Quote:
Originally Posted by cappy208
Now that I have been made aware of 'Drag Queen' I have my whole crew use it on their phones. We often leave a barge in an anchorage. And they (someone has to stay aboard) have no way of knowing (definitively) if they drag. This is a great app!
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DragQueen's goal for me was to figure out what was needed for the alarming part of the problem. I'm still surprised that most other alarms don't provide an alarm when the GPS accuracy becomes too poor to give good data - some devices keep reporting the same lat/lon but give a high HDOP showing that the data isn't good any longer - most alarms will miss that. High HDOP can happen if a storm comes up and if you're sleeping, you might not realize that the anchor alarm isn't really watching any longer which is the exact time you really need it watching. I also learned that an alarm delay is needed for all alarms to limit false positives.
Over the next year, all of that will be combined into the Companion and eBoatCards "Locations". The result will be DragKing (and still all free). DK provides a remote anchor alarm. There will be a lot of reasons to leave a PC, Mac, or phone/tablet onboard collecting your position for updating in eBoatCards - there's a special anchor mode - you'll see. Anyway, if that's being collected, a second Companion will allow you to view and alarm based on the remote location instead of the internal GPS. The result is that while at lunch onshore, you'll have a live anchor alarm showing the state of your boat in it's anchor circle. It'll alarm if you exceed the limits set.
Anchor swing collections (including depth - cool new wireless ways coming to collect and record that) will be part of anchorage markers. That'll allow you to see where others have anchored and what they experienced for depth across a full tide swing. It'll be sorted by friend/group members, etc. giving extra meaning if you know people who've anchored there before. So using the alarm will actually help others in the future who might want to anchor in the same place.
We call this whole new class of capabilities, "social navigation"...