EarthNC

EarthNC Marine Charts version 3.5 available

EarthNC — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 15:12:55 +0000

In case you haven’t noticed the update availability on your iPhone, a new version of Marine Charts for iOS is available. The release includes:

* Support for premium layers including hi-res imagery, various TOPO feeds, Google Road, Google Terrain

* A slider function for NEXRAD radar weather (allowing you to keep the layer active but quickly toggle it on and off)

* Full support for iPhone 5 and iOS 6

Enjoy the updates and we look forward to your feedback!

https://itunes.apple.com/app/marine-charts/id386584429?mt=8

-The EarthNC Team

Another great write up on the Shark Net app – new robotic gliders to the rescue.

EarthNC — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 15:01:12 +0000

This article goes into some depth (ahem) about the fascinating new robotic listening devices feeding shark location data to the Shark Net app in real-time.

Follow the full article here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/19287582

EarthNC, Gaia GPS and Stanford University team of up for Shark Net App.

EarthNC — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 14:48:06 +0000

Our work with Stanford University and GaiaGPS on the Shark Net app is complete – for version 1.0 at least! We’re proud to have been part of this important project showcasing the science involved in observing and conserving the rich biodiversity in the west coast oceans otherwise known as the Blue Serengeti or the Great White Highway. The release gained quite a bit of attention in both the consumer and scientific plublication communities and we’re seeing a fairly steady stream of downloads and really positive reviews.

Image Credit: davidpstephens / Shutterstock

From Panbo: Kayaking and Marine Charting apps…

bwinney — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 18:08:05 +0000

A nice mention of the EarthNC Marine Charts app as one of several apps that can be used for kayaking. Great stuff!

Kayak cruising, is there an app for that?

Jun 18, 2012

While there are many wonderful non-profits helping to preserve the Maine coast and to enable public access, one of my favorites is the Maine Island Trail Association. MITA has established a network of island campgrounds that can be visited by small boat. The Trail is used primarily by kayakers but I’ve visited many MITA-monitoried islands in larger boats, sail and power, and can attest to the fact that the organization has established a leave-no-trace ethic that really works. I use both the printed and online MITA Guide and appreciate other membership benefits but largely support the organization because I so like the idea of more people….

follow this link to read the entire article.

Tech Tip: Creating, saving, retrieving saved waypoints…

EarthNC — Fri, 18 May 2012 13:23:37 +0000

EarthNC’s Marine Chart’s apps support creating, saving and editing waypoints quite well. But there’s a few steps involved…and while we’re working on making it easier to do so, here are some basics steps.

1) First, from the map view, make sure you’ve enabled “My Waypoints” in the Layers menu.

2) Once done, return to the main Map window and select the Flag button and select “Drop Pin” or “Drop Pin Near Me” (which uses your current GPS position).

3) Give the waypoint a name for easy recall and note that it provides your lat / long. You can also move the point around with your finger in this view.

4) Click “Save” and you should see your waypoint on the Map view Note, you cannot edit it here (this is one thing we’re working on).

5) At any point in time, you can go to your “Saved” menu, select the Flag button (waypoints) and see a list of your saved waypoints. Note, in this screen you can easily delete a waypoint by sliding a finger to the right on any waypoint listing.

6) Select the Action button on the top right of the screen and select whatever activity you want to perform (Export, Show on Map, Guide Me, etc.)

Try that out. Remember, you really can’t break the app, so tinker around with the functions to get your bearings straight.

Best,

The EarthNC Team

Tech Tip: Finding the distance between two waypoints.

EarthNC — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:30:59 +0000

Right now we don’t we a simple ruler tool in the app. But what you can do is drop a waypoint by touching the Flag button and select either “Drop a Waypoint” or “Drop a Waypoint near Me”. Then when done, select “Save & Guide” and when you do, the bottom panel will display the heading and distance.You can also, select “Create Route” and then lightly press your finger on the screen to create your waypoints and the distance between the two will show up on the bottom panel.

Tech tip: Downloading charts. How much can I download at any one time?

EarthNC — Sun, 13 May 2012 18:11:40 +0000

We get asked this question quite a bit and its a tough question to answer by “area” because the size of the area you can download at any one time is determined by the zoom level of the charts. The more detail, the more information, the more storage it takes, therefore the less area you can manageably download and any given time.

Bottom line though, is you can now download an immense amount of chart data at one time (100,000 tiles) and you can download as many areas as you like.

Our recommendation is to download a large, medium level zoom of the entire region of the area you’re boating, and then download as many high-detail regions (typically close to shore, or inlets) as you need / like. You can mix and match as much you like as again, there are not any limitations to how often or how many regions you download (save the storage space on your iPad) – just how much you can download at any one time.

