We're planning a cruise next summer to the West Coast of Vancouver Island. As fog is frequent there during the summer, I'd like to add radar to my boat before we go and am begining to look at options. I already have a laptop on board that I interface with my chart reading software (First Mate by the Capn). I'm thinking it would be wonderful if I could feed the radar signals into the laptop for display and possibly integrate the them with the chart reading software and gps. Perhaps a tall order. The only thing I've seen that comes close to this is a product called RADARpc which is quite expensive and appears not to integrate with my chart reading software. Is anybody out there doing this? Any product recommendations? Thanks for your help. Gary Wyngarden S/V Shibumi H335
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Been There, Tried to Do That, Gave Up!
We tried to go down that road this fall, and gave up in a bit of frustration. We had this wonderful "Vision" of radar, GPS and PC, all intergated, radar overlay on the PC chart, screen at the helm, yadda, yadda. The cost is just too much! The digital radar is about twice regular radar with the same power and resolution. And what they call the "RadarPC" is, in our opinion, little better than expensive toy radar; you really need to go to the Inritsu unit to get good radar, and that was WAY up there. In addition, we think that we need to pay more for a software upgrade to get the radar-chart overlay capability. Then if you want the display screen at the helm (let's face it; anywhere else is little better than useless) you need to pay upwards of $3500 for a daylight viewable waterproof display screen. Sheesh!!! So we set aside the PC integration, and looked at integrated radar/chartplotters. Still expensive, and we weren't impressed with some of the chartplotting technology. We came close to this, but......then we looked at the new Garmin chartplotters with the new "Blue Chart" chips. We were VERY impressed with that; but no radar overlay. :>( So after a lot of looking and talking and getting frustrated, we have purchased just plain old radar (Furuno 1712) and we are seriously looking at a Garmin 176C GPS-chartplotter. So here we will be with separate radar and chartplotter screens that will both be at the helm, while our laptop PC for the present stays down at the nav station. "The Vision" of a PC at the center of a totally integrated system with display at the helm just costs WAY to much $$$ right now. So we have opted for an interim, but bearable cost, solution that will give us what we really need for our voyages, and we will see what "The Vision" costs a couple of years from now. Carl and Jule s/v 'Syzygy'
We tried to go down that road this fall, and gave up in a bit of frustration. We had this wonderful "Vision" of radar, GPS and PC, all intergated, radar overlay on the PC chart, screen at the helm, yadda, yadda. The cost is just too much! The digital radar is about twice regular radar with the same power and resolution. And what they call the "RadarPC" is, in our opinion, little better than expensive toy radar; you really need to go to the Inritsu unit to get good radar, and that was WAY up there. In addition, we think that we need to pay more for a software upgrade to get the radar-chart overlay capability. Then if you want the display screen at the helm (let's face it; anywhere else is little better than useless) you need to pay upwards of $3500 for a daylight viewable waterproof display screen. Sheesh!!! So we set aside the PC integration, and looked at integrated radar/chartplotters. Still expensive, and we weren't impressed with some of the chartplotting technology. We came close to this, but......then we looked at the new Garmin chartplotters with the new "Blue Chart" chips. We were VERY impressed with that; but no radar overlay. :>( So after a lot of looking and talking and getting frustrated, we have purchased just plain old radar (Furuno 1712) and we are seriously looking at a Garmin 176C GPS-chartplotter. So here we will be with separate radar and chartplotter screens that will both be at the helm, while our laptop PC for the present stays down at the nav station. "The Vision" of a PC at the center of a totally integrated system with display at the helm just costs WAY to much $$$ right now. So we have opted for an interim, but bearable cost, solution that will give us what we really need for our voyages, and we will see what "The Vision" costs a couple of years from now. Carl and Jule s/v 'Syzygy'
Radar/Chart Overlay
Gary; I am under the illusion that the radar, and chart plotter have to be of the same manufacturer. I have not heard of a radar display being output to a pc. The radar software, I thought, was only for learning to read a radar display, not for integrating the two signals. However I could be behind the times. I have seen land masses displayed on the radar screen that I could recognize on the charts, but this is not always the case. Radars will show the waypoint from the GPS, and this helps identify the land mass on the paper charts. I do not have a chart plotting system as yet. I just use a GPS, paper charts, and the radar when I can't see. Mike
Gary; I am under the illusion that the radar, and chart plotter have to be of the same manufacturer. I have not heard of a radar display being output to a pc. The radar software, I thought, was only for learning to read a radar display, not for integrating the two signals. However I could be behind the times. I have seen land masses displayed on the radar screen that I could recognize on the charts, but this is not always the case. Radars will show the waypoint from the GPS, and this helps identify the land mass on the paper charts. I do not have a chart plotting system as yet. I just use a GPS, paper charts, and the radar when I can't see. Mike
Raymarine
Gary, Maybe try Raymarine. I know they finally got into the PC interface within the past few years. I wouldn't be surprised if they are working on it! good luck, Mike D
Gary, Maybe try Raymarine. I know they finally got into the PC interface within the past few years. I wouldn't be surprised if they are working on it! good luck, Mike D
Few More Details
