

Show HN: For the boaters among us, my small company made an iOS app - andrewljohnson
http://www.tryskipper.com/

======
keithwinstein
Looks interesting. It's great you have put a lot of effort into making the app
easy to use, but here are some suggestions if you really want to be a nautical
chart app "done right":

(1) Don't just use the published RNCs; they are only released at 100 pixels
per cm, which is too low to look good (especially on the awesome resolution of
the iPad screen). If you send a FOIA to NOAA, they will give you the RNCs at
300 pixels per cm (nine times the resolution), which is what they actually use
when printing them.

It will also give you a unique advantage over the 20 other similar apps.

(2) Show the user what charts overlap their location, in order of scale, and
let the user control which chart they want to see at a particular time. The
existing apps all try to guess which scale chart to show and they switch
between them as the user zooms. (Your web app does the same thing.) It's never
quite right.

(3) Use the (geo-aligned) ENC vector chart to provide clues to the UI, even if
you don't actually render the ENC. The user should be able to tap on a feature
(e.g. a buoy) and get information about it and set it as a waypoint.

The user should be able to plot a course to a waypoint that keeps in mind the
draft of the vessel vs. the depth of the water. The user should get an alarm
if their course will take them over a shoal or into a mark.

(4) Make clear on your Web site what distinguishes your app from the 20 other
apps that also display RNCs aligned with the iPad's GPS fix. E.g., MX Mariner
is $7 and perfectly servicable if no-frills -- what do you have that they
don't? How about my Raymarine chartplotter that came with my boat -- why is
this better?

Right now the marketing ("modern," "done right") resembles the puffery that
seemingly _every_ app spouts (you're missing "beautiful" and "exquisitely-
crafted" but otherwise you check most of the boxes). If you want actual
mariners to buy your app over others, it wouldn't hurt to make it a bit more
expert-friendly and show what makes it special. More screenshots would help!

I worry that no matter how hard you work on making it easy to get started, you
are just yet another app displaying lowres RNCs as a dumb raster that can't
take advantage of semantic information contained in the chart. That's not
"modern" or "done right" and it's not something a professional mariner would
be caught dead using. Which may be ok -- you're not aiming your product at
professional mariners. But better to be clear about what your app does and
doesn't do than have it be an unwelcome surprise.

~~~
andrewljohnson
Thanks for your comments!

1) I didn't know that about issuing a FOIA to get higher res charts, but I'm
not sure it would be very feasible. Our server processes the NOAA updates in
real-time, and charges change nearly every day.

2) I totally agree, and only iNavX seems to do that, and I think we can do it
cleverly. The one big feature that did not make Skipper 1.0 is the ability to
press and hold on the chart mosaic, to surface the entire chart, and pan/zoom
it with collars, insets, and all.

3) We do render the navaids using the ENC data. It's not perfect, but if you
zoom in enough and tap on the navaid symbols on the charts, you will be able
to interact with them (info, guidance, etc).

4) I hear you on the website text, and marketing is always tough. For now,
we're emphasizing the automatic syncing between devices/web, automatic chart
updates, the good UI, and friendly support. "Done right" is just a phrase we
use so you keep reading, and find out what we mean by that. In general, the
response has been overwhelmingly positive, and I think we're always going to
get accused of smarminess by some. There are certainly a million things we
could do to improve the website and other marketing.

------
mbesto
Novice skipper here! Looks cool. One suggestion - on your homepage - explain
to me very clearly (in better imagery or a few sentences) why this trumps
using my existing tools GPS + paper maps + VHF.

For example - I recently did a yachting trip in Australia. Daily weather was
always provided by the charter company. I rarely used charts and just used GPS
for courses. Lastly, GPS on my iPhone was buggy. Perhaps this was just because
I didn't have an internet connection and _thought_ it was buggy. For most
people they won't 'get' that GPS works when you don't have an internet
connection. Might be helpful to explain.

