Apple iBoat?

 

I have had it for three years I think on my iPad. Use it mainly at home for planning and weather. I've added waypoints for spots et cetera at home and then transferred them to my tzt3's on the boat. It is by TimeZero which I wouldn't mind to have on the boat but I don't want to buy a separate computer and screen to run it. The two Furuno tzt3's that I do have are by TimeZero also but I wish the bathy charting was a bit better for the W coast. Supposedly Furuno has something in the works but so far it hasn't be released. Anyway it's a good app which I could probably make use better than I am.

 

That’s good to know some of the features look great, but I was wondering about the accuracy I may have to give it a try thank you

 

Last summer tz iboat got new charts called tz maps, the tz pc software got the same charts in october. I like the offshore detail (1000ft + depths), but nearshore it falls short, it does have tight contours near shore, but its missing detail or not correct in most fishing areas i have checked. I would guess furuno plotters will be getting an update to use the tz maps soon. The new maps look cool but if the data isnt right its just eye candy.

Navionics has big lead , for the areas i know well, navionics wins, tz maps falls short, near shore. Offshore the tz maps are better than navionics.

I do like the iboat ap over the navionics ap.

Furuno needs to buck up and pay garmin for the charts.

 

Furuno needs to buck up and pay garmin for the charts.

LOL

 

I have it on my iPad and in my iPhone, it’s linked to my Furuno watchman radar and the echos overlay the chart so you can see bouys, islands, etc…I like it for that. Also it’s a backup to my chartplotter.

 

Sorry to resurrect this thread. Somehow I missed this back in January . Too busy skiing I guess


Samsims has some good points - Navionics does have a refined interface and nearshore maps are pretty much the best of all the off-the-shelf mapping apps out there.

But, TZ iBoats - honestly, its a pretty darn good app. Unfortunately, its only available for Apple products (IOS, iphone, ipad, etc.). So bummer for the Android users.

Its running $19.99 a year for a US map subscription. You get a full trial for 7 days....so if you want to play with it and cancel, they make it pretty easy to cancel if you don't want the subscription.

I tested a full export of waypoints saved from Navionics and also from C-Maps and easily imported them right into TZ iBoat app. They imported in flawlessly.
On import, you lose all the fancy icon symbols and colors...but the name and the coordinate is there - which is the most important thing.

Its really impressive what they crammed into this app and the interfaces is really good and responsive.

First of all, you can choose from between Vector maps, Raster or their BathyVision maps. Below is the BathyVision map that gets much granular contour lines.

What is really slick, is that you can choose the contour line resolution to your liking. Where it says steps (I have it circled) you can get contours down to 5foot.
That is kind of messy on the display...but in some locations, you might want that kind of contour definition. What I like about this is, I can set it to whatever I want or need for a particular location.
I'm sure some of this data is interpolated, but it is still useful and a nice to have.

You can also enable Depth Shading (if you like) and this gives you another perspective of your charts.

For those of us on the North Coast, here is Dinner Reef outside of Garibaldi as a point of reference so you can see what it looks like.

Lots of overlay options:

more overlay options, including weather:

For example, enabling Wind overlay, its an animated display of wave direction and intensity. You can move the slider on the bottom over the time/date to get predictions. The default is GFS model.

wind overlay is the same. Its animated showing intensity and direction of the wind. Again, default is GFS model.

Now what is really cool, is that you can create an event/Point of Interest with pressing on the screen with 2 fingers.

The Fishing Catch Report saves the location, you can add a picture of the fish , length and weight of fish....its kind of like a log but gets saved on your devices. You can also create other Points of Interest quickly by using the 2 fingers on the screen.



All the data is synchronized between all your devices (phone, tablet, etc.) And you can log into a web browser on their web page and access your data, waypoints, etc from a computer if needed.


The Offline map storage is pretty good too. Its not bulky, so the file size is manageable. The interface is fast and snappy which is because of good coding and compression techniques from a software development perspective.

I do want to share another perspective on things as a software developer. When I export the data from TZ iboats, the GPX file actually has color and symbol provided. Although you might not be able to directly import the 'extra' information, like color into your MFD on your boat...at least the data is there. You could potentially use a tool like GPSBabel to convert it into a format for Garmin (for example).

