Cruising with Wifi

San Cristobal Galapagos

I am sure this will be a continuing subject as we meander our way try across the globe, but I thought this was a fine time for an update on our Wifi system. Generally I have been VERY pleased with our wifi system. The Port Networks 250 pulls in signals at great range and seems to do fine with a fair amount of rocking and rolling. Wifi availability has been pretty good. We had excellent wifi in Cartegena, both in the anchorage from Club Nautico ($) and in our marina from Club de Pesca (free). The San Blas had ZERO coverage, but they barely had electricity so no surprises there. We were connected in Panama at Shelter Bay ($) and on a mooring at Balboa (included with mooring) in Panama City. The Las Perlas were a dead zone as we were near uninhabited islands, but we got service from the Tropic Star Lodge (free) in Bahia Pinas at the southern border of Panama. Coverage was good in La Libertad around the Puerto Lucia Yacht Club (included with dockage) as well as in Bahia de Caracas from the Puerto Amistad Yacht Club (included with mooring). In Bahia we even could pull in several signals when anchored a few miles out waiting for high tide and our Pilot, but they all were either locked or MAC address restricted.

Here in San Cristobal in the Galapagos, the City has free wifi (see screen shot above) throughout the Malecon (boardwalk) and it reaches quite well the half mile out to the anchorage, coming in stronger than the onboard Linksys router (probably due to the fact the linksys is mounted about 3" above the waterline and the Port Networks antenna is 15 feet off the water while only separated by 25'). In fact, we started pulling in working wifi 9 miles from town (see screen shot below) and more than 2.5 miles from the nearest land as we came down the western side of the island. In the Harbor I can still see that same AP (verified by mac address) I picked up 9 miles out, though there are others closer by with better signal strength. They certainly have some high powered access points here, but it is still amazing that I am getting at least 4.5 miles of working range (and maybe more) while underway at sea.

Almost universally, this is a connection shared between MANY boaters and sometimes many on shore as well, so it tends to get slow from about 10 am till 10 pm. Generally at night the connections are decent with maybe 40 to 50 kbps pretty normal. Many of these have firewalls blocking useful services and websites (blogs seem to get mislabeled as adult content quite often) though sometimes you can get around that by not using their DNS servers and inputting your own. It will be interesting to see how the coverage compares as we head west and further from civilization. I will keep up with some occasional updates for others to reference as they follow in our wake.

iPhone Grib Viewing

Word is iNavX v1.2.0 has been submitted to Apple over the weekend and includes the ability to download (via xTraverse account) GFS grib data and view it on the charts. The data is only available at a 1/2 degree grid and only the GFS model is available at this time, but you can see the forecast out to 60 hours at 12hr increments.

My suggestion to make this FAR more valuable would be to have a way to download the latest QuickSCAT satellite wind measurements as well. Dealing with multiple models is probably way to complicated for the small screen, but the ability to download and view the actual wind around you in the last hour would be extremely valuable for the mobile navigator.

AIS, This and That

I installed our new ACR Nauticast B AIS-300 over the weekend. The GPS cable is run to Laz aft, but not yet up the Radar post and VHF antenna is sitting in the cabin irradiating my head instead of at the masthead, but the unit works great just as we saw coming back from Bermuda with Ben (Panbo Article). The screen shot (click for larger view) is how the targets are displayed in Expedition. You can see the two Narragansett Bay Pilot boats across the Harbor and a CG boat out in the mouth of the bay. Our new version of The Cap'n is on its way and I am excited to see how it displays the targets.

Other weekend projects (after building an oven on Friday night) included relocating the Raymarine Life Tag base unit to the pilothouse for better coverage of the cockpit (it used to false alarm a bit too much when located at the Nav Station) as well as re-installation of the Water-maker pump after Ocean-Options replaced the pump and I re-painted the motor. The watermaker is now making almost 30 gal/hr where it was only making 15 gal/hr before the pump replacement.

One and two half jobs checked off the list....eventually I will get there.

Nav Comparison

When sailing last weekend in Fort Myers Beach I was able to test the full spectrum of Nav programs available for the iPhone. The only program I don't have is Active Captain as they haven't ported it to the iPhone yet. I was able to compare iNavX with NOAA Raster Charts, iNavX version 2 with Navionics Vector Charts, Navimatics Marine Maps (Now Charts and Tides), and Fly to Maps Water Map Navigator. By far the best chart data available was the Navionics Vector Data.