~~~
killerpopiller
I used iSailor on my iPad with correct and reliable homing without internet
connection.

~~~
frenchman_in_ny
As someone who sails, seeing "Correct and reliable homing" scares the
daylights out of me, particularly when just referencing GPS on the iPad.

You have no way to know how accurate your location is on the iPad, and when it
comes to marine use, the outcome can be fairly tragic [1].

[1]
[http://www.cyca.com.au/sysfile/downloads/CYCA_Flinders_Islet...](http://www.cyca.com.au/sysfile/downloads/CYCA_Flinders_Islet_Internal_Inquiry_Report.pdf)

~~~
killerpopiller
it depends. I just returned from a sailing trip and if you are in narrow
waters you can compare your position with land marks, bridges, harbour
structures and so on.

Worked out great. I also used Navionics before, worked great as well. I
anchored over a small cable without looking at the iPad and caught it.
Navionics displayed the cable under us.

------
applecore
My advice is to include advertisements for waterproof iPhone and iPad cases.
You have a very valuable, targeted audience. (Waterproof cases can cost
upwards of $100.)

~~~
andrewljohnson
Thanks! We have never tried to put ads on our product sites, but I could see
that working in niches like ours.

------
pflats
Very cool, but on the website version, it's hard to get the appropriate charts
for smaller waterways.

I thought I'd check out the local bay. At zoom levels to see anything, it
shows the larger chart[1]. If I zoom in enough, it will load the local chart,
but at that point, I can barely see enough of the region to be useful[2].
(Those images are one zoom level apart.)

How does the app handle this?

[1][http://i.imgur.com/htvjmRw.png](http://i.imgur.com/htvjmRw.png)

[2][http://i.imgur.com/0AZWl9C.png](http://i.imgur.com/0AZWl9C.png)

~~~
andrewljohnson
Thanks, I have a couple of comments on this:

1) The app handles the charts the same way, so any defects you see on the web
must live in the app too.

2) We have a plan for this though, and your screenshots (and coordinates) are
super useful.

We set up the chart server such that any of our team can improve the charts,
and we'd like to expose this interface to users eventually too. We have tools
that let us change the cutlines of the charts, and change the layering of the
charts, from a web interface. These changes get pushed down to the app as
metadata, and so we don't need to change the app at all to improve the chart
mosaic continuously.

We tried to do our best to layer the harbor, approach, and ocean charts in a
user-friendly way, but we expect to make algorithmic and spot changes to the
mosaic based on further feedback, so thanks!

3) We also have plans for a feature that didn't quite make it into v1.0. We'd
like to set it up so you can press and hold on the chart, to surface the
entire unadulterated chart, on top of the mosaic, and then zoom and pan it,
with collars and legends and insets and everything. Since we mosaic the charts
on the fly on the device, this is pretty easy to do.

~~~
aidenn0
More feedback for you then; Narragansett Bay (Rhode Island) near Wickford has
similar issues, made even more obvious by the fact that there is an inset
placed just outside the harbor.

[edit] Also, and the farthest out zoom level that shows the detail, it's
impossible to find the "See Note X" stuff. I panned around a while on a
1920x1200 monitor unable to find some of these.

------
monkey_slap
This looks really, really useful to boaters. I'm not a boater at all, but I am
a hobbyist pilot that flies maybe once a month on small trips. I frequently
use Foreflight ([http://www.foreflight.com/](http://www.foreflight.com/)) for
navigation, planning, information, etc (while also calling the FSS Briefer to
be safe!) for flights. To download the app is free but the service costs $99
per year.

Your pricing model is very forgiving. If you've got the features to support
offline caching and downloading of charts ahead of time, $.99 download and
$11.99/yr is a no-brainer. It's nice too that you guys didn't go crazy on
design and looks like you focused on functionality and features, which is the
most important for a tool like this.

Is this something your company does regularly or was it a "hey we have a few
boaters let's knock out an app" sort of project?

~~~
andrewljohnson
Couple of comments:

1) We started out long ago making a hiking website, which led to hiking iPhone
apps, which led us to make all sorts of mapping apps, everything from Burning
Man to hiking to driving. We basically now specialize in anything that takes
an offline map.

2) The pricing model is based on some other successful apps - for examples,
Wing-X in the aviation space and Motion-X GPS Drive. The .99 is not to make
money, it's basically just to make sure you are a boater and are interested,
and it helps keep costs under control for serving the data and using the APIs
we pay for. We plan to eventually increase the 11.99 subscription fee, but
people who subscribe early on will get to keep the same cost.