Gary and Others: A few more details on what we learned as we got frustrated. BTW, this all transpired at the Newport Boat Show. We have Nobeltec PC nav software, and it IS indeed possible get complete PC integration and have radar image overlay directly on the charts. There seem to be two possible paths; (1) digital radar, which will interface directly with a PC and with Nobeltec, and (2) a "black box" digital converter that takes the signal from traditional radar and converts it to digital. After a lot of talk, our opinion was that true digital radar is still in its relative infancy. The "RadarPC" unit seemed to us to be little better than a toy. The Inritsu digital radar (relationship with Simrad???) looked better, but it was very expensive. We were left with less than warm feelings that the digital radar technology had reached the point where it was truly ready for prime time. Do we really want to bet our boat and lives on this at its current stage? The "black box" approach (Furuno) was very expensive. However, Furuno is clearly headed in the PC direction long term. Their new nav electronic inter-connection and communication system is an ethernet system, which is the near-universal PC networking platform. They aren't saying too much about it yet, but the slection of ethernet makes their future direction pretty clear. The final hurdle is the at-the-helm waterproof, daylight readable PC display. Although prices are coming down, the lowest cost units are still around $3000, and the power that they consume to get the daylight readability is quite high. More batteries may be needed. We also wonder about the lifetime and reliability of these displays with the amount of heat that they generate from all that power. You CAN do it all; the technology IS there. But it is horribly (!!) expensive to put it all together. Also the full technology package is still in what we view as early stages, and we just weren't ready to trust our boat and possibly our lives to what we saw. Carl and Jule s/v 'Syzygy'
Gary and Others: A few more details on what we learned as we got frustrated. BTW, this all transpired at the Newport Boat Show. We have Nobeltec PC nav software, and it IS indeed possible get complete PC integration and have radar image overlay directly on the charts. There seem to be two possible paths; (1) digital radar, which will interface directly with a PC and with Nobeltec, and (2) a "black box" digital converter that takes the signal from traditional radar and converts it to digital. After a lot of talk, our opinion was that true digital radar is still in its relative infancy. The "RadarPC" unit seemed to us to be little better than a toy. The Inritsu digital radar (relationship with Simrad???) looked better, but it was very expensive. We were left with less than warm feelings that the digital radar technology had reached the point where it was truly ready for prime time. Do we really want to bet our boat and lives on this at its current stage? The "black box" approach (Furuno) was very expensive. However, Furuno is clearly headed in the PC direction long term. Their new nav electronic inter-connection and communication system is an ethernet system, which is the near-universal PC networking platform. They aren't saying too much about it yet, but the slection of ethernet makes their future direction pretty clear. The final hurdle is the at-the-helm waterproof, daylight readable PC display. Although prices are coming down, the lowest cost units are still around $3000, and the power that they consume to get the daylight readability is quite high. More batteries may be needed. We also wonder about the lifetime and reliability of these displays with the amount of heat that they generate from all that power. You CAN do it all; the technology IS there. But it is horribly (!!) expensive to put it all together. Also the full technology package is still in what we view as early stages, and we just weren't ready to trust our boat and possibly our lives to what we saw. Carl and Jule s/v 'Syzygy'
Radar/plotters
Gary; I have an older version of Raymarine's radar/plotter combo. They use a common screen that you toggle between or the screen can be split horizontally. The advantage is the screen is at the helm, where it should be, not below on an expensive and vulnerable PC. I may upgrade to color in a few years, but for right now, it works for me.
Gary; I have an older version of Raymarine's radar/plotter combo. They use a common screen that you toggle between or the screen can be split horizontally. The advantage is the screen is at the helm, where it should be, not below on an expensive and vulnerable PC. I may upgrade to color in a few years, but for right now, it works for me.
middle of the road...
I agree with what's been said about the radarpc it is not a worthwhile radar display it is very grainy and toy like. What we have decided on is a stand alone radar, and a stand alone lcd display for pc based navigation. I looked at all of the bullet proof lcd screens in Newport and wasn't ready to shell out those kind of bucks. I ended up buying a brand new datalux touch screen 10.4 inch 640X480 for $400 off of ebay. Is it the best thing sinced sliced bread? Probably not. it's only 200 nit so it's not classified as daylight readable (though my outdoor tests with it prove it to be fine on a sunny day without direct sunlight on it. My take is that this data is most critical in low vis or at night. During nice days it's no problem to run below and take a look on the other screen. We're used to that anyway we've been working off of the pc for 3 years now. So having a display at the helm at night is a real luxury!
I'm figuring as lcd prices continue to fall the marine rip off artists will be forced to compete or we'll just put less marinized versions on and replace them once in a while! I intend to build a nice little lexan enclosure with a hinged cover to protect mine a little more. I also will be sealing the enclosure a little bit better, I've talked with Datalux and they concur. Hope this helps! Scott
I agree with what's been said about the radarpc it is not a worthwhile radar display it is very grainy and toy like. What we have decided on is a stand alone radar, and a stand alone lcd display for pc based navigation. I looked at all of the bullet proof lcd screens in Newport and wasn't ready to shell out those kind of bucks. I ended up buying a brand new datalux touch screen 10.4 inch 640X480 for $400 off of ebay. Is it the best thing sinced sliced bread? Probably not. it's only 200 nit so it's not classified as daylight readable (though my outdoor tests with it prove it to be fine on a sunny day without direct sunlight on it. My take is that this data is most critical in low vis or at night. During nice days it's no problem to run below and take a look on the other screen. We're used to that anyway we've been working off of the pc for 3 years now. So having a display at the helm at night is a real luxury!
I'm figuring as lcd prices continue to fall the marine rip off artists will be forced to compete or we'll just put less marinized versions on and replace them once in a while! I intend to build a nice little lexan enclosure with a hinged cover to protect mine a little more. I also will be sealing the enclosure a little bit better, I've talked with Datalux and they concur. Hope this helps! Scott- Status