As this product hasn't been released and Navionics is handleing the PR side of things I can't show you a full screen shot, but here is the chart portion of the screen shot. The raster chart above was usable, but due to the low scale of the Raster, the free chart was not great for navigating the narrow channel (not that it really mattered as we still bumped a sand bar heading out due to the unusually low tide even though we were dead smack in the middle of the channel). My understanding of the plans for iNavX are that when version 2 comes out (free upgrade) Navionics will have a method to purchase and download their Vector charts (in addition to the free NOAA Raster charts). No word yet on regional packaging or pricing, but if I lived up this inlet, I would spend the money for the Navionics Vector chart as it fills in nicely for the less than stellar Raster of the region.

I unfortunately forgot to load the correct region of the Navimatics charts, an inherent flaw in a system with separate programs for different regions. That said, you can load more than one region at a time and the icon shows the active chart region. Below is what the Navimatics chart of the region looks like.


Certainly workable, but not really as good as the NOAA raster let alone the Navionics Vector. It doesn't show all the Nav Aids that line the channel, just the larger Piles at the entrance. It does show the location of the channel with a different water color, but without the smaller posts shown, it would be harder to follow.








Fly To Map's product uses the free NOAA Vector charts (S57 format). Unfortunately, there are still ~30% of the raster charts that have not been converted yet. Also, they aren't the prettiest things in the world by any means. Clearly this is a region where the detailed charts haven't been converted to Vector format yet making the software completely un-usable in this situation. Sure it only costs $10, but if you lived or sailed in Fort Myers it wouldn't be worth 10 cents.

Overall, I am very excited about the partnership of Navionics and iNavX. The iNavX software is by far the most powerful, with the new features of waypoint and track import/export just adding to the functionality. They also keep developing with promises of eventual Grib weather overlays and several other features on top of the added support for Navionics Vector charts. The Vectors are sure to be somewhat costly, but hopefully they will be priced fairly and reasonably or at least in a way that you can pick and choose the charts you want to buy to fill in areas where the rasters aren't that great, or for international use.

Fly to Map - Water Map Navigator First Look

Fly to Map was nice enough to let me test their new marine mapping program (Yeah Apple Promo Codes ... way easier than AdHoc distribution) for review. The program is cheap and simple (just $10) and displays NOAA ENC charts. I got the US Eastern region which covers the coast from Maine to Mexico although my understanding is that NOAA is not yet completed turning all the charts into ENC's yet so coverage detail may vary depending on region. The chart rendering is nice enough, although not nearly as pretty as the Navimatics Marine Maps, fairly similar to the Navionics charts on iNavX Version 2. Zooming and panning is quite jumpy, although smoother than Navimatics marine maps, not anywhere near as smooth as iNavX V2. Pushing the location button plots your position, and moves the chart to put you in view, but does not rezoom, so when you start the program and it shows the entire east coast, you must manually zoom in or search to your region to actually see any detail. The search function does work but is essentially the only function the program has. There is NO WAY this program should be used for navigation, or really even trip planning, but it does provide a fairly cheap way to view the ENC charts on your phone. For anyone serious about iPhone navigation, this isn't worth your $10, at least not yet. Better to save your money for iNavX or the upcoming iNavX Version 2 (with Navionics vector charts).

By the way, iNavX V2 is coming along nicely. The search that I love in the Navimatics marine Maps is finding its way into the software. If you want a sense as to what this will look like, you can download the free Navionics viewer and roam around south Florida or Italy. Picture those charts with iNavX's instruments, waypoints, etc and you have a pretty good idea of what is to come. I haven't gotten a clear sense of what will happen to the raster version of iNavX when the vector charts become available. I generally prefer raster charts, but the ability to search for a harbor by name when dealing with the small screen of the iPhone may be enough reason to favor vector charts.

--UPDATE-- from iNavX -- Apparently both the raster and vector charts will be able to exist side by side within iNavX Version 2 when it is eventually released. Thus far the alpha version I have been playing with doesn't have access to the raster charts (which makes sense at this point as he is working out the vector parts of the program) so no word yet on exactly how this will work, but if past performance is any prediction of future results, it will be a smooth integration from the folks at iNavX.

