All the capability of Portable Navigator Survey - PLUS
New Portable Navigator Server broadcasts all the available text data, charts and images on your boat's LAN as pages of a website hosted by PN7.2 onwards and the VBB tool on your Navigation PC. Adding a LAN router to your boat is very easy and inexpensive! Just buy a small low cost USB powered travel router e.g. the TP-LINK Nano Router (typical price around £30). This can either be powered from a USB cigar lighter adaptor or from a USB port on the Navigation PC. Normally this can be located on the navigation table. The factory default settings of the router we tried allowed it to work "out of the box", so all that was needed was to search for and join it's default network, using the password printed on the router and the PC's Settings / Network. This step should only be necessary the first time you use the router. Imagine the advantages of this: Any Portable Device, Smart Phone or Tablet anywhere on the vessel can now access all the latest navigation and survey data including Charts, AIS charts, Raster Charts, Data trend and Magnified Survey plots, and AIS Collision Potential analysis with the ability to replay the latest AIS New Target audio announcement. E.g. For the helmsman or with the person manning the survey equipment. Multiple devices can simultaneously connect. Shown here with an iPhone 6:
New PN Extended Config Preset Editor Tool to quickly configure some of the additional settings you may need without having to use the multiple PN dialogues. The simple user interface has intuitive switch controls:
New Parser String Maker Tool to simplify creating and managing Log format, Autopilot and VBB parser strings. Save your favourite parser strings in the drop-down history list for quick recall:
New AIS parser terms for Video Black Board and server use. The maximum chart size has been increased. Editing charts now includes Chart Area Select and Copy/Delete operations. This helps you to more easily edit charts and add detailed port plans to passage planning charts. New chart line styles for pilotage and exclusion zones. Thick coastline option for better visibility.
Portable Navigator 7 has been completely updated to fully comply with the latest versions of Windows 7 through 10. The development environment that we now use is the latest Embarcadero RAD Studio 10 system, which ensures that our software is compliant with the latest code standards. Also PN no longer requires the Windows "virtual store" mechanism. This makes locating your logged data files much easier. Microsoft say that they will eventually remove "virtual store".
Some new waypoint shapes including Video Information waypoints which enable you to associate video clips with information waypoints using, for example short clips of pilotage information. New Magnified Plot data filtering enabling you to omit missed or zero values from plots e.g. sounder data.
In addition to the advanced data logging facilities provided by PN Survey Software Portable Navigator Survey 7.2.7, the latest version of Portable Navigator, has AIS based collision potential analysis. It has now been fully tested with Windows 10. There are new File Viewer tools for Waypoint files, Route files and the Quick Log. Also the help file has been expanded and revised. Plus latest version of NMEApro for magnetometers, bug fixes and other minor improvements.
The results of the AIS based collision potential analysis are displayed in the AIS Visible Targets List. Every time the list is updated the visible targets are analysed for collision potential by looking at changes in the target's bearing, the result being displayed in the left column, headed Passes. The range of target for analysis and the auto list refresh time can be set. The default values are Range = 5 Nm and Auto Refresh Rate = 30secs. If a target is outside the range, anchored, moored, stopped, aground or your own speed is 0 then the analysis is not carried out and a " - " is placed in the Passes column. Other possible Passes status results are: Danger?, Ahead, Astern and Passed, the latter being when the distance of the target is increasing between list refreshes. This is the same process as using a hand bearing compass when crossing shipping lanes but automated using AIS data to provide better security.
Read more about Portable Navigator Survey
For a full description of this find out more by downloading the HTML Help file ? (Problems reading this help file? Click here).