3) We did this now because Skipper is the forerunner of the next version of
Gaia GPS, version 8. We have been working for many moons to overhaul our core
code, and it will lead to 3 app releases. Skipper, Gaia 8, and one more for a
partner I can't name.

~~~
instaheat
I would love to see a partnership for all the major music festivals being
mapped out. Sure, they hand out maps but it would so much better to whip out
my phone.

I went to Bonnaroo this year and would have appreciated something like this.
Hiking, great idea also.

How about, INSIDE GROCERY STORES? I don't do much of the shopping in my
household but when I do, it is usually a frustrating process finding
everything on my (her) list. It could be crowd sourced like Waze whereby if
Big Box stores do a floor move, you could report on it. "Crepes got moved to
Aisle 3" "The Sale section is now here" and look at a visualization of this
data. Categorize it by color, etc.

The answer to "Where do they keep the...?" How's that for a killer app idea.
FUCKING IKEA! I'll work on this with someone. Please give me an excuse to quit
my day job.

~~~
andrewljohnson
1) If you ever go to Burning Man, we do the free, open source app for that:
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iburn-2012-burning-man-
map/i...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iburn-2012-burning-man-
map/id388169740?mt=8)

2) Hiking is where we started. We make the top selling hiking GPS app, the one
that people consider to be the true Garmin analog, with all the benefits of
the network connected smart phone:
[http://www.gaiagps.com/](http://www.gaiagps.com/)

3) Inside grocery stores is tricky because GPS doesn't work in doors. There is
nascent tech that does work, though.

~~~
instaheat
Very cool! I will download it prior to my next hiking trip.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabethwoyke/2011/12/22/micros...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabethwoyke/2011/12/22/microsoft-
motorola-nokia-and-rim-to-battle-google-over-indoor-location-market/2/)

------
reeses
Wow, congrats. My first "real" job was working on NavTrek when Nobeltec was a
startup.

Make sure you work out relationships with beta testers so that you can do a
lot of onboard "tests". :-) That was probably the most fun part of the job
(other than reverse-engineering the GPS models on the market at the time).

~~~
andrewljohnson
Thanks!

Beta testing is part of our DNA... there was a group of boaters using this app
for months before it shipped, in many different cruising and sailing
scenarios.

We shipped the first version to beta before we had built many of the features.
We also get some broader test data from beta testing Gaia 8, though that
doesn't help with design so much as QA.

I saw Nobeltec just released an iPad app where they drape NOAA raster charts
over DEM data to get a 3D effect. I think we could whip up that feature pretty
quick, but do people really use that a lot?

~~~
reeses
Definitely make the most of getting onto different boats. I am not a
stinkpotter fan, so I am unlikely ever to own one, but it was a good way to
experience all kinds of different craft.

The 3d rendering in the original PC product was kind of a "why not" with
OpenGL acceleration just becoming somewhat common. It was very cool looking
and was a good combination of bathymetric data with the charts of the time.

Mind you, we still had to deal with different geodetic data depending on the
chart supplier. Seamlessly navigating from a NAD27 chart to a WGS84 chart was
probably the most important feature at the time. Interfacing with as many
random pseudo-compliant NMEA 0183 devices was the other. Autopilots that don't
respect zero padding is a fun one when it comes to headings. :-)

------
frenchman_in_ny
Congrats building a nice product in a niche space. There's quite a bit of
competition out there (Nobletec[1], MaxSea[2]) in case you haven't researched
them, but at significantly higher price points.

How much trip planning can one do with your app? (ie, departure at a certain
time with tides, when current is expected to go foul on me, etc)?

[1][http://www.nobeltec.com/products](http://www.nobeltec.com/products)
[2][http://www.maxsea.com/products](http://www.maxsea.com/products)

(edit for typos)

~~~
andrewljohnson
There is a route editor in the app, but it does not account for tides and
current, unless you makes notes for each waypoint. It just lets you plot a
point-to-point route, and get basic guidance. More intelligent routing seems
like a good avenue to explore though.

I saw the Nobeltec products came out recently, but haven't fared all that well
on iPad. The apps to beat are probably still Navionics, Garmin, and iNavX.
Everyone else is tier 2 in terms of earnings.

------
milesokeefe
You can charge much more than $0.99 for this.