Reading through the iNavX forums I found this bit of useful info:

"All current owners of iNavX will receive version 2.0 at no additional cost. iNavX version 2.0 will add these features to iNavX..

- Download purchased Navionics charts & maps in addition to the free NOAA US waters
- Navaid inspector
- Waypoint upload/download (GPX and KML file support)
- Pinch zooming (Easy to use zoom slider will still be available)
- Available on ALL iTunes iPhone app stores

Prices have not been finalized on the top quality Navionics cartography, but I understand they will be very reasonably priced. Even with the additional features, iNavX will remain priced under US$50. "

New Wifi and Computer System Update

I finally got all my tools and parts back from Shane in Florida and got a decent day on Saturday to finish the wifi install. The new WiFi antenna is the white one on the right (furthest outboard). I ended up needing an antenna extender since there was just no way to get the LMR-400-UF SMA connector down inside the hoop. Luckily West had all I needed in stock so I was able to finish before snow flew last night....thank god. I sure wouldn't have wanted to be climbing on my rather precarious ladder arrangement in the snow. It is quite difficult finding a location in a cockpit to place a 8' stepladder. In the spring I will need to re-rig my ladder in order to install a GPS antenna opposite the WiFi antenna on another Edson Rail Mount for the AIS unit we plan to install.

The Port Networks MWB-250 system by Alan Spicer Marine Telcom is working superbly. Looking at the site survey on the left (click for bigger), you can see signals about 1.5 miles away (Sail Newport) in a rather "Noisy" environment of downtown Newport.


Further long distance testing will have to take place in the future when there aren't sooooo many signals, but my initial reaction is that the system works quite well and is very easy to use. In the few minutes I played last night, I was able to connect to several access points around town, most of which aren't visible on my laptop even when in the pilothouse or out on deck.

The MWB-250 unit which is located in the pilothouse with a Power over Ethernet (POE) equiped Cat-5e cable connecting it to a POE injector and then to the Linksys WRT54GL router running an open source firmware DD-WRT. A LED equiped switch is located in the back of the desk flip-top to allow turning off the WiFi reciever to save power offshore as it runs on the same circuit as the Cell Phone Booster and Globalstar SatCom.

I love this router and firmware for its low cost, high power, and extreme flexibility. There is a great community providing support and sample scripts to allow many customizations such as multiple WAN ports and data shaping. I can certainly recommend Alan Spicer and Port Networks to any interested in a high powered WiFi system with a remote radio. If you are very savvy, you could probably buy direct from Port Networks and put together the antenna, cable, connectors, etc yourself, but if you want some direction, Alan's services and in particular his service contracts (which he is supplying to my client Shane) can be indispensable. With the service contract, he was incredibly price competitive on the parts.

I am also in the process of upgrading our computer system with a new Nav computer, moving the Nav computer over to Communications work and moving the 8 year old Com computer off the boat for Home Theater use. I will update on this and our entire onboard computer system in the near future.

Navimatics Marine Maps First Look

Bill Zissimopoulos from Navimatics was kind enough to send me an AdHoc copy of his Marine Maps iPhone Navigation program to test in follow up to this Panbo article. It took me far to long to get around to loading the program and looking into it, but that process has finally started. Overall it is a very pretty program, with very good chart detail at least in the regions covered (not sure on completeness of coverage, but my understanding is that these are based on NOAA ENC charts which don't have complete coverage yet). The chart rotation feature is pretty cool and they have added the compass lock button (2nd from left) to lock onto north up if preferred. Zooming and Panning are fast, but the chart display reverts to the base raster (read very jagged with no detail) when you are panning or zooming, so it makes it hard to home in on what you are looking for. I will try to make a video of that sometime soon and post it so this complaint becomes more clear. Several of the other comments that the iNavX developer brought up on Panbo have been addressed as well as there are now waypoints and a goto feature, but you have to go to an info screen to see the waypoint bearing and distance info.

By far the best feature is the Search bar at the top of the screen which allowed me to quickly move down to Newport. It also gives the chart scale at all times in the lower right corner. My initial impressions are that for general marine reference or rough trip planning, this program has a LOT OF MERIT, but it doesn't seem to compete with iNavX for actual navigation. For many users, the ability to search for a location and quickly jump there would be an overriding decision maker, especially if you already have a portable GPS plotter, or a plotter display in the cockpit.

