How to plot with my chartplotter?

[veedubtek]

Ok. Guide me to some chartplotting for dummies here. Like, yay, it's cool, I can turn it on and it shows a bread crumb trail so I can make it back to the dock. Pretty handy for sure. But, there's gotta be 1,000 other things this thing can do that I don't know how to. Mainly, how about living up to it's name and plotting charts? Like, to Bimini and maybe to snorkeling spots over there and what not.

I'm referring to mostly my Elite 4-HDI on the ski. Oddly enough, the thing has tracked well and showed depth charts even all year thus far. When putting the transducer in today, I was digging in the box and found an SD card "Lake Pro v15". Didn't have a card in it at all before, so what is this card gonna do for me that it didn't do already?

Any and all tips appreciated! Can't believe I haven't tried to figure one of these things out yet since I'm technically on my 3rd one now, heh. I guess it's just not needed much when your primary boating is on an 88-shore mile lake.

 

[Murf'n'surf]

Learning how to drop waypoints is the key. Drop them as you explore and later that night label them with a name so you know what they are later down the road.

As for plotting a course beforehand, it's a little hard unless you are a big boat that has to stay inside marked channels. You might plot your course through shallow water or submerged objects. I'm not sure how much map detail your specific plotter has so these are general suggestions.

After you visit the area, you can plot a path using your breadcrumbs and waypoints.

 

[veedubtek]

I guess I'm not looking for a turn-by-turn guidance, but more like the ability to say "I wanna go to these coords - just show me an arrow" type deal?

 

[robert843]

Oh these things are fun lol. I have not experience with the model you have but the basic way most work is there should be a chart feature. Once in that feature you can go ahead and manually chart your routes and save them. Later you when it's needed you go back and activate or start the route from you starting location. For Bimini it should not be bad start you chart at the mouth of port Everglades and I would make my second chart point just before the mouth of the Bimini Channel. This should take you in a straight line to Bimini easy enough as there is nothing to really need to navigate around. As for the stuff around Bimini you can save way points likely for places you want to in advance but with out manually charting it the gps is going to direct you in a straight line it won't care depth or if your track runs through an island or anything. To do it safely you would need to go in and manually track the safe course it's kind of a pain. Some of the new Garmin gps units have the ability to add automatic safe routing where it will chart you path for you in a safe route buts it a really expensive add on.

 

[2nazt]

I was able to download the charts @Bruce posted in the Bimini thread and upload to my GPS and can select that route. Maybe save it on a SD card and upload to plotter. I am not sure on that model but the MFG may have software to download and make plots on the computer and transfer over also or use something like Navionics to make a plot and save it and transfer to plotter. There seems to be a lot of leg work in making a chart plotter act like a GPS in a car I have noticed.


I also downloaded pre made trips from this to use well on my ski loaded to my Garmin unit.http://www.pwctrailfinder.com

 

[waterboy]

Not sure about your brand of plotter, but my Garmin has some computer software called Homeport. It allows you to preplan routes on your computer, add waypoints, etc and transfer them to the Chartplotter via the SD card. Then once on the water, you select your desired waypoint and it will show you the way. As mentioned, some of the nicer plotters will also route you around shallow areas, land and other things you dont want to run over, in other words, keep you in the channel.

I hate to say, time to break out the manual...

 

[Julian]

Yep....will take someone with your model to explain it. My Garmin allows you to browse the map and mark waypoints. Then you can enter another menu and say navigate to waypoint. It will chart your course via the safest route it can find. If there is nothing between you and the destination it will just show a straight line.

The SD card you found probably just gives you better resolution to the lakes, and possibly fishing spots.

 

[veedubtek]

Yup. Been workin on the manual for a bit now, and successfully have implemented the house we're staying at in Bimini. Now, I just gotta figure out how to do it on PC and transfer all that over. Thanks!

 

[robert843]

Not sure about your brand of plotter, but my Garmin has some computer software called Homeport. It allows you to preplan routes on your computer, add waypoints, etc and transfer them to the Chartplotter via the SD card. Then once on the water, you select your desired waypoint and it will show you the way. As mentioned, some of the nicer plotters will also route you around shallow areas, land and other things you dont want to run over, in other words, keep you in the channel.

I hate to say, time to break out the manual...

Thanks @waterboy I just looked and the Homeport thing is compatible with my Garmin gps I'm going to have to see if that makes life easier! I currently dread anytime I need to manually chart something as my gps screen is small. I have used the navionics app more then my dedicated gps due to this hopefully this helps.

 

[waterboy]

@robert843 The Homeport software is pretty easy to use. Just make sure you have the SD card plugged into the computer, transfer data to the card and make sure to download waypoints, etc from the card to the plotter.

One other thing I learned is that you may name something on your computer, say like "Sapona". The plotter will truncate to like 4-5 letters so some of your waypoints you can't tell apart from others. Check into the number of characters early and it may save you some trouble later on the plotter. Sorry I can;t recall number of characters, etc...

 

[robert843]

@waterboy you are the man my good sir and def owe you a beer the next time I see you if you only knew how many hours you just saved me! I was able to find a way for me to use the autocharting feature on my Navionics app that automatically uploads the safest route between two points and save the file in a certain format that will upload into homeport and then I transferred it over to the gps. No more manual charting for this guy! I was trying to route a very difficult part of my upcoming trip and it was going to be a huge pain now it was done in just about 1 minute. I was shocked I got it to work as Naviionics is not supposed to be compatible with Garmin but it worked great once I got it in the correct format.

 

[waterboy]

Very cool. Glad you got it to work. I really like the Homeport software. When looking at plotters, I didn't even consider the computer software side of the equation so I cannot comment on the other brands. I will say that Garmin nailed that part of it real well though.

 

[Bill D]

@robert843 do you mind sharing some more details on how you were able to pull that off? Thanks!

 

[robert843]

@robert843 do you mind sharing some more details on how you were able to pull that off? Thanks!

@Bill D sure I choose the example below because even though its only a 5.3nm distance it has 112 way points and would have took for ever to manually chart.

Step 1
Go into the navionics app on your smart phone or tablet. Using the dock to dock charting feature on the app it will automatically chart the safe path. Once it has charted the route for you hit the information button ( i with the circle around it)





Step 2
Hit the forward/ Share button on the top right of the below screen




Step 3
It will then ask you how you would like to share it send it to your self as an email.






Step 4

One you get the email two links will have been sent to you click the download link and click (save as) when the box pops up name the file and save it as a klm file on a pc.






Step 5

If you have already downloaded the Homeport software for free from the garmin web site open it. Click the file tab and in that tab is a Import to my collection button hit it and upload the klm file. This will upload all the waypoints.





Step 6

Scroll down the waypoint tab to the bottom you will see a route key or you can use the new route key at the top of the page and it will convert the way points into a route after that click the file tab again and the export key at this point you can export the route on to a sd card or directly on the gps if you have it pluged into the computer. This whole process took aproxomitly one minute for this route which had 112 waypoint which would have likely taken me 10-30 minutes to manually route depending on what I was using.

 

[veedubtek]

A little googling says you can use homeport and save as a gpx file to upload to a lowrance too.... Might have to play around with that later.

 

[Bill D]

Thanks @robert843! That is awesome.

 

[tim h]

Nice !
I didn't know you could get Navionics routes over to your chartplotter through Homeport...