ORCA | a tablet based navigation that's smarter than the rest
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 ต.ค. 2024
- You may have heard of this latest tablet based navigations device as it's been around for a little while now. We've had ours for over a year a sailed over 5,000 miles with it so it's now had a fare test.
In the early days there were some glitches but the product showed good promise and there have been a constant stream of updated to iron out and improve things. I think they've come up with an impressive, powerful bit of kit that's definitely worth looking at, so here's my review.
You can learn more from their website here;
getorca.com/
The coverage map is difficult to find, but if you want to see it it's here... getorca.com/or...
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/ sailingfairisle
Great to see the innovation these folks are bringing to the navigation market. Thanks for the thoughtful review.
Thank you for the overview, Orca is one of the apps I have been kind of looking at. A lot of really good information
Hi Steve. Excellent review. Thanks. Certainly will be adding this to the navigation installation on my boat as our refit progresses. Hopefully we'll be in the water for January/February next year. All the best. Steve G
Great review and fascinating especially given the RYA have now moved to a digital first approach.
As someone who’s had a few boats but still relatively a novice, I very much enjoyed your video. I have just bought a Sax door 400 GTC, with a view of doing some long extended adventures in a way that the boat probably was not built for. it comes with, or rather I ordered, three screens for the Simrad system and will now research if there is enough value it getting this as well. Safe voyages to you and yours.
Thank you for another great bit of info. Orca seems to be a nice piece of kit to have and play with ;-) I like the customizability, the log seems a great thing to have. It takes the boat navigation to the level of aircraft navigation. Whether it is necessary or not is a different question; but then cruising sailing is about having fun more than just travelling from A to B.
agree love the system, but hate the lack of maps for the rest of the world :-) - not ready for prime-time outside Northern Europe yet.
I use Orca too. I also have a Simrad. Orca is lightyears ahead. I use my Simrad as backup only nowadays.
Thanks Steve. Loved it. Just wish there was more on the logbook.
very insightful and informative! thank you for the run down
Very good review, thx. I've been using the app on my phone as I carry out a lot of deliveries and every boat has a different system to get used too, so orca has been a big time and hassle saver for me. Now looking at the features of core based system I'm very tempted to add it to my own boat.
Nice update. Orca should thank you !
Perfect timing for us, I’ve been playing with a few apps lately and wondering how to interconnect with my Raymarine to provide a system suitable for all crew onboard. I downloaded Orca a few months ago but hadn’t really got to grips with it. Your video convinced me to subscribe, I’ll try it for a while and may upgrade to the Core for next season. Thanks for a very informative video.
Beware when relying on tablets and phones for navigation. Just completed a 2 week trip sailing the coast of California and the iPad and 2 of the iPhones failed due to logic board issues. Despite a waterproof casing for the iPad and the IP68 rating for the iPhones, they couldn’t hold up to heavy fog, dampness, salt air and an incessantly damp charge cable in the cockpit. You never can be sure what kind of weather conditions you’ll be facing.
That's interesting. Obviously we don't rely on the tablets for navigation as we have the onboard plotter, but in 8 years of solid sailing now from ice in Holland to sun and torrential tropical rain in the Caribbean we've not had a single device go down and we don't use waterproof housings. The main problem we have is the charging cables / ports become unreliable because of corrosion. I spray with contact cleaner often but still the charging seems to get more and more patchy. You can get around it with wireless charging which we do for the phones. I might have to buy a new ipad just for the induction charging!
@@svfairisle Thanks for the response. Yes, it seems like inductive charging with an inductive charger at the binnacle, with the connections completely protected, should do the trick. We have a similar USB charger in our cockpit as you have, but it corroded quickly. Haven't been able to find a marine grade one. The ipad charge cable was always getting kicked out despite efforts to place it out of the way, and it would then get wet. The charge ability of the ipad of course failed as we found ourselves in a rocky area at night.
Comprehensive overview. Nice.
Thanks for your overview and insights, very interesting.
Thanks I found that interesting. I’ve got to make some decisions on electronics options soon. Am anticipating one of the main instrument manufacturers for primary systems but would like to understand backup options so this was good info and looking at the website I didn’t think it was ‘too’ expensive. I’d really like to understand differences of Navionics and Orca to OpenCPN capabilities at another time.