I will continue to play and will try to test this and the two versions of iNavX side by side when I head down to Ft. Meyers FLA for the Leukemia Cup Regatta Fantasy Sailing Weekend in December. Stay tuned.

Also note that I added a mapping feature from mapdaze. I am hoping they come up with a way to add map markers via e-mail as then this could be a VERY cool and easy to use feature. Otherwise I will just have to post date locations when full internet is available.

Pinch Zoom Coming to iNavX

I loaded the latest Beta of iNavX last night and played around with the main new feature, PINCH ZOOMING! Apparently Apple doesn't include an API for pinch zooming meaning that every coder must write it themselves, but iNavX's version is actually the most responsive pinch zoom I have seen thus far, so many of my frustrations with google maps are relieved. Best of all, you can shut off the pinch zoom and the current zoom bar comes back if you prefer that for single handed operation.

In other news, we got all the sails off Visions and winterized the engines last weekend. The wifi install should be finished this coming weekend and I will write about that soon, and as soon as I get my new clamp ammeter I will finish my LED bulb testing and will start writing that article.

Weekend Electronics Install

I spent the weekend helping Shane with his MAJOR electronics wiring upgrade project on Volare. Ben Wilcox (benboat@yahoo.com) who was recently laid off by Hinckley and has set up his own shop in Providence doing boat and high end house cabinetry rebuilt the pilothouse and com station dashboards and also built a few cubby-holes for personal electronics storage and charging. With panels removed we took advantage to lead new video, audio, and a few antenna cables through the boat. I also set up the AOpen mini-PC that I had built for Shane a few weeks ago (right).

After a day of wiring on Saturday which included adding the Port Networks MWB-250 from Alan Spicer which was fairly easy to install except that the LMR-400 to RP-SMA crimp connectors didn't show up on Friday as promised. I bought these connectors to facilitate fitting the junction from the low loss cable to the antenna pigtail in the rail, so we couldn't quite finish putting the wiring away. I had a bit of frustration with the Belkin Router onboard due to limited adjustable settings, but a quick e-mail and return phone call from Alan Spicer later and we had it all squared away. Internet is now pulled in with the high powered radio and antenna and then spread around the boat to 3 computers, iPhones, and any guest computers. Photo of NAV screen with Nobletec to the left.

This shot on the right shows the NMEA boat data (including AIS via a Smart Radio Dual Channel Receiver operating with an active antenna switcher also from SRT) being used by iNavX. Data comes in to an 8 port Serial to USB adapter five of which are used (GPS, Backup GPS, B&G, AIS, Depth). Nobletec combines the data and outputs a combined stream back to the Autopilot as well as a virtual com port which then gets served over the on board wifi network via Fransom GPS Gate. That NMEA stream (including AIS) can then be picked up by onboard laptops or an iPhone. I think iNavX is limited to just a few Targets, but it is still quite helpful iNavX then shows the AIS targets and supports waypoints as well and an amazing bit of Tech if you ask me (confusion came from some "lost" targets shown in red in my other screen shots that Nobletech was still remembering). Still not as amazing as Virtual Computing.

I set up REAL VNC, a Virtual Network Computing program that allows viewing and control of the NAV (or Communications) computer over the network. I could theoretically set this up to work over the larger internet, but don't really want to do that, so it is only available over the on-board intranet network (LAN). The pic to the right is Shane's laptop viewing and controlling Nobletec on the Nav Computer over Wifi. I had only played around with this software a bit before and was amazed at how effective it was when working over a local network (as opposed to over the internet when it tends to be a bit sluggish). Operating the navigation or Radar was fairly seamless, and there are even some free programs for the iPhone (Mocha VNC light and Jaadu VNC light) that allow viewing of the Nav screen or Radar on the phone's screen. We had better luck with Jaadu by the way as Mocha was fairly unstable at the high screen resolution of the Nav computer.

Overall a very successful weekend and Volare now has a state of the art network and computer system with some neat integration features. It also provided me with practice for Visions which will undergo a similar, but less severe upgrade in the coming weeks. Feel free to contact me if you are interested in more information about any of these systems.