But when you export Navionics data from the app to a GPX file, it does not include things like symbol or color. So that kind of stinks. They just give you the Name and the coordinate. So the TZ developers have a more open approach providing you with more not less. I like that.
CMAP export does provide description along with the name and coordinate. But no color, no symbol. So that is kind a a let down.
So for data export...definitely TZ iboats beats them all.



Now regarding weather forecast models....you get GFS. If you want more, you have to pay. For some reason its not an annual sub, but rather a monthly subscription.

So hopefully this helps you out if you are considering using this great tool. There is a lot more features there...I just touched on the big ones.

 

I also want to add that TZ's support was pretty amazing. I sent them an email late afternoon on Friday (today @ 3:30) to ask about their file format. And 10 minutes later and I had an email response with everything I needed.
Not very often do you get that quick response, let alone on a Friday evening...

 

Yup I really like the app. You can see some of the bottom data is done with multi-beam so those areas should be fairly good inshore and out. Off shore edge looks fairly good. Unfortunately I didn't take it with me yesterday halibut fishing off Washington to compare what I was actually seeing but I think it was fairly good.

The bummer part of this is Furuno introduced new MFD's which includes the same date as this and Time Zero but the guys with the tzt3's can't get that charting on their units. From what I read there are a fair number of Furuno users that are ****ed...including me. I did check with Time Zero about the possibility of using Time Zero Pro displaying it on the tzt3. The guy said something about them working on getting the new charting on the 3's so I'm still holding out a bit. Furuno won't say anything. We'll see.

 

I am repowering an old boat with new DF250AP Suzukis that paired with the Furuno autopilot will give me Spot Lock and a drift mode called Sabiki Lock. So I was looking at a TZ3 12 MFD. Well, two months ago they dropped support for Navioncs charts. I already own Platinum + charting that I currently used in my other boat. Between that and only one transducer per MFD, I am tempted to use Furuno autopilot with the bare necessities for spot lock and use Raymarine for the rest of system.

Any charting or transducer advice for Furuno anyone can share, I'm all ears.

Kimbrey?

 

The Furuno pilot is great or at least it is though my Volvo system. Sabiki mode is fantastic when back trolling. Autopilot in reverse. I've had TZT3's since for 3 years or maybe more. I never thought you could use Platinum + charting ever so used the cmap stuff. Not bad for nav charting but you can do better with the bathymetrics which was why I and other are ticked at Furuno not including their new charting for the TZT3's....maybe it'll come. I'm not sure when their new mfd's will ship but you'd have the new charting with them. Looks like fantastic systems plus being Furuno you'd get some of the best support in the industry, Camas is an easy call. Their systems usually are problem free.

One transducer per mfd. I guess a guy could set up an external switch if you wanted to use two separate ducers. I have the 275 lhw and can run high and low freq.

But...
MFD's are convenient as there is stuff consolidated in them but that's about it in my book. This Furuno MFD upgrade with features left behind like the new charting has me thinking if I was ever to do something new again I'd go computer based such as Time Zero Pro. Black box sounder, radar et cetera feeding into the system. Upgrades in the future would just be software versus the various manufactures putting out new mfd's ever so many years. Never used a mfd on the fishing boats I ran in Alaska.

 

Thanks for the reply Kimbrey. I have held your opinion in very high regard since the Arima forum

 

It is by TimeZero which I wouldn't mind to have on the boat but I don't want to buy a separate computer and screen to run it. The two Furuno tzt3's that I do have are by TimeZero also but I wish the bathy charting was a bit better for the W coast. Supposedly Furuno has something in the works but so far it hasn't be released.

Nox Vidmate VLC​

 

It is by TimeZero which I wouldn't mind to have on the boat but I don't want to buy a separate computer and screen to run it. The two Furuno tzt3's that I do have are by TimeZero also but I wish the bathy charting was a bit better for the W coast. Supposedly Furuno has something in the works but so far it hasn't be released.

Nox Vidmate VLC​

They have released it which would be the same as Time Zero on their next version of mfd (TzTouchXL) but didn't include the better charting on the TZT3's. Like you I have a couple TZT3's but would like better charting. Supposedly you can run Time Zero on your TZT3 screen by networking. I'm still holding out a bit as they might be working on getting the charting into the TZT3's also or that's what I've heard unofficially from a Time Zero tech that I talked to about running TZ on one of my current screens.

 

The computer and the screen are the cheap part of tz, $700 for a nuc and a 12v monitor, the software is the killer, $3500 for tz pro with pbg and sounder mods.