[brak]

Looking for testers to kick tires of yet another application.

PolarCOM is an integrated NMEA 0183 marine navigation instrument data bridge and multipurpose data display. Available for Apple Mac OS X and Windows systems, it provides:

* Support for multiple NMEA 0183 data sources and instrument types
* TCP and UDP network server support permits sharing your NMEA 0183 data with network-enabled navigation software. (Personally I tested with a few production packages, which I will not name to avoid promoting competition )
* NMEA data logging and replay capability
* Customizable set of digital instruments for data display, providing virtually infinite combinations of views (which actually look a little better than text boxes).

The current version is 0.1 ALPHA That means - it probably has a personal bug for each of you

We are very much interested in feedback - in particular on types of information (both NMEA data and display values) you are most interested to see added next.

Visit Polar Navy and follow to products page to see screenshots and to Polar Navy to download.

 

[brak]

Quiet. Must be Easter.

Well, we've got easter bunnies. Not really.

This application really needs testers - I will never have access to as much data producing hardware as really is needed to validate and build support for.

 

[denby]

brak,

I'll down load it tonight when I get home and take a look at it. I'm not very good with computers but I will play with it.

 

[JomsViking]

Just downloaded it. Will be testing as soon as I get my boat-computer running.

 

[sailingdog]

I'll be testing the software when I get home and off my work laptop.

 

[brak]

Thanks guys

I just wanted to bump this thread up a bit, hoping someone would notice. I'll leave everyone be for now.

Generally there are 3 directions we'd go with this:
1) Adding more NMEA sentences. This is generally not difficult but to limit clutter it is probably best to add what people actually see out there on their instruments (I have a full list of all the exotic NMEA sentences and haven't seen 90% of them "in the wild").

2) Adding more (or different kinds) of instruments. This again depends on whether there is any demand for non-digital instruments (i.e. simulated analog dials or graph-style history logs, for example).

3) Finally, more intelligent data bridge functionality - again it depends on whether users actually want to configure port priority or specific sentences to be or not be sent to some ports. If it turns out that the only mode it will be used in is a single serial connection - complicating bridge functionality may not be the wisest move.

So, real life testing is definitely important to determine what the heck to do next (if anything)

 

[jarcher]

I have a pretty good computer background so I'll give it a try.

What language did you implement it in?

 

[brak]

this is a collection of things using a number of technologies actually (though it may not look like that from the outside)
of course it is all a native code

 

[tdw]

Brak,
Downloaded,,,will play later on this evening. Cheers.