WiFi Take 1

I quickly set up the new WiFi system in the apartment last night so that I could start to play with the system and see how it works. Short answer is quite well. To the right is the list of wifi AP's in the neighborhood, over twice what either my Linksys WRT-54gL (quite the powerhouse really) or my laptop sees and I was able to connect via the open "motorola 491" network with a rather weak -91 signal strength. Other handy features include a live signal meter that is meant for use to aim a directional antenna, or quite helpful to determine how viable a connection really is instead of the snapshot of a site survey.

More once I get the chance to set it up onboard...hopefully next weekend.

iNavX 1.0.3

iNavX 1.0.3 was officially released on Monday. I got a the final version for testing the previous week so I got to play around with it over last week and the weekend. I set up an AIS simulator and fed about 1min of AIS data on a loop via Wifi. It was pretty cool and seemed like a nice addition to the program.

The Main change with 1.0.3 was the change in zooming. Zooming is now controlled by sliding (or just tapping) the circle to the left or right on the "Zoom Bar" which then re-centers when the chart re-renders. This is a LOT easier than moving the zoom dot around very small amounts for minor zoom changes. The disadvantage is that there is no longer an indicator of you zoom level. Richard is working on this and has one solution in mind to display the scale as the chart re-renders, but I prefer a constant visual signal.

My idea (crude photoshoping) is to the left. Basically a zoom indicator in the form of a triangular pointer would be rendered left to right on the zoom bar to indicate how far in the chart was currently zoomed. Not sure how easy or possible it would be, but ideal would be some way to drag this triangle in order to make gross changes in zoom level (ability that was lost in 1.0.3). Overall, 1.0.3 is an improvement in zooming and luckily Rich is going to continue developing his methods.

In other exciting iphone navigation News, Panbo announced Navionics Mobile which is essentially a Vector chart version of iNavX (also known as iNavX2). I am alpha/beta testing for iNavX, but am under an NDA, so nothing more until I am told I can talk. The most promising potential for the raster based system partnered with Navionics is the worldwide availablility of detailed charts. Amazing what a little phone can do.

iNavX 1.0.2 & a Week of Use

Version 1.0.2 came out today and adds the much sought after and promised overview zoom. I think this will do a lot for usability of the software as a near primary navigation solution at least for short trips. I was surprised to see that the link to ayetides has disappeared, but since it quits iNavX and launches Ayetides I guess it probably doesn't need a link on the main chart page.

I also got the chance to use iNavX extensively on our cruise last week. Even with the pilothouse just steps away, I found I used the iPhone a lot in the cockpit for a closer look when coming into or leaving harbors (or when passing through restricted channels). When entering The Basin, I used it while standing on the bow looking for shallows and pointing out lobster pots to see were we were on the chart as well as to have a remote depth meter using the boat instruments over wifi. I think the iPhone will find its home in the cockpit while sailing Visions. Hopefully they will figure out how to deal with international charts for cruising to further points.

With extended use, I did discover one fairly minor annoyance. If you let your iphone fall asleep, the wifi doesn't come on fast enough and iNavX looses the wifi instruments and reverts back to the built in GPS. On the other hand, I found the onboard GPS to be better than I had previously thought. I did find that the jumpiness of the chart recentering as the COG shifted around with "keep ship in view" on was distracting so I found myself shutting that on and off a lot. It would be nice to be able to zoom around and then center on the boat with a single click of course I am not sure you want to give up the screen space for such a feature. Also, in 1.0.1 the download speed when downloading a chart was removed which is a bummer. Not sure if this was a request by Apple or not, but it was nice to get an idea of just how fast a connection you were really getting when trying to download a chart. This was especially missed when trying to download then next chart with a very weak edge connection when sailing up Blue Hill Bay.

1.0.2 also supports some new NMEA sentences and AIS targets. Now if the FCC can just approve Class B so we can all have affordable AIS transceivers.

Otterbox Armor Waterproof iPhone Case Mod for 3G

One of my favorite comedy lines is from Dennis Leary, "No Cure for Cancer" when talking about saving the animals wants to have animal auditions:


"What are you?"
"I'm an Otter."
"What do you do?"
"I swim around on my back doing cute little human things with my hands."
"Your free to go! What are you?"
"I'm a Cow."
"Your a baseball glove, get in the f*cking truck!"

