Fish Tech | The Fishermen Friendly iPad Navigation App

I doubt that any commercial fishing vessel would rely on simply an ipad to navigate the boat.  However, it looks like the iPad could be useful on the vessel for something else than just streaming video. With AIS, GPS, and Wifi, you can easily turn that tech toy into a piece of hardened marine equipment.  I highly suggest the Lifeproof iPhone or Ipad case before you decide to bring the iDevice to the fishing grounds.  There are a number of different navigation apps for the iPad and iNavX rises to the top with easy chart downloads, AIS compatibility, and easy waypoint execution.  The key here is the ability to download raster charts, the ones that look just like the old paper ones, directly to the iDevice as needed.  The app will recognize your position and recommend charts in that area.  Once the charts are downloaded, you can use the app offline.  There are other apps for marine navigation, such as, Navionics and Navimatics.  These apps sell for much cheaper, but you are stuck with proprietary charts that only work in that program.  iNavX is a whopping 50 bucks on the app store and its a great purchase.  You won’t need any other marine app on your boat, though.  If you are a Mac guy, there is iNavX laptop software for Mac OSX.

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