A few days ago I asked people for help on electronic charts. I have found out quite a bit. Some of you may know this but I can see a lot more of us don't. Here is what I've found... so far. Get on www.fugawi.com/viewenc/viewenc.html This will get you to a Fugawi demo that will read free NOAA enc charts. You can download this demo and with it load three NOAA charts at a time and try out this program. The full version will let you download more than three charts at a time. You can also customize the NOAA charts with full version of this program to do many things. For instance color the contours on the chart so that depths that are too shallow for the draft on you boat are a different color. Select depth shown on the charts to read in feet or meters and a bunch of other stuff. Now to get NOAA charts free go to http://nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/mcd/enc/index.htm at the top of the page click on "Download NOAA ENC@s" Scroll down the next page to where it says "Proceed to NOAA enc downloads" click on it. You will now see a list of about 500 charts. check the ones you want to download then at the top of the page click on "Download selected NOAA encs" You can save in a you computer, zip file or on a CD. These are NOAA charts Suitable for navigation and are completely free. All you need is the Fugawi program to use them $200.00. I have someone who is going to try and get these charts downloaded on a Garmin chip so I can put them on my GPS without the need of a laptop on the boat. Two dealers tell me its possible but difficult to do. This local computer whiz is right now trying to locate the chip used by Garmin. If anybody can help me on this please do. If you need help let me know.
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Stu Jackson C34 1986 #224
Fugawi
Richard, Great info and thanks for the input. FYI there was a rash of fugawi earlier. The link's to the search. Some fun stories in these posts. Stu
Richard, Great info and thanks for the input. FYI there was a rash of fugawi earlier. The link's to the search. Some fun stories in these posts. Stu
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Steve Christensen
You can purchase blank Garmin cards
Very interesting. As for the chips or cards that Garmin uses, you can purchase blank ones at West Marine or any Marine outlet store. The part of this that I am skeptical about is that I thought the NOAA charts were raster scans, while Garmin uses vector charts. If this is so then getting the two to work together would seem to be like trying to load Mac softward on a PC. But please do keep up informed of your progress! Steve Christensen
Very interesting. As for the chips or cards that Garmin uses, you can purchase blank ones at West Marine or any Marine outlet store. The part of this that I am skeptical about is that I thought the NOAA charts were raster scans, while Garmin uses vector charts. If this is so then getting the two to work together would seem to be like trying to load Mac softward on a PC. But please do keep up informed of your progress! Steve Christensen
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Ward Niffenegger
NOAA not raster
The NOAA charts are vector charts. Actually, they are not charts at all, but merely databases that computer software can interpret and create a chart. That it the purpose of the viewer or chart navigation software. If you look in the archives, you will find a great deal of discussion on this topic. That said, I am glad it keeps surfacing because this IS the future of charts. It only makes sense that keeping a dynamic database will be much cheaper to maintain by NOAA than to continuely reproduce charts.
The NOAA charts are vector charts. Actually, they are not charts at all, but merely databases that computer software can interpret and create a chart. That it the purpose of the viewer or chart navigation software. If you look in the archives, you will find a great deal of discussion on this topic. That said, I am glad it keeps surfacing because this IS the future of charts. It only makes sense that keeping a dynamic database will be much cheaper to maintain by NOAA than to continuely reproduce charts.
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Richard Marble
Steve, I talked to Garmin and they said
that Garmin makes their charts from the same NOAA charts that we can get free. He said that Garmin digitizes them. He said that I could not put NOAA charts into a chip and have my Garmin read them. (But that’s what they are doing) I talked to the guy I’ve got working on this and he is looking into what language a Garmin GPS uses. He says that if you can buy a CD from Garmin and then down load it to your GPS then something is reading and something is recording and that’s a language. Anyway its a little beyond me but I’ll keep you informed.
that Garmin makes their charts from the same NOAA charts that we can get free. He said that Garmin digitizes them. He said that I could not put NOAA charts into a chip and have my Garmin read them. (But that’s what they are doing) I talked to the guy I’ve got working on this and he is looking into what language a Garmin GPS uses. He says that if you can buy a CD from Garmin and then down load it to your GPS then something is reading and something is recording and that’s a language. Anyway its a little beyond me but I’ll keep you informed.
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Derek Rowell
Richard, you are wasting your time...