What does this have to do with Sailing and an iPhone case modification....very little, but I think of it every time I see Otterbox's Logo. Since Otterbox has yet to update their waterproof Armor Case for the 3G iPhone, I saw it upon myself to do it for them. I managed to find the 2g version fairly cheap on Amazon so I bought the yellow version. The case is waterproof to 3 feet for half an hour. Apparently after that, water starts leaking through the paper like barrier that covers the speakers and microphone which allows the phone to be used in the case. It is fairly bulky, but I only intend to use if while sailing so that isn't a concern. The problem is that due to some small design changes, the 3G iPhone will not fit in the 2G case. The big problem is the headphone jack. For some stupid reason Steve Jobs thought it would be a good idea to recess the headphone jack in the original iPhone. He wised up for 3G, but the recessed jack requires a longer jack in the Otterbox Case. "Fixing" this problem was as simple as grabbing the male plug in the box and ripping it out, then cutting the wires that connected it to the external female connector. The headphone jack no longer works in my Otterbox case, but the phone basically fits.

I then took out the dremel to make it fit a bit better. Supposedly the width did not change between phones, but from this case it seems to have slightly. I ripped out the grey rubber bumpers on the right side as well as two of the back dots (the new phone is slightly thicker in the middle) and then ground back a bit. I also ground back at bit in way of the silencer switch as that was easily switched by accident when installing or removing the phone from the case. Overall the mod took about 5 minutes and works beautifully. When Otterbox gets around to producing a real 3G case I may buy it so I can listen to tunes at the beach with a protected phone, but I might not bother as this one does 99% of what I want the case to do which is protect my phone and allow me to use it for Navigation with iNavX.

iNavX with Wifi Instruments

During the early morning motor back to Portland, I managed to figure out my wifi network problems (hardware issue, not iNavX) and got the boats instruments beaming happily to my iPhone. Once I got the network squared away, I was able to output the instrument data with either Expedition or Franson GPS Gate which we use anyway to split our instrument data to various programs. Pulling it up in iNavX was easy.

I must say, I was fairly impressed. We were using the "steer to" command in the Capn on our Nav computer and the iPhone picked up the temporary waypoint and did the same. Operation with a "real" gps was much better. I can't blame iNavX for this because I think it is an iPhone firmware problem, but I do have hope with future OS upgrades.





Here you can see the instrument data with the compass across the top, boatspeed and magnetic heading added.










It automatically gave distance and bearing to waypoint, time to go and cross track error. Depth, Water temp, and Wind data were also displayed.

Having a small chart up in the cockpit was quite nice when sailing out "The Hussey" at the beginning of the race, but I hadn't figured out my network problem yet, so it wasn't as good as it would have been with wifi instruments. Also, the zoom out feature that is still a few days away was much needed. Ultimately, with a 15" screen just two steps down into the pilothouse, that proved easier, but I was pleased with navigating on the iPhone and with the new zoom feature think I will use it more. Also, if I didn't have a computer screen so close like we do I would find it even more useful.

iNavX Update on the Way

It feels good to make a difference. As I hinted in the comments to the Day 1 Review, Rich Ray, developer of iNavX contacted me about my reviews and the zooming issue which was my only major hangup. Build 1.0.2 has been submitted to Apple (1.0.1 available any day now) and should hopefully be available by August 15th. Included in the update is the ability to zoom out to 10% 20% of the actual chart pixels (much further than before as you can see from the image on the left). This is a little different than the treatment he was considering yesterday, so he must have figured out the performance problems he was having. You may also notice that he seems to have added some sort of tide function. No details on that yet, but it seems like it is on the way.

As mentioned before, I will be testing with networked instruments over the weekend (ran a desktop test with a simulated GPS stream yesterday with success) and will let you all know how that goes.

I was also contacted by the developers of Active Captain. They currently have a mobile program available for Palm smartphones and are developing versions for Win Mobile as well as the iPhone. It sounds like the Win Mobile version will come out first with the iPhone version to follow. He was interested in having me beta test the software which I will be happy to do and let my readership (all three of you...I hope more than that) know what I think. There is an ad-hoc iPhone distribution scheme for beta testing, but it is rather untested at this point. In the mean time, Ben at Panbo has a copy on his palm and we are going to try to find a time to get together and compare. Might happen sometime mid to late August.

