Egad!!! Not Another Monark 1644 Project ....

[cavman138]

wow, you may have the most technologically advanced tinboat in the world. Looks great.

Hey man my company does lake mapping/bathymetry mapping for all kinds of customers. Whats the cost of that setup? Where are you located?

 

[longjohn119]

The basic computer $400 (A modified $270 netbook), with the additions in the boat $500. About another $150 in software, mainly Win7. I bought a bunch of GPS programs from a pro walleye tournament fisherman after his sponsor bought him a $3000 chartplotter/depthfinder and he retired his laptop. He kept all the map CDs and sold me just the programs for 50 bucks. I believe it was part of a package Bruce 'Doc' Samson put together or at least modeled on his system https://www.hightechfishing.com/

Earlier in this thread I explain the purpose of this project, I believe these could be manufactured to similar specs and sold for under $500 and there is indeed a market for them. I started out with a fishfinder GPS with no background maps, then a used Pocket PC with GPS puck (Way too small) then a 15" laptop (Worked well but was too bulky and sucked a lot of juice). I've been throwing around this idea for a couple of years but using 'single board' computer and small separate LCD monitor but could never get the cost down. Then last Fall I saw what some people were doing with these little netbooks and the 2nd generation ones like mine are fairly powerful, cheap, and hackable. Finding a netbook that already had a WWAN modem embedded (I have one already that uses the USB port) was a bonus, finding that the WWAN modem also had GPS and just needed to have it enabled was a really big bonus because otherwise I would have an external USB modem and an external USB GPS (Velcro a GPS puck to my hat) making it awkward to use as a field GIS style unit.

I still have several updates to do, this weekend the boat details, I want to document how I made it work on 12V without using an auto adapter,(You still need to use an auto laptop power adapter to charge the battery) and one on my GPS and cellular antennas and maybe some on setting up voice control to work with GPS programs (Which I've barely begun)

 

[rghering]

I must say impressive... I am a Network Admin by trade and have been wondering what to do with my many spare laptops and netbooks I have laying around the house.
This looks like a really neat project.

I just might have to do something on a similar level with my project boat.
First time I took her out I streamed pandora via my phone the entire trip but it would be nice to have a
local selection as well as a larger GPS display as the Droids screen is hard to read in the sun.
I've got a couple of older toughbooks that might fit the bill.

Ohh as a side note my company was recently asked to come up with a portable mesh wireless network that could be used to stream
fishing tourny's FROM the boats and hot fishing spots to ustream.tv. This is taking an enormous amount of wireless engineering to figure out.

 

[cavman138]

Let me know if you have a prototype that you want someone else to test. I'd be glad to give it a try. Might even be able to get my boss to buy from you if we could figure out how to make up the maps and reports.

 

[ncfishin]

Man, I'm gonna tell you the truth. If I'm on the boat fishin, that's what I want to do. Thank technology for the fish and depth finder. I got no room on the water for the internet. Maybe if I wanted someone to track my movements for me? If you aint got time to fish, there's no time left.