Excellent overview/review.
Great intro. Thanks. I also prefer the iPad and can recommend the Paperlike screen protector. Not only does it take the glare from the screen, but it makes using the Apple Pencil a much better experience - and it protects an expensive piece of kit.
Interesting thanks
So... you cood map out pirats from old data points. Very usful!😀🤙
I like the concept. If that concept is central unit that manages and logs all the data and you connect to it with whatever you want.
I am growing tired of these £2k chartplotters that are out of support in 3 or 4 years 😞 but tablet chartplotters can be a bit flakey and prone to running out of power at that crucial moment.
Equally, opencpn is now very good. Sooner or later someone will relase a turnkey opencpn/raspberryPi/ip68 plotter for £500...
I don't think a Raspberry Pi is a good choice.
A PC based on an ITX motherboard with a laptop processor would be much better choice. One would then need to build a saltwater resistant casing.
@@charonstyxferryman Don’t underestimate the latest Pi’s! You would be very surprised how powerful they are and how little power they use, especially running opencpn. Multi monitor support and direct connections available to canbus/nmea2000 in a tiny package. The big deal really is the amount of power, especially compared to a pc motherboard. I know I dismissed them initially, but now I am looking seriously at it as an option given the cost of replacing my Furuno chart plotter.
Thanks for the informative review Steve. I wonder do you also have a traditional plotter like B&G or Raymarine alongside navionics and Orca ?
Yes we have a Raymarine chart plotter that I fitted when we first purchased Fair Isle. It's just a small unit on the chart table as I basically use it as the back up. It was just too much money that you would have to be spent on multiple plotters to get anything like the usability you have with tablet based units so not worth it for us.
Looks like it works great in sea state 2 !
First time watching and subscribed! Really enjoyed your clear explanation. One question, your thoughts open source options?
@@africandreamchild Yes if you’re using a computer then open cpn is a good cheap way of getting charts. Can be a bit clunky and doesn’t have the integration built in that these tablet based platforms have now. Frankly they’re worth the money is my take.
@@svfairisle fair enough. Maybe CON as a redundancy option. Great insights. Thanks
Am I correct to assume, that those are Raymarine ST60 you are using? Those are SeaTalk1 connected devices, right? How do you have them connected to the NMEA2000 net (and thus the core)? I have the same instruments and was wondering if I could get them to work with ORCA.
Thanks in advance. Greetings from Hamburg!
Yes I had to convert from seatalk 1 to seatalk ng then to NMEA. I had already done this in order to fit other equipment actually so for me it was just a matter of extending the backbone.
@@svfairisle Seatalk NG is actually NMEA. Any confusion is caused by the fact that that Seatalk NG uses non-standard NMEA hardware (plugs etc.) but the data is already NMEA.
Very interesting! I love the in depth tech reviews! 😊
Steve, much thanks for the Orca demo. Very nice nav tool. Suggested feature upgrade: For man overboard (MOB) situations it would be cool to see estimated present (and predicted future) location of your swimmer, based on history of tides/currents (wind? waves?) back along your ownship course history. This estimated present position of swimmer could be shown graphically as a separate track, as well as predicted future position of swimmer, and even a suggested course of ownship with highest probability of intersecting swimmer, from ownship current position. From a data and software point of view it seems to be a reasonable upgrade to Orca capabilities. Thoughts anyone?
I think Orca are monitoring this. I would be surprised if it wasn't something they were working on, seems a reasonably straightforward thing to do as you say, just relys on having accurate date for current in the area which is sometimes tricky to get
Thx a lot… I am going to buy mine now…
Very useful. Thanks. Any idea when the charts for ocean crossing will be included? I'd also be glad of a long term review of Savvy Navvy. Yes I'm aware that it is lacking ocean crossing charts. Again, thanks.
It's not lacking the charts for ocean crossings just the ability to plot a route across an ocean.
Yes we are expanding the routing length limit to 2500kms soon.
Longer than that requires a different routing plan, more like a departure planning tool with options.
Impressive .
Steve, re your Log not reading, if it’s been in place many years, you might try knocking out the press fit spindal/ axel, rubbing it with very fine emery paper, and re installing. Worked for me. But I learned this from a Canadian engineer after I purchased a new log, now our spare.