One other idea is to create a Route, and then going back to that Route (once its saved) and select “Download Maps for the Track”. Yes, we know, the language doesn’t make too much sense, but what this does is download all of the charts for your specific route at a fairly close zoom level. This is super easy to do once you get the initial hang of it.

We hope this helps…

Argus, CruisersNet and EarthNC team up for a very cool new approach to “crowd sourced” soundings data for boaters.

EarthNC — Wed, 09 May 2012 13:25:13 +0000

As some of you know, our friends at Survice and Cruisernet have been working with a growing fleet of volunteer boaters to collect soundings data from their depth finders. Now, there’s enough data now to show the real promise of crowd sourcing using low-cost hardware and software leveraging on-board depth finders. Below are two screen shoots showing color-coded soundings data in an an inlet at two different zoom levels. One of the first applications that come to mind is the establishment of “bread-crumb” trails in various shallow and narrow waterways. In general, we think this could be a really useful way to compliment conventional, certified soundings data from the USCG as well as User Generated Content navigational data.

Enjoy (and send us your thoughts!),

-The EarthNC Team

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 9, 2012

Salty Southeast Cruisers Net, SURVICE Engineering and EarthNC Form Partnership to Bring Crowd-Sourced Sounding Data to the Cruising Community.

Delray Beach, FL – The Salty Southeast Cruisers’ Net (SSECN), SURVICE Engineering, and EarthNC, Inc. announced today an exciting new partnership that will provide SSECN users with the benefit of 25 million soundings acquired and processed with the ARGUS (Autonomous Remote Global Underwater Surveillance) system. The Salty Southeast Cruisers’ Net (http://www.CruisersNet.net) is the FIRST web site to offer easy access to ARGUS data.

Effective immediately, users of the SSECN’s “Chart View” pages can click a simple checkbox, thereby opening a new ARGUS layer, set over up-to-date images of the NOAA nautical charts. Once selected, the ARGUS layer will display color coded markers which depict the tide corrected solution of soundings gathered by ARGUS cooperative research vessels. This new SSECN tool will be continuously updated as new ARGUS data is received. It will provide the Southeastern USA cruising community with yet another valuable resource to help make mariner’s time on the water a safer and more enjoyable experience.

SSECN has worked closely with ARGUS and EarthNC to integrate ARGUS data into the SSECN’s EarthNC powered “Chart View” pages. Plans are also underway to include ARGUS’s sounding data as a layer in EarthNC’s Marine Charts & Weather iPhone app in a future update.

Salty Southeast Cruisers’ Net co-founder and Editorial Director, Claiborne S. Young, comments:
“We could not have brought this new, exciting resource to the cruising community without the tireless work and cooperation of EarthNC and SURVICE Engineering. The sole impetus for all three of our companies was to make the valuable data gathered by the ARGUS project available to the cruising community in a simple, easy to use and understand format. Working together, we believe that goal has been achieved!”

John Hersey, ARGUS Project Manager, adds: “SSECN readers are the ideal audience for ARGUS solutions, and we’re very excited about this opportunity to provide added value for under-surveyed waterways such as the ICW to those who can most benefit from it. The partnership’s combined expertise will add to the continued development of outputs that will endlessly improve the benefit for recreational boaters. We also look forward to input from SSECN readers in the form of soundings, feedback, and local knowledge to make the solutions even better.”

EarthNC’s Zetterlind adds: “The ARGUS soundings data, supported by SSECN, is an important and innovative approach to crowd-sourced surveying data that compliments traditional navigational data sources. It has huge potential for our customers and is a natural fit for both our web-based and mobile offerings.”

Argghhh!!! New patch creates issues with Apple iOS 4.x users

EarthNC — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:15:51 +0000

All,

Our latest upgrade to our iPhone / iPad app, while fixing the previous bug with a small cluster of users, created potential issues for some users who are using Apple’s iOS version 4.x or earlier. We’re busy working on this fix and should have this out by the end of this week. Alternatively, you can upgrade your iphone / ipad to Apple’s latest iOS version 5.1 (which we would recommend in any event). Sorry about this latest bug…

The EarthNC Team.

Fix is available for Marine Charts version 4.3

EarthNC — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 22:55:52 +0000

We had some isolated issues with our latest version for some of you. We’re sorry about that! The fix is available now in the Appstore so please upgrade as soon as you can.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/marine-charts/id386584429?mt=8

Kind Regards,

The EarthNC Team