Hi!
I'm turning my hobby (mapping lakes...) into a small business here and would appreciate your thoughts on some issues I've come across. Creating and selling charts for plotters (Lowrance, Humminbird and Garmin) is fairly easy to do without uppsetting anyone as long as you get the permits required and buy licenses for the programs you use, but what about maps for Iphone/Android users? I find the .kmz maps from RM great, but is it legal to sell a chart that need for example the Google earth app to display it? I can't figure it out by reading Googles terms of use, and google won't reply on this issue. (I understand that no one here can give me permission, but interested in your thoughts anyway!)
Anyone here that has found a good app for displaying RM charts? The ideal thing for me would be a dedicated app for RM with some possibility to copy-protect the maps, but I guess that's asking a lot from Matt! ;-)
Appreciate your inputs,
Markus

Can't see a problem with creating a chart that needs a specific application to display it. KMZ files can be displayed in numerous applications, and are VERY easy to produce and copy. Suggest you try something like Memory-Map which uses qct format if you are concerned.

Trevor

Charts for Lowrance units in the AT5 format for selling?

Note: The IMC is restricted for noncommercial use.
If not, You must ask Navico for licence. Do You have experiences (costs per license, conditions).

Jorg,

hes not asking about displaying AT5 charts on an iPad. He's asking about formats for other devices. AT5 is simply an option in RM, there are plenty of other formats possible, although some require a few more steps.

T

Yes Trevor, this is clear for me. But Markus also wrote;

"... Creating and selling charts for plotters (Lowrance, Humminbird and Garmin) is fairly easy ..."

and in this context i hope this question is allowed.


Best wishes
Jörg

Hi Trevor and Jörg!
Thanks for your inputs. I wasn't aware there are other apps for displaying .kmz-files, guess I should have done my homework better...:-)
I have an agreement and license from Navico for commercial use of the IMC toolkit. In my opinion, Lowrance currently offers the best way of displaying the RM-charts, and a great copy-protection as well, but many anglers don't have a plotter. Here in sweden ice-fishing in the winter is popular and most people have a smartphone/tablet so a .kmz map can be most useful when you don't want to drag along your plotter and car battery... :-)

Trevor, I looked at your charts displayed in Memory-map and it looks great, is there any kind of copy-protection built in to that app? Also, I understand there is a fee for the user before a custom map can be displayed?
I might be overly concerned about copying, but forwarding a .kmz-map is so easy...
Best wishes,
Markus

I build the users name into all my memory-map charts, easy enough if you only distribute a very limited number, but a pain if you do a lot I imagine. You need to purchase a 3rd party licence before you can use externally produced memory-map charts.

T

Markus,
What progress have you made toward commercializing your mapping work?
AnglingCharts use of Memory-Map is interesting but the cost of entry for vendor and customer has held me back. As I am working on this long post, and thinking, I am starting to see why AnglingCharts is using Memory-Map. It is one of the few multi platform. At the moment I am still using DrDepth to survey and generate maps but I hold a RM license and am working to bring myself up to speed on RM and see how I can use it.

My Mapping Life Story:
I am also am trying to do something commercial with my maps. The main reason I started is for personal and business use. My wife started a standup paddleboard business doing teaching and excursions and taking people safely into the local backwaters is really tricky, and also, we are restoring a little steel gaff rigged schooner for charters, so all in all, doing our own charts seems a natural. We have a lot of water here in CapeFear,NC,USA but much of it is spread very thin and then there are the oyster banks and abandoned broken off piling stubs, ouch.
Getting started, the Dr Depth tools have been great and they provide some really great tablet/phone tools but alas they are no longer available to others even though we still have them for our own use. That got me looking.
At the moment I am generating DrDepth maps and using MAPC2MAPC to convert them to KAP charts and also to merge my data with freely available USA Raster KAP Charts and with Google Earth KAP charts created with GE2KAP (not sure about using GE images in commercial product). The most promising thing I have found for our own immediate use to replace the no longer available DrDepth tablet software is 'SEAiq OPEN' that will display user provided KAP files and like AnglingCharts I could embed the user name on the charts but SEAiq is Apple_IOS only and has a $50US cost for user. Looking at the Android world for user provided KAP chart plotters is not yielding much.
Today I am on the forum looking to see what SW tools others are using for map work. I am wondering about making ENC charts (S-57 or S-63 , I guess) and looking at open source GIS SW like GRASS, QGIS, etc.......
Lots to think about !

Hi George,
I have not yet found a good solution to displaying RM-charts on smartphones/tablets. At the moment I focus on maps for Lowrance. I use RM and then Qgis for labeling etc and encrypt the maps with IMC (I am a "toolkit partner" to Lowrance). It is a quite steep learning curve with Qgis, but a lot of help and tutorials can be found online. :-)

I think Google Earth would do fine for displaying RM-charts if copy-protection was possible. I read some users have problems getting their position in the maps. It seems to be an issue with the android version of Google Earth, positioning in Google Earth works on Iphone/Ipad.
Best regards,
M

If you produce an RM chart as a series of scaled rasters, then create georeferenced jpg or png files and you will subsequently be able to create Memory-Map qct files. Memory-Map runs on Android, Windows and Ios. This is a perfect format for home made charts, although, because they are raster rather than vector, they can get a little large if you want useable large scale charts. You'll see an example on my website of a chart (created using traditional bathymetric analysis rather than RM), and running (beautifully) on an iPad. The principle is exactly the same for RM charts however.

Don't even think about s57 as a viable "home creation" format.

At the moment (I think....haven't looked for a couple of weeks) it is not possible to create useable vector charts for use on iPad, you may also want to look at Oruxmaps and Locus for Android charts - both of which I have played with but making practical, useable marine charts easily is still, shall we say, non trivial.

T