]

The Capn and Raytheon/Autohelm

George,The Capn. Family of products, First Mate and Voyager, will upload routesonly.The Capn can upload a route to your GPS and has native support for Garmin,Magellan, NorthStar 941/951 and Furuno GP30 / 80. Capn also generates aNMEA Waypoint Text File for those GPSs not covered.Try exporting the routes as a NMEA text file.