I have been using on board my sailing kayak and sailing canoe for more than a decade the Crosscall line of toughened, Android-based smart phones and, especially the toughened Smart tablet Crosscall T4 of which I own two. This equipment has none of the drawbacks mentioned in the article, which are common to most smartphones which were never designed to handle all-weather operation in the first place.
A little know but oft used technique for navigating in the fog on the river is to listen to the frogs along shore. When you drift too close to shore they shout out the water depth, "knee deep, knee deep."
So many people discount handheld gps devices in favor of cell phones without even trying them. I assumed that was to save money and they put up with the sensitivity to water and poor screen use in sunlight as they may need the use of a navigation device only a week or two a year. I have been using a Garmin Montana for several years and it works just fine. Also it costs less than the full retail of the Maptattoo. My gps renders the charts in color and the graphics are vector rather than raster. My unit uses more power than the one presented here but it is still a tiny amount and the unit can be easily connected to the boats electrical system (there is a clever mount that not only powers the unit but charges the internal battery as well). I don't mean to rain on these guy's parade, but I don't think I am going to replace my Garmin with a MapTattoo.
I agree with Chuck in that my old handheld Garmin 76 did what I needed, until the screen finally burned up too many pixels due to exposure to CA sun. Has the MapTattoo screen been tested for extended sun exposure? I was going to replace mine with a similar handheld, but found that smaller chartplotters are priced less than new handhelds. For 1/4 of a MapTattoo price my new unit is a Garmin echomap UHD 64CV, with color screen and pushbuttons not touch. Power consumption is 7X the MapTattoo at 2.8 W, but that is a small part of the available solar. It has no internal battery and needs a cable, that is a negative. The most concerning item with MapTattoo to me is proprietary charts, I would need to see years of positive reports before committing.
Hi Rick, Erwan here, I am the founder of MAPTATTOO.
A typical issue with UV exposure on screens is yellowing of the polycarbonate external layer. Under atmosphere, the cause is oxidation accelerated by UVAs and UVBs. Our screen is bonded to the glass, which protects the polycarbonate layer and prevent oxidation (no oxygen). We are also adding a UV protection on our glass. We have been conducting accelerated UV exposure tests and are still conducting some. We will share the results.
Lastly, with regards to charts, we will release on online converter that our customers can use to convert standard S57 charts into our proprietary format. This will allow US customers to use charts available for free from NOAA.
Thank you for the thoughtful response Erwan. On my Garmin the failure was darkening of individual pixels, I do not know if it was due to UV damage or overall heating from the absorbed spectrum. The entire unit could get hot enough to shut off if not protected from long term direct sun.
If you are really planning to make free charts available then I am impressed. The Garmin business model is like ink sales with printers, much of the profit comes from selling updates.
Thanks Rick, we do not intend to make a profit on charts. We do sell them for now because it takes some effort and money to get updates regularly, store them. For countries other than USA, we also have some effort to update the hydrographic organizations on our charts sales and pay them royalties. But for USA, we have no problem at all allowing users to use free S57. We just have to make our converter available. It is not available on the web yet but the effort is nominal.
Erwan, would it be possible to get a good view of how the product displays depth information? Can you set different shading levels for depths? It sounds like a great product and after my last several trips having to swap Ipads or batteries all the time i would love something better.
If you navigate to https://www.maptattoo.com/specs/ and scroll down, you will see a list of our currently available charts and check coverage. We have some inland lake coverage but only the largest ones in USA.
correct, there are some like Winnebago and Oneida but most are not covered. We are exploring options for smaller inland lakes. A potential future option might be to support geoPDFs.
I have been using on board my sailing kayak and sailing canoe for more than a decade the Crosscall line of toughened, Android-based smart phones and, especially the toughened Smart tablet Crosscall T4 of which I own two. This equipment has none of the drawbacks mentioned in the article, which are common to most smartphones which were never designed to handle all-weather operation in the first place.
A little know but oft used technique for navigating in the fog on the river is to listen to the frogs along shore. When you drift too close to shore they shout out the water depth, "knee deep, knee deep."
