Hi all,
Anyone had experience of the el cheapo tablets?
I thought we had a reasonable chart plotter until arriving in the Sandy Straits Qld.
Very little detail & a lot of that is inaccurate. Thought the cheapest fix might be Tablet/Quickcharts/wifi gps receiver.
Any advice would be gratefully received. Thanks, Rob
Select to expand quoteDownboy said..
Hi all,
Anyone had experience of the el cheapo tablets?
I thought we had a reasonable chart plotter until arriving in the Sandy Straits Qld.
Very little detail & a lot of that is inaccurate. Thought the cheapest fix might be Tablet/Quickcharts/wifi gps receiver.
Any advice would be gratefully received. Thanks, Rob
if you have a phone with data you could use the Navonics app and use you phone as a hot spot for your tablet or just use your phone with the same app
a good thing to have any way just i case . The screens are hard to see during the day what ever table or phone you use.
There only as good as the signal from the likes of Telstra 
I bought a google 7 inch rebuilt after some one warranty claim makes them a little cheaper around the $200 but theres cheaper
I guess
Cisco uses an Aldi tablet he could put you right
Select to expand quoteHG02 said..
The screens are hard to see during the day what ever table or phone you use.
There only as good as the signal from the likes of Telstra
I have a Samsung tablet which I run the Navionics app on & it is pretty good but it is only for backup. I have the same app on my phone as another backup!!
As HG02 said, not real good out in the sunlight.
Select to expand quoteHG02 said..
Cisco uses an Aldi tablet he could put you right
Not any more. It failed and I bought a Lenovo A5 for $200 which works very well but as mentioned by somebody else, reading it in daylight is challenging.
Navionics on an 8 top 10 inch tablet with internal GPS is a pretty good platform lately and especially good if you latch into it a WiFi sonar transducer.
However when you go to the expence of a waterproof tablet and a WiFi sonar transducer the price goes beyond buying a dedicated Garmin, Lowrance, Humminbird unit.
The technology is in place and is getting cheaper by the day. The question is what format do you want it in??
Yes, I have a Samsung TabA 10inch screen with Memory map charts running on it. I have it in a Sea to Summit mapcase with the screen set upside down so the power cord plugs into the top, the cable is rolled in the seal of the map case.
When you buy the Australian chart pack you get raster scanned Aus hyro service charts and all the queensland harbours and marine charts. You can switch between the two types of chart for the best coverage.
I use the internal GPS which works extremely well and doesn't require internet.
I have just bought the pro licence so will be able to receive wifi AIS feed when I get a NMEA to wifi thingy.
The screen of the tablet is excelent in sunlight and shade (better shaded)
Currently Ambler is in NZ with their hydro charts loaded via MM and their topos too for mountain biking running on my samsung phone in flight mode.
Thoroughly reccomend this set up as it's portable and easy to use.
Wayne
I'm writing this on a Windows Toshiba 8 inch tablet. When used for navigation I use Seaclear and the same chart package as Ambler but I use a Gps puck. 8 inches is way too small for navigation and I would suggest the minimum is 15 inches and the ideal 20 and above. Don't bother trying them in sunlight or rain. Mount a big screen in the cabin that you can view from the steering position and use an appropriate mouse.
This one will be on eBay in a couple of days and if I get $50 it will be a pleasant surprise. This was not a cheapo tablet either.
Thanks for the interest, you lot are most helpful on this site.
I'm with Ramona on screen size, mostly due to the old eyes.
Back to the drawing board, might have to load something onto the laptop for now.
Thanks again for your help, Rob
Select to expand quoteDownboy said..
Thanks for the interest, you lot are most helpful on this site.
I'm with Ramona on screen size, mostly due to the old eyes.
Back to the drawing board, might have to load something onto the laptop for now.
Thanks again for your help, Rob
I use a Toshiba Tectra with the battery removed bolted down to a frame on the chart table. Mouse is a Logitec roller track ball screwed down on a pad so that water runs off. Laptop does not need to be all that fast just choose one with a decent display. Pictures on my page.