Thanks I'll give it a go, but it's all or nothing with the log which makes me think its electrical.
As usual, it will help the viewers if you mention at the begining of technical video if you are involved or not in any comercial deal, discount, etc with the suppliers, orca in this case. I could bet big in this particular instance.
On the very rare occasion we do a sponsored video we say so, we have it in the description and we tick the sponsored content box on YT that puts a big banner up at the start.
Orca is great but in Spain charts are not reliable for cruising as they miss many coastal rocks as IHM Charts are designed for big vessels
Lekker man lekker 🇿🇦
Visually looks better than Navionics and Raymarine Lighthouse. My concern: What is the quality of the charts compared to Navionics subscription with updates?
As I said in the video if I could only have one chart it would be Navionics because of the bathymetric charts. The charts on Orca are clear though and it’s good to have two options to look at and compare, sometimes one will show something the other does not
Does Orca have inbuilt AIS or did you add AIS through NMEA 2000?
It takes it from the boats NMEA along with all the other telemetry
@@svfairisle More to add then on the HC43T I'm buying.... 🙂 Currently only has a depth gauge.
Cheapest way is to just get a splitter box for the VHF ( I assume you have one of them?!) to feed AIS into the NMEA system, if it doesn’t have NMEA at all there will be some system like Seatalk (Raymarine) which can be converted to a NMEA backbone
Where does the core get it's weather info from when you're offshore/out of mobile phone coverage? I assume it needs an internet connection.
Yes to get the up to date weather it needs a connection. We have Starlink to it had it even offshore
What anchor alarm do you use? I guess it's the 'floating pyramid' from the other episode?
I usually use one called 'anchor'. It was a free app for the ipad but I dont think you can download it now. I think the Vision Anchor buoy will get used in certain circumstances but probably not all the time
@@svfairisle I'm assuming it runs in the background when locked? I tried one for my android phone and it stopped monitoring. Could be the way I set it up. After that I shied away from anything on an device that would lock, or run out of power because the app was in the foreground.
@@peterbyrne652 Yes our 'Anchor' app on the ipad runs in the background. After 7 years we still forget about it and have the alarm go off 30 seconds after weighing anchor and sailing out of the bay!
Can you easily export to Navionics and then import to plotter?
We are working on that feature as we speak. In 2 weeks you will be able to export via GPX with one click
So this is a second system to the raymarine or B&G main chart plotter ?
We use it as the main system in the same way we sometimes use navionics on the tablet as the main system. Our Raymarine chartplotter has always been the backup as its just not as good as using a tablet
this might sound a dumb question. this looks a great system, but does the system also work on Android tablets?
Yes in fact if you buy Orcas tablet that I showed in the video this is Android I just prefer the iPad because that’s what I’m used to
Whatever happened to sailing? Whoops my software did not tell that the wind might shift.
It’s definitely a bummer when you sail a course because you expect a wind shift and then it doesn’t happen! But in the whole the forecasts do a much better job than guessing so it’s very helpful. The skill in sailing using the weather is not so much wether the wind will shift in 6 hours but how it might be affected by a headland or masked or accelerated by an island, local knowledge and sailing experience will always be useful
I wanted to purchase the orca system - however realized that its really only viable if ones sailing is limited to northern europe. there are too many waters thats not available for this to be real contender.. yet anyway.
There are certainly some gaps in the Southern hemisphere still but I don’t think there’s much missing in the North, not where we’ve been anyway. Have you checked the coverage map on their website?
what is the total cost of this?
Really depends on what bits you want to buy. Have a look at the Orca website for their cost and decide it you want to buy their tablet or use an existing one you have, it works with Android or iPads
So, I don't understand. Navionics does everything (nearly) better but you are selling Orca? I am looking to get my own vessel and I partly watch your channel because money isn't as much of an issue as accuracy and doing things right. Your promoting Orca seems odd to me, in that context, because really understanding one, Navionics, and your own equipment, seems the better option?