Its a good initiative. I hope they can get the price down to something reasonable.
So many people discount handheld gps devices in favor of cell phones without even trying them. I assumed that was to save money and they put up with the sensitivity to water and poor screen use in sunlight as they may need the use of a navigation device only a week or two a year. I have been using a Garmin Montana for several years and it works just fine. Also it costs less than the full retail of the Maptattoo. My gps renders the charts in color and the graphics are vector rather than raster. My unit uses more power than the one presented here but it is still a tiny amount and the unit can be easily connected to the boats electrical system (there is a clever mount that not only powers the unit but charges the internal battery as well). I don't mean to rain on these guy's parade, but I don't think I am going to replace my Garmin with a MapTattoo.
Looking forward to reviewing this and comparing it to my portable waterproof boxed small chart plotter that I built out of off the shelf components.
Sounds like an excellent innovation. I hope the Indiegogo campaign generates lots of sales and the product gets established on the market.
I agree with Chuck in that my old handheld Garmin 76 did what I needed, until the screen finally burned up too many pixels due to exposure to CA sun. Has the MapTattoo screen been tested for extended sun exposure? I was going to replace mine with a similar handheld, but found that smaller chartplotters are priced less than new handhelds. For 1/4 of a MapTattoo price my new unit is a Garmin echomap UHD 64CV, with color screen and pushbuttons not touch. Power consumption is 7X the MapTattoo at 2.8 W, but that is a small part of the available solar. It has no internal battery and needs a cable, that is a negative. The most concerning item with MapTattoo to me is proprietary charts, I would need to see years of positive reports before committing.
Hi Rick, Erwan here, I am the founder of MAPTATTOO.
A typical issue with UV exposure on screens is yellowing of the polycarbonate external layer. Under atmosphere, the cause is oxidation accelerated by UVAs and UVBs. Our screen is bonded to the glass, which protects the polycarbonate layer and prevent oxidation (no oxygen). We are also adding a UV protection on our glass. We have been conducting accelerated UV exposure tests and are still conducting some. We will share the results.
Lastly, with regards to charts, we will release on online converter that our customers can use to convert standard S57 charts into our proprietary format. This will allow US customers to use charts available for free from NOAA.
Thank you for the thoughtful response Erwan. On my Garmin the failure was darkening of individual pixels, I do not know if it was due to UV damage or overall heating from the absorbed spectrum. The entire unit could get hot enough to shut off if not protected from long term direct sun.
If you are really planning to make free charts available then I am impressed. The Garmin business model is like ink sales with printers, much of the profit comes from selling updates.
Thanks Rick, we do not intend to make a profit on charts. We do sell them for now because it takes some effort and money to get updates regularly, store them. For countries other than USA, we also have some effort to update the hydrographic organizations on our charts sales and pay them royalties. But for USA, we have no problem at all allowing users to use free S57. We just have to make our converter available. It is not available on the web yet but the effort is nominal.
Erwan, would it be possible to get a good view of how the product displays depth information? Can you set different shading levels for depths? It sounds like a great product and after my last several trips having to swap Ipads or batteries all the time i would love something better.
Jess, Here is a photo I just took.
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/media.maptattoo.com/image_67169537.JPG
You can see the light grey that indicates shallow waters (for now set at 2m but in the future, this will be configurable).
You can also see uncovering seabed in hashed background.
Depth soundings appear (in meters here)
What charts does it use? Are inland lakes available?
Hello Henry, I am MAPTATTOO's founder.
If you navigate to https://www.maptattoo.com/specs/ and scroll down, you will see a list of our currently available charts and check coverage. We have some inland lake coverage but only the largest ones in USA.
Thank you. I see that only the Great Lakes are available; no local lakes.
correct, there are some like Winnebago and Oneida but most are not covered. We are exploring options for smaller inland lakes. A potential future option might be to support geoPDFs.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/maptattoo-the-e-ink-gps-tablet-for-small-boats#/
I don't see technical details, but you have to buy charts from them.