... please go back and read my comments on your previous thread. The ENC charts ARE NOT used by Garmin, the old NOAA raster formats are. That's because the ENC charts are still being developed and new ones are being released weekly. They still do not have Narragansett Bay for example - so how could Garmin possibly use them? The Garmin charts were around before the ENC releases were really underway. I have looked at the structure of ENC charts and the data compression used in the Maptech charts. Believe me when I say that conversion is not a simple process - and even impossible when you don't know the format/compression used by Garmin - and believe me: they ain't about to tell you! You say you have somebody looking at "the language" Garmin uses. It's not a language that in question - its the data format on the chip. That's a closely held secret by the company. The data is probably encrypted so that it becomes extremely difficult for anyone to decode. I speak from some experience on this, having developed charting software myself. It is an incredibly tedious business to scan a raster chart and then convert the coastline etc to a vector format. You will not be able to do it automatically unless you invest man-years of effort in image analysis software. I have played with many of the ENC viewers - including Fugawi. I have been toying with is the idea of getting a bunch of people together and starting a project to develop a public-domain "open source" charting package - similar in concept to the Linux development - where many people could contribute to the package. It's a BIG project... I have no desire to rain on your parade, but what you propose simply isn't going to work. As I said before: pay your money and go enjoy your boat ;D Derek
... please go back and read my comments on your previous thread. The ENC charts ARE NOT used by Garmin, the old NOAA raster formats are. That's because the ENC charts are still being developed and new ones are being released weekly. They still do not have Narragansett Bay for example - so how could Garmin possibly use them? The Garmin charts were around before the ENC releases were really underway. I have looked at the structure of ENC charts and the data compression used in the Maptech charts. Believe me when I say that conversion is not a simple process - and even impossible when you don't know the format/compression used by Garmin - and believe me: they ain't about to tell you! You say you have somebody looking at "the language" Garmin uses. It's not a language that in question - its the data format on the chip. That's a closely held secret by the company. The data is probably encrypted so that it becomes extremely difficult for anyone to decode. I speak from some experience on this, having developed charting software myself. It is an incredibly tedious business to scan a raster chart and then convert the coastline etc to a vector format. You will not be able to do it automatically unless you invest man-years of effort in image analysis software. I have played with many of the ENC viewers - including Fugawi. I have been toying with is the idea of getting a bunch of people together and starting a project to develop a public-domain "open source" charting package - similar in concept to the Linux development - where many people could contribute to the package. It's a BIG project... I have no desire to rain on your parade, but what you propose simply isn't going to work. As I said before: pay your money and go enjoy your boat ;D Derek
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Jose Venegas
I heard that Garmin
actually buys the digitized charts from the same outfit that makes most digitized charts and then Garmin sells them as their own. It kind of makes sense since the cost of digitizing thousands of charts throughout the world would be immense. The trick is that they introduced on the code lines that are read by their PC software and by the chart plotter before the charts can downloaded from the CD. That allows them to sell one CD that includes all charts but give access to selected charts by region by providing numeric keys for each of a maximum of two chart plotters per Software. I am not sure that code can be easily figured out but if you do, please let us know.
actually buys the digitized charts from the same outfit that makes most digitized charts and then Garmin sells them as their own. It kind of makes sense since the cost of digitizing thousands of charts throughout the world would be immense. The trick is that they introduced on the code lines that are read by their PC software and by the chart plotter before the charts can downloaded from the CD. That allows them to sell one CD that includes all charts but give access to selected charts by region by providing numeric keys for each of a maximum of two chart plotters per Software. I am not sure that code can be easily figured out but if you do, please let us know.
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Richard Marble
Derek, In all likelihood
You are probably right it sound like you’ve research this pretty well. So what your saying is everybody has two options right now. # 1 buy the chips, or #2 get a lap top and a program like Fugawi and NOAA’s ENC charts as they come on line. All I can say is at the price the GPS companies are selling chart data for whoever figures out a way to get free NOAA ENC charts to read on a GPS without all the hardware is going to make some bucks. That should be an incentive for someone to try
You are probably right it sound like you’ve research this pretty well. So what your saying is everybody has two options right now. # 1 buy the chips, or #2 get a lap top and a program like Fugawi and NOAA’s ENC charts as they come on line. All I can say is at the price the GPS companies are selling chart data for whoever figures out a way to get free NOAA ENC charts to read on a GPS without all the hardware is going to make some bucks. That should be an incentive for someone to try
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