Electronics Mfg PC software

[timjet]

I have both Raymarine's Voyage Planner software and Garmin's Homeport software that are designed to allow route planning on your PC and then have the capability of transferring those routes to your Plotter.

Since I have two plotters made by different companies thankfully both companies software allow routes to be saved in the universally accepted GPX format along with their propriety format. This allows one to create a route in one program and be able to be read by the other. Also a route can be created in one program and using the GPX format then be converted and uploaded into both plotters without the necessity of creating the same route in both programs.

Does anyone have experience with these two programs, Garmin's Homeport and Raymarine's Voyage Planner?

I'm just learning Raymarine's program and it seems amateurish compared to Garmin's. Raymarine's program also seems to have a limit of 50 waypts per route when saving in the GPX format.

Just wondering what you guys think.

Also for you guys who have a primary and backup plotter made by two different companies do you plot your routes separately in each plotter or their associated PC software, essentially a duplication of effort.

 

[rwidman]

I use Garmin's "HomePort" a lot. I plan my trips in advance, then upload them to my Garmin plotters. This makes it pretty easy to stay on course and out of shallow water. I can hand off the helm to my wife and she knows to follow the orange line.

I'm going to say this now before somebody calls me on it: She and I both know to believe what we actually see over what the plotter says.

I not only plot the course, I plot marinas and possible anchorages so we know how far away we are and so we don't accidentally pass them by.

I have no other brand of plotter or software.

 

[timjet]

Thanks Ron,
I like Garmin's Homeport software. It's easy to use and easy to upload routes and waypoints.

I have Garmin's 740 chartplotter which is their entry level touch screen plotter. A great plotter and does more than I need. I recently purchase at a steep discount a Raymarine E90W touch screen unit and radar which has a slighter larger screen for the radar display. I'm getting use to it and have not yet formed an opinion on it as compared to the Garmin unit.

Raymarines software program called Voyage Planner is actually not made by Raymarine but by a second company in Canada.
Raymarine uses Navionics charts so now a third company is involved. The navionics charts have to be uploaded into the software and with all the propriety stuff and their security to prevent someone getting something they shouldn't it gets a little cumbersome.
Another important note, the Navionics electronic charts included in Raymarines chart plotters are Navionics silver charts and don't include tide and current information. Garmin chart do include this and more.

Garmin is far ahead in this area since you're dealing with one company that makes the plotter, produces the software and makes the electronic charts. Gee what an idea, one company produces everything you need.

 

[rwidman]

There is a HomePort users forum here:

https://forums.garmin.com/forumdisplay.php?214-HomePort

There's not a lot of action on it at the moment but it's better than nothing.

 

[timjet]

Garmin's forums are terrible compared to Raymarines. They are absolutely no help in providing information on installation questions. I have found Garmins forums for the most part to be useless.

Raymarines forum on the other hand is pretty good and categorized in a way that makes sense. I have used it several times.

However, both companies phone tech help is excellent.

 

[rwidman]

Garmin's forums are terrible compared to Raymarines. They are absolutely no help in providing information on installation questions. I have found Garmins forums for the most part to be useless.

Raymarines forum on the other hand is pretty good and categorized in a way that makes sense. I have used it several times.

However, both companies phone tech help is excellent.

The forums are intended to be user to user. Occasionally a tech will answer a question. As far as installing HomePort is concerned, it's just like any other software.