Actually that's an old photo with an ordinary mouse, the current set up is similar to the fishing boat nav station.
Select to expand quoteAmbler said..
Yes, I have a Samsung TabA 10inch screen with Memory map charts running on it. I have it in a Sea to Summit mapcase with the screen set upside down so the power cord plugs into the top, the cable is rolled in the seal of the map case.
When you buy the Australian chart pack you get raster scanned Aus hyro service charts and all the queensland harbours and marine charts. You can switch between the two types of chart for the best coverage.
I use the internal GPS which works extremely well and doesn't require internet.
I have just bought the pro licence so will be able to receive wifi AIS feed when I get a NMEA to wifi thingy.
The screen of the tablet is excelent in sunlight and shade (better shaded)
Currently Ambler is in NZ with their hydro charts loaded via MM and their topos too for mountain biking running on my samsung phone in flight mode.
Thoroughly reccomend this set up as it's portable and easy to use.Wayne
This looks like a good set up Ambler.
I have an old Acer 500 Tablet, and have Navionics on it and on my Note 4 phone. On the phone I can't zoom up large enough at times to read depths and place names... old eyes.. but the tablet is great. Still don't have my youbeaut Chartplotter installed, but getting closer to a solution with the suggestion of ordering a NAVPOD to fit. 
What not a bad idea with old lap tops is buy and hybrid drive which is a mix of SSD and conventional hard drive it will add a turbo charger effect to you old lap top
and bring up your boot and operational speeds for a $100 plus dollars depending on your size
www.pccasegear.com/products/22914/seagate-st1000lm014-laptop-sshd-1tb-hard-drive
I'm inclined to agree with Ambler. We use a 10in Samsung Galaxy with Navionics as our main Nav. system. We also have Navionics on our plotter which is always on while we are on board. We use the Galaxy mostly because it has a larger screen than the plotter and is not fixed in place like the plotter and therefore can be taken below with us if need be.
I also agree with HG02 in relation to the hybrid drive and would like to add that for a bit more than a hybrid drive you can add a full Solid State Drive (SSD) that will speed your laptop or PC up even more. If you shop around you can get a hybrid drive for only a few bucks more than a conventional HDD these days. They are known as SSHD's.
We are using a six year old laptop for our use of MemoryMap and other on board uses and when we put an SSD in there about a year ago it totally transformed the laptop.
Yes my old laptop was a throw out at work with a lot more going in the bin
I collected a couple and added hybrid drives to a lot more to the guys in the work shop.
they were old XP's and once the hybrid drives are installed they will run windows 7 Plus the rest above if your into that
When I make a PC I have always installed a SSD for the operating system.no moving parts and low power use so they would make a excellent data storage on a boat
you get very sore fingers putting covers on wiring
Select to expand quoteHG02 said..
What not a bad idea with old lap tops is buy and hybrid drive which is a mix of SSD and conventional hard drive it will add a turbo charger effect to you old lap top
and bring up your boot and operational speeds for a $100 plus dollars depending on your size
www.pccasegear.com/products/22914/seagate-st1000lm014-laptop-sshd-1tb-hard-drive
Laptops for navigation don't need to be fast or powerful, just have a large clear screen. A $100 laptop will still be more powerful than any chart plotter. This is my set up visible part way through the video. One of these days I will build a large screen set up. The problem is the large screens seem to require a fair bit of power. Laptop with no battery and run off the ships supply is fairly light on power.
I just picked up two 2011 MacBooks on Gumtree at Kiama. Not sure how many are left but there were ten going at $350 each. In immaculate condition they were bought for a school which used them for 6 weeks and decided they didn't like them.http://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/kiama-downs/laptops/10x-macbook-2011-2gb-ram-250gb-hard-drive-new-battery-must-go/1103901548
Plan is to link it in with the Lawrence Elite 7 which I managed to fix, along with the new Sonarphone Tpod.
Thats if Winston hasn't swallowed her!
