Android chartplotters
Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2011 4:11 pm
I have read a lot of discussion about ipads and phones as plotters, but not seen a whole lot of detailed discussion and even less on android, so wanted to open up a thread vs listing a mod. Below is what is working for me and I am hoping others will be able to share what is working for them. Many mac owners are “frugal” (my goal was $150-200) so for that reason I hope it won’t turn into an apple vs android debate.
Also I was only interested in something that would operate 100% offline with no subscriptions or fees.
I already have a handheld garmin gps and 10” MSI wind with seaclear, so wanted something to bridge the gap at 5-7”. 10” tablets felt too big to practically mount in a car and at the helm of the boat. The netbook with seaclear connected to a gps worked for planning while on the boat, but was not really what I wanted on the water and the screen was no good in the sun.
I did quite a bit of research on tablets with built in gps and in August bought a dropad A8X. The primary selling point was that it uses a Samsung SPC110 1ghz processor which is 5V and said to use about 1/3 the power of comparable processors. In GPS navigation mode I have ran it for 6 hours straight without recharging and had battery left.
It has 2 usb ports and charges and transfers files through a standard usb port. For the boat/car I picked up a 12v cigarette lighter to usb adapter and suction mount when I ordered it. It fits perfect in a quart freezed bag while in the mount and I have used it in the rain a couple times.
Charging it runs on a 500ma/5v (2.5w) adapter so the draw on the boat is minimal unlike a laptop. Standard it comes with an 8gb micro sd for a hard drive and 512 of ram. If the 8gb fills you can always just plug in a cheap flash drive if you want to take some extra movies or files with you. It also has some other cool features like a metal case instead of plastic, 1020p playback and HDMI out port for playing on a monitor.
For navigation I installed a couple programs. Some are free, some have a price, all can be easily downloaded for free depending without any special steps. I also downloaded several 100% offline GPS car nav apps if anyone is interested in the pros/cons of them.
Earth NC
http://earthnc.com/
If you are familiar with seaclear this looks almost identical. To use offline you have to preselect the area you want by drawing a box around it and download the maps. You can download about a 10milex10mile area at a time with the full version. You can save as much as you want. You can also set it to download/run topo maps, relief maps or street maps. It is fairly easy to drop pins and setup routes and it allows 2 finger pinch zooming. There is a high contrast mode which is good for direct sunlight. I find the tablet is fine in all but sunlight directly on it with the bimini down. I like this one for planning the best.
All the screenshots are of the same inlet so you can get a comparison idea.
Zoomed in
In topo mode (good for geocaching)
Also I was only interested in something that would operate 100% offline with no subscriptions or fees.
I already have a handheld garmin gps and 10” MSI wind with seaclear, so wanted something to bridge the gap at 5-7”. 10” tablets felt too big to practically mount in a car and at the helm of the boat. The netbook with seaclear connected to a gps worked for planning while on the boat, but was not really what I wanted on the water and the screen was no good in the sun.
I did quite a bit of research on tablets with built in gps and in August bought a dropad A8X. The primary selling point was that it uses a Samsung SPC110 1ghz processor which is 5V and said to use about 1/3 the power of comparable processors. In GPS navigation mode I have ran it for 6 hours straight without recharging and had battery left.
It has 2 usb ports and charges and transfers files through a standard usb port. For the boat/car I picked up a 12v cigarette lighter to usb adapter and suction mount when I ordered it. It fits perfect in a quart freezed bag while in the mount and I have used it in the rain a couple times.
Charging it runs on a 500ma/5v (2.5w) adapter so the draw on the boat is minimal unlike a laptop. Standard it comes with an 8gb micro sd for a hard drive and 512 of ram. If the 8gb fills you can always just plug in a cheap flash drive if you want to take some extra movies or files with you. It also has some other cool features like a metal case instead of plastic, 1020p playback and HDMI out port for playing on a monitor.
For navigation I installed a couple programs. Some are free, some have a price, all can be easily downloaded for free depending without any special steps. I also downloaded several 100% offline GPS car nav apps if anyone is interested in the pros/cons of them.
Earth NC
http://earthnc.com/
If you are familiar with seaclear this looks almost identical. To use offline you have to preselect the area you want by drawing a box around it and download the maps. You can download about a 10milex10mile area at a time with the full version. You can save as much as you want. You can also set it to download/run topo maps, relief maps or street maps. It is fairly easy to drop pins and setup routes and it allows 2 finger pinch zooming. There is a high contrast mode which is good for direct sunlight. I find the tablet is fine in all but sunlight directly on it with the bimini down. I like this one for planning the best.
All the screenshots are of the same inlet so you can get a comparison idea.
Zoomed in
In topo mode (good for geocaching)
I have one also I bought used back in 2004 off a pilot because I wanted a color GPS. I am not sure if any nautical charts will work on it. If you email garmin they always respond very promptly though.