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Comment by pnut | Hacker News Reader

HN crowd maybe doesn't appreciate it, but the marine sensor networking world, route plotting, and related tasks are an atrocious cesspool of overpriced, weirdly incompatible proprietary solutions.

Regular people save literally tens of thousands of dollars per install by going open source in this space, and end up with superior toolkits.

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I won't say we ended up with anything superior, but we definitely benefited on cost as you mention! We have an intro writeup of our experience using OpenPlotter and a Raspberry Pi-based setup here.

https://sailingcourage.xyz/projects/plotter/

Something also not often realized is that many, many sailboats are actually quite old (20, 30, 50 years!) and so are their on-board electronics. Any chance to update wiring, instruments, diagram out on-board electronics, etc. is probably a really good opportunity for nav system and overall boat maintenance.

In the US Commercial Tug & Barge market, Rose Point Navigation (out of Redmond, WA) has a near 100% saturation of the navigation software market. Why does nobody disrupt them? The overlap between experts in software and experts in vessel navigation is pretty low. Take a look at the technical specifications of their platform here and see if you can crack that out in a weekend: https://www.rosepoint.com/rose-point-ecs/

In recreational vessels, our needs are more basic, but even us geeks may be more prone to shell out $500 - $2000 to Garmin or Raymarine for a hardened chart plotter MFD that "just works", is waterproof, and robust at least in the nav function. I got a "deal" on a Raymarine Axiom Pro which has both touchscreen and a keypad mode for when the rain interferes with the display, has nav, ais, radar, sonar display, engine gauges, and tons of other features, it is running some version of Android. It's really good honestly. When the wind is howling and the waves are high, it's not necessarily a good time to do some hacking and bug hunting on the nav platform. I do plenty hacking on my boat in the sensor integration world, but that's another story...

Why are the color palettes used in these maps always so ugly? And they're not even color blind proof either!

Because the colours are standardised and embed important information. These are tools, not aesthetic objects. A lot of the palette is preserved from paper charts where they need to be readable under red light when underway at night.

For a masterpiece of technical documentation dig up a copy of admiralty chart 5011 for a dive into the colours and symbology used.

It's an international standard so all professionals that read the maps never have to guess what the colors mean. In commercial vessels, you need to follow the Solas standards. This also means that you need certified hardware and software for the chart plotters.

People get pretty far with tablet apps these days (literally), and there is a good market for the development of the apps. Hardware integration is always the challenge.

See 59-north for examples of offshore sailing schools who seem to have found a good mix of modern and reliable

https://www.sailmagazine.com/cruising/navigating-by-tablet

The only thing I don’t like about a tablet is that it will ruin your night vision. Integrated marine electronics usually cater to that pretty well.

Depends on the tablet navigation software you use. Orca has a very decent night mode.

And for anyone wondering about an opportunity to shake up the market just estimate TAM and you'll see quickly why boat stuff is priced at such a premium.

The number of people using things like Open plotter is even smaller, but still greatly appreciated by all!

I'm confused why does this mean no one can Carplay-ify the plotter/charting world for boats?

Mostly sailors are very conservative and the technology has to be bulletproof. The saying goes that Murphy was an optimistic sailor. Plotters are a marriage of RADAR and paper charts. The technical integrations are really no trouble for the average system administrator. The problem comes about with the challenges of the environment and the uniqueness of every installation. The market is also small. I think the estimate is around 10,000 yachts actively moving around the world.

Another issue is that there are very few makers or the technology.

I think it's a great area for development because it is immature and in the middle of technical upheaval that nobody really knows what how great a plotter could be.

Making CarPlay for boats would not be so hard, but making Waze for recreational boats might be. But if you have ideas on that and are sure you can avoid directing people into deadly obstacles, considering all sea and weather conditions, in all kinds of boats, give it a go!

All commercial plotters have autorouting. There is automatic wind routing for sailing in OpenCPN (as a plugin). I'm not sure that adding it to a phone with carplay is a viable option. If you have a display to show it on, it's probably a display for a plotter with all the functionality, including map updates over the internet.

Thou for entertainment it's an other side, that would be useful.

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