Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Titusville - Aqua Map Master announced

Last year I was selected to be a beta tester for a new iPad navigation app, Aqua Map Marine. The company was formed from former employees of Navionics and I got to work with them on the ground floor, so to speak. I had many years of experience in working with navigation programs and had firm ideas on what should be included.

Today, the culmination of that collaboration was announced in the form of an upgrade to the base application called Aqua Map Master for $10/year. The added capabilities include USACE survey maps as overlays on the NOAA base charts. Now you can navigate a shallow area and have the latest USACE depth survey displayed with color-coded depths right on your iPad screen. It would make short work of getting across the St Johns River into the Pable Creek by Jacksonville. In the fall, it was a major source of groundings when a new shoal formed right in the middle of the passage. The USACE survey clearly showed where it was at and when displayed in Aqua Map, you knew exactly where to go to avoid it.

How much easier it is to have a USACE depth survey displayed when crossing St Johns River into Pablo Creek
You can have that in Aqua Map Master
The Master upgrade also supports AIS from either the Vesper XB-8000 unit or through Signal K. Now you can see the AIS targets right on your navigation display. The same Vesper unit also transmits all NMEA data such as depths, wind speed, and other instrument data for display within Aqua Map;.

As if that wasn't enough, Aqua Map also added Route Explorer for an entered route that shows the cheapest fuel on the route as well as marinas and all lift bridges. Tap on any of the previous items in the list and details will be provided. As you progress on your route, the ETA is displayed for each item so you can easily see when you're due to arrive at a critical bridge that needs to be opened for your passage.

The development team is not done yet, they are very active but I would highly recommend everyone to get this state of the art programs, you won't regret it.

6 comments:

TimC said...

Georgio and the team continue to impress. We're starting to plan our Keys trip for the summer and "Master" will be a key tool. Thanks Bob!

Tim Connolly
Lady Di 4

Anonymous said...

Is it currently or will it be available for Android devices?

M/V Beverly S said...

Adding the ACOE data to the app is positive genious!!! Thanks so much for all that you do Bob.
Sue & Larry

Bob423 said...

Tim C, the Aqua Map team has further enhancements coming, they are an impressive development group. I love working with them.

Anonymous, it will be available for Android too soon.

Larry, the USACE data is unique amongst nav apps. Now you have info that’s better than SonarChart. I talk to Aqua Map developers daily, they are a great bunch.

Ted A said...

A very exciting upgrade!

Doug Peterson said...

WAY TO GO BOB!
I KNOW you were the driving force behind this!
We all owe you big time!