Radar on Laptop

[BananaToe]

I've seen threads on connecting almost every other sensor to a laptop but haven't found any data on connecting a radar?

Is it possible?

I can buy 3 or 4 laptops for the price of a chartplotter and of course having Dora the Explorer on board makes the double duty a nice perk.

Is there a translater box that will take a Garmin (18D) Radar signal and display it on my laptop?

Thanks all.

 

[jsalley]

The Coastal Explorer program (Rose Point Navigation) can accept a radar dome that they sell. Don't know if it works with Garmin, or if Rose Point offers a software patch. It's otherwise a great program.

 

[Roger Long]

Don't know if it works with Garmin,

Garmin's radars do all of the processing in the dome and send the image via a standard CAT 5 network cable that can be plugged into a computer. It must be possible then to intercept and display the data. I don't know if anyone has done so however. I'd be surprised if Garmin would release the necessary information for a programmer to easily create a program to make buying one of their chartplotters un-necessary but a clever hacker could probably do it.

 

[Bill Roosa]

hacking radar

Yes Martha, all the radar data is in a unique to the manufacturer format.
I'm not aware of any NMEA data items related to radar so you would be stuck with asking for assistance so you don't have to buy there products. good luck getting traction on that one.
If there is a "NMEA data out" port then it is pretty simple to decode that as the format is public. Just need to get one of those "free software" guys to gin up the code for you.

 

[Deadline]

It pays to procrastinate. I waited and waited to put a $2500 radar system on my H320, only to find it works great on my Droid smart phone. I bookmark a local TV station's weather radar.

 

[BananaToe]

Much obliged. I guess I need to keep feeding the sailing kitty awhile longer... Thanks all.