Update with Wifi Instruments

iNavX Day 1

I did a bit of iNavX testing yesterday. During the morning, I set my iPhone to not sleep and tested the battery life running iNavX. With about 30% screen brightness and 3G on but not used other than 15min e-mail fetching (my default for normal use) I got about 3 hours 10 minutes of operation running iNavX before the 20% battery warning came up (with the occasional interruption for about 2 or 3 phone calls that came in). I am sure this could be extended by turning 3G off but it is still not too bad considering the screen size. The one downside of the operation of the iPhone is that when the screen turns off, apps stop operation and therefore the GPS will stop tracking in iNavX. The program comes back up right where you left off, but if you care about your track, then you need to leave the phone on the whole time.

I took my iPhone in Otterbox case out on Rumours last night to give it a more realistic workout. With the bright sunshine and sunglasses I had to bump the brightness up to 100% which dropped the battery life down to about 2:40 before the 20% warning. Everybody onboard was fairly impressed. I still wish I could zoom out further, but it isn't quite as bad in operation as I thought it might be. I still couldn't see the entire course on one screen which is kind of ridiculous for such short course racing.

It also becomes obvious that the iPhone's GPS just isn't that good at determining a speed even when the low "HPE" suggests it had a strong fix. I have read that the OS 2.1 developers beta has some added location features to improve this, so I have hope, but the speed would regularly read between 5 and 21 kts when we were really going 7 to 8 kts. Positioning heading seemed better but you can see from the screen-shots that it doesn't show us actually rounding the gong and can that were our race marks. This won't be an issue if using a real instrument system over wifi (more on this Monday or Tuesday assuming I can figure it out on Visions over the weekend).

Update with Wifi Instruments

In other news, Woody was doing much better last night. He seemed fairly strong without the wobbles he had last week. If it wasn't for his shorn head, "F*ck Cancer" hat, and actually healthy weight loss, you might never know. Except of course he wasn't smoking like a chimney and went home after racing as opposed to the IYAC for drinks.

iNavX Initial Impressions

iNavX, a Marine Navigation Program was finally released for the iPhone over the weekend. I downloaded it this morning and have played a little. Obviously the screenshots are from the office...no I didn't run aground REALLY hard. Although a bit more expensive than I was hoping (I believe the developer said "cheap" on panbo, it is still reasonable at $50 and overall, the program seems pretty awesome. It uses the internal GPS or an optional NMEA stream over wifi (available from MacEnc, Expedition, as well as several others). It apparently can even display AIS data although I won't be able to check that till we install AIS on Visions (PLEASE FCC give us AIS B like the rest of the world). I do plan on using this with my recently aquired Otterbox Armor Waterproof iPhone case (modified to fit my 3G as they haven't released a new one yet) that will be the subject of a future post when we race Visions in the Monhegan Race this weekend. I may even bring a wifi router along to play with that instruments feature.

Navigating around the screen is easy and the chart tile load time is reasonable. Downloading new charts takes about 20 to 30 seconds on a good 3g connection and shows ~100 kb/sec on the download screen (nice feature). I am guessing edge will take about 4 times that long at least, but still not too bad. Charts are stored locally, so you can download when at home on 3g or wifi and with 8 or 16 gb on an iphone, storing the charts isn't a problem. Taking ranges & bearings is easy with a double-tap, and displays the data nicely on the top of the screen (see image above). My only real complaint is that the zoom doens't go out nearly enough. The pics are both zoomed all the way out, and you can only see a very small fraction of the chart (similar with larger scale charts as well). Also, the difference between zoomed in and zoomed out is only about a factor of 2 or 3 (not nearly enough). Zoomed in is probably closer than it needs to be and zoomed out is WAY too close to get a sence of where you are and what is coming up (probably only 10 mins ahead if moving at 8 to 10 knots). Waypoints are easy to create, name, move around, and "steer to" (see screenshot below).

Unfortunately, I have yet to see how to have instruments or waypoint data overlaid on the chart (maybe they can do this in a future version). It does have the ability to display a wide range of instrument data and can even list a single item in large text on the screen if you want to use it as a portable depth readout or VMG or whatever.

UPDATE Day 1 Actual use Review
Update with Wifi Instruments