Firstly I'm not 'selling' anything. I test all marine equipment and give my opinion on what I find. i think I was pretty clear in saying that if you were to have only one platform for navigation for me it would be navionics because i wouldnt want to be without the Bathymetric charts. However for cruising sailors such as us relying on one platform only would be a bad move. It would only takes some sort of software glitch where for whatever reason you get locked out and you're in trouble, so i want more than one option. Odds are that would never happen, but all the same there are other benefits to be had because some features are much better on one app than another, also comparing charts is always a good idea. Features exist which are left out on others. The alternative is paper charts as a back up which is a very bad idea and for a cruising sailer mega expensive.
@@svfairisle Sorry, I didn't mean you were "selling" it. It did seem you were promoting it to me, just my $0.02. I agree 100% that at least 2 platforms are necessary, what I didn't get is that was what you were suggesting, I thought you were just saying Orca was awesome. Hope you recognize me from other comments, I'd hate to think this one was how I am :P I Love you and Judy and your channel. We talked about your BBC time and how I thought you should do a TV show and you said how you didn't want to lose any creative license... Anyway, sorry if I came off harsh, wasn't meant to be that way.
@@utahjag No problem and no offence taken. Written messages can come off harsh in both directions
@@svfairisle Agreed, still sorry. Was really more of a question and observation thing, I didn't have enough knowledge to have an opinion. I plan to buy Fair Isle in a few years, so let me know when you're ready! :D P.S. I see I did say "selling" and I did not mean that literally but just as I meant promoting... Still sorry
I don't have an Orca, but from what I've seen, they seem to be the first company that really embodies what a modern software company should be-developing their products in line with today's standards and delivering a contemporary user experience. They might not match Navionics plus traditional plotter manufacturers in every aspect, but in many ways, they're already ahead. The old guard, like Raymarine, B&G, and similar brands, seem more like hardware companies, and their user experience can be pretty awful. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a lot more of companies like Orca in the future.
You said if youR boats gps fails you can you just use your iPad gps. How, when iPad gps uses mobile phone signal and WiFi to position itself. You don’t have those at sea. iPad gps does not get its info from satellites unless you have additional external gps equipment!
Pretty much all phones now have a GPS chip. Apple still has the iPad range with gps chips in the models that take a SIM card and not in the others. You don’t need to fit a sim though and you don’t need to be on WiFi if you have a device with a gps chip it will give your position. Phones and tablets can use triangulation from cell towers to try and improve you gps fix but this is mostly because gps can be patchy when around buildings or inside. At sea all these devices with a gps chip give good accurate fix’s and don’t require any other signal.
To clarify, you do have a position but not data to download info on mobile Navionics. Most sailors would/should have chart info downloaded in advance. Great review, I've been considering Orca so great to see a real life review 👍
Tried it, dont see how it beats navionics as a chart. Whats the point to it?
As I said in the piece, if you were only to have one system then for me it would be Navionics because of the detailed bathymetric charts. However I think anyone cruising and properly passage making knows the advantage of having another system to compare / backup. Orca has features that navionics doesn't have as well and I find it a better platform for passage making. If you are going to run two systems then it makes sense to use ones that have complimentary features.
The presentation is confusing and hard to follow because there is no apparent logical sequence.
A different approach would be to create a story - “I wish to sail from A to B” - and show the many features in the context of the story.
In this way the various functions of the SW is related to actual use - not a long tedious list of unrelated singlefunctions.
There are many sequences using this nav gear and others in the episodes. All our episodes are made in that way, as a story. This is a technical video and needs to deliver as much of the technical aspects of the softwear and fitting of the hardwear as possible in as close to 20 mins as I can get it. Thats only possible in this format. Maybe stick to the episodes if you don't like the tech stuff.
Cheaper to have an iPad....not a lot 😂. Assume it works on on a €110 Android tablet for the rest of us poor people?
Yes it's fine with Android
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🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
The truth is I WISH I had a need for this, but the way I presently sail, I don't. It was a good review though!
Infomercial
This is not a sponsored video
@@svfairisle Well then you should disclose that you purchased the item and did not received it for a free review. Not making a clear statement along with the tone of the video makes it look like a sponsored video. You put out a lot of great videos, and these sponsored-like reviews only taint your channel to many eyes.
@@dreupenIf you find the videos helpful feel free to become a patron and support us.