SkipperDroid

If you have a WiFi bridge on your boat or sailing ship, this utility will be your best friend very soon. It connects your WiFi capable phone to the bridge and listens for standard NMEA sentences of the following types:

• GPS positions,
• waypoints,
• wind direction and speed,
• course and speed over ground,
• depth,
• water and air temperatures.

It then displays the readouts of the above mentioned devices. By tapping the unit field you can change the currently used unit. Tapping the screen toggles the day-time (white on black) and night-time (red on black) views. With the long-tap over a given gauge line the context menu appears where you can reset the value (and the stored min/max) of the gauge or bring up the settings dialog. In the dialog you can set parameters for announcing the readout or set alarm values.

This is of great help for example when you are anchoring and have to look after a lot of things and you still want to have a continuous readout of the depth gauge. In this case you can setup an announcement for a time interval or depth change. You can also set an alarm for any gauge for any value. Your phone will alert you e.g. when the wind speed grows above a certain value or when your vessel reaches a pre-defined speed over ground.