Please add my vote too. I have a Raychart 420 and have been waiting for the feature to export routes/waypoints for 3 years now.

Sam

Add my vote to it as well. I use a Raymarine RC320.

Still I want to draw Raytheon users attention to the fact that when waypoints and routes are present on the RaytMarine GPS, they take precedence on the Seatalk network. This means that when running PC based software the waypoint and route info on the PC can no longer be displayed as for instance Bearing To Waypint info on the Seatalk network. Also the AutoPilot will no longer be controlled from the PC.

I want to add my vote to support Raymarine units. I have a NAV 398. Another alternative would be to provide MapTech users a better ability to define the interface with GPS units that MapTech does not support. It appears to me that all that would be necessary is to be able to specify the proprietary prefix on the NMEA sentences.

First, I added your "vote" for the NAV 398.

When we say that we "support" a GPS unit, it means that we have one of those units in our inventory for development, testing, and support. This way we can ensure that we are fully compatable with these units and can provide specific assistance when customers contact us with perticular problems. We also develop a close relationship with that GPS manufacturer to ensure that we implement the best possible drivers for those units.

After working with many manufacturers, there is no way to provide a "generic" driver that specifies the proprietary prefix. Every GPS we have done in the past is radically different from almost every other.

In short, until this is established with Raymarine, there is no quick fix for supporting their GPS units.

Sincerely,

-Ed Lecuyer

Manager, Quality Assurance and Technical Support

I've been reading the posts regarding a Raymarine (and Raytheon previously) interface for the past two years. First it was on-going discussions with Raymarine by your marketing dept. Now it's lack of interest on the part of Raymarine equipment owners! I've seen more posts on the part of Raymarine owners (myself included) than any other non-supported brand. In fact, I can't even think of another non-supported brand discussed on the forum! Last year I had to "hand jam" 350 waypoints from my maptech paper listings to my Raymarine Chart plotter to support movement of our boat from the Potomac River in Virginia to Lake Champlain in upstate NY. All this for lack of implementation of a well defined, simple interface. So what's the real skinny, licensing fees to Ray Marine?

First off, the tone of this message is a tad close to violating the rules about "no whiney posts" in the General discussion thread. I will answer your questions, but please keep all future discussion good-natured. I don't "moderate" too often - I believe in honest, open dialog as long as it remains in a positive direction.

There are no licensing fees to Raymarine that I am aware of.

Since your post came in just as I posted the response to Thomas Albert (see above in this same thread), I assume you did not see my comments about supported units. That is the "real skinny".

But you specifically ask about our numbers and data, so I will provide the following general (but accurate) information:

Unsupported Garmin units account for 54% of the requests. We are working to directly resolve at least 20% of these with a new driver due out shortly. For most of the other popular Garmins, we will be looking to provide "suggested" settings that we have verified that work with the unit, but we cannot completely support since we will not be able to maintain that unit in our permanent library of GPS units.

Unsupported Magellan units account for 20% of the requests. However, we do not have any new units from Magellan in our current development cycle at this time.

Unsupported Lowrance units account for 7% of the requests. We do not have any new units from Lowrance in our current development cycle at this time.

Unsupported Trimble units account for 6% of the requests. We do not have any new units from Trimble in our current development cycle at this time.

Unsupported Raytheon/Raytech units account for 4% of the requests. We do not have any units from Raytheon/Raytech in our current development cycle at this time.

Unsupported Furuno units account for 3% of the requests. Furuno has asked us to provide drivers for 2 additional units, which we have in our development schedule.

All other manufacturers combined account for 4% of the requests. With the exception of direct support for certain USB-driven GPS units, we are not working on any of those units at this time.

Thus, we are truly working on the needs of the majority of our customers - or with manufactures that, through goodwill and cooperation, would like to see us more fully support their complete product line.

That is the real skinny. I'm sorry that it may not be the answer that you (or your fellow Raymarine customers) are looking for. However, it does represent the true conditions of the current market for our products.

Sincerely,

-Ed Lecuyer

Manager, Quality Assurance and Technical Support

My apology for a negative, caustic posting. I guess I was thinking about how hard it was to "hand Jam" those fifty waypoints every day. And unlike the Garmin units, I couldn't just type the coordinates in. I had to move the cursor from point to point till the readout read correctly, then input the position.

My compliments to you for providing such a concise response. I'll try to be patient and hope that Raymarine eventually makes it up your priority list.

Actually, I have used the "Standard Horizon GPS Chart 150" to successfully upload waypoints and marks from my RL70CRC. Another alternative is that "GPS Utility" at http://www.gpsu.co.uk/ offers that ability to read track and waypoint files from Maptech and upload/download these files to/from Raytheon. My problem is I bought a copy of Maptech Offshore Navigator before discovering the poor USB/serial support.