Some improvements for the site:

* Make all the footers sticky.

* Center the lower text area on the tryskipper.com/ios/

~~~
andrewljohnson
Thanks for the comments on the site.

The app also has an 11.99 yearly subscription fee - the .99 is just to
discourage non-boaters from running up our costs, and is not really intended
as a profit center. Other top nav apps use this sort of pricing model too.

~~~
milesokeefe
Still, people who have boats have money, and iOS users especially are
accustomed to higher costs.

If you ever need the extra revenue I don't think you'd lose sales by raising
the price.

~~~
andrewljohnson
I do think eventually the subscription fee will be raised, but we'd like to
get some users and feedback now. Any subscriptions purchased now will stay the
same price forever, though.

~~~
erikig
"Still, people who have boats have money, and iOS users especially are
accustomed to higher costs." ~ Geez Miles, don't mess things up for us those
poor boat owners among us. iPads, iPhones, MacBooks are super expensive and
any price breaks would be much appreciated.

:)

------
bcl
Why are you using the raster charts instead of the S57 vector charts? eg.
[http://www.charts.noaa.gov/ENCs/ENCs.shtml](http://www.charts.noaa.gov/ENCs/ENCs.shtml)

Also, if you're interested in AIS support take a look at
[https://www.github.com/bcl/aisparser/](https://www.github.com/bcl/aisparser/)

~~~
andrewljohnson
On S57, couple reasons:

1) Our attempt to render S57 on the device isn't good enough for prime-time
yet, but that's something we'll eventually do. We decided we needed many more
months to get the styling right.

2) We are thinking about merging S57 with OSM data to make a seamless land/see
map.

3) The raster charts are only 2 gigs for the US, and the vectors are only
about half that. So, the space savings isn't a big win, whereas pretty charts
is a big win.

AIS parser is really interesting! We might have to make use of that, thanks.

------
IanDrake
You have some competition in the iOS app store, but if you make a Windows
Phone version, you'll be the only marine navigation app _not_ using bing maps.

Edit: Just to add, I think you're charging too little.

~~~
andrewljohnson
Our general plan is to build native apps for iOS and Android, and serve other
platforms with the web app. cloud.skipper.com is not done yet, but when
complete, it should do most of what the app does. We also may wrap and tweak
the website for things like a Mac or Windows app... it's architected to make
that possible.

------
ryandrake
I used work for one of the "big guys" writing embedded mapping software for
chart plotters, and this looks very, very nice. Great work! Could be very
disruptive to a market stuffed with entrenched old-timers.

------
ahulak
Also valuable to the surfing community.. nice work. I've been playing with
NOAA data for personal forecasting for a while.. great to see it used in a
commercial product other than surfline..

------
strick
Hi Andrew - what is your connection to Boca Grande, FL? I see you used it in
the example screenshots. I grew up fishing in Bull Bay and around Boca.

~~~
andrewljohnson
No real connection, sorry!

Savannah, who does most of our support and marketing, just needed to come up
with good tracks to use for example screenshots, and we didn't want every
screenshot to reference Berkeley. That data is an imported GPX file.

------
owenjones
This looks beautiful, do you have to buy specific charts? $0.99 is a lot
cheaper than other chart apps I have looked at.

~~~
andrewljohnson
For .99, you can view all the charts, but you don't get a lot of the features.

For 11.99/year, you can cache whatever charts you want for offline use, and
they all get automatically updated, whenever NOAA updates the charts.

We also set up the app with a "Test Drive" button. You have to pay the initial
.99 to get the app, but you can Test Drive all the subscription data and
features before deciding to subscribe. Test Drive works for one full app run,
and you can do it as many times as you like.

Also, you can browse the charts on our website:
[http://www.tryskipper.com/charts/](http://www.tryskipper.com/charts/)

------
YellowRex
HeroLight is hard to read on that background and looks rough around the edges
on a non-retina screen.

------
sbuccini
Always great to see Berkeley companies on here. Nice work!

~~~
andrewljohnson
Shout out to our intern Anting from the University of Berkeley, who has
totally become the dev lead on our cloud website. He learned our web stack
like it was nothing - Angular, CSS, Django, and Python.

    
    
       http://cloud.gaiagps.com
       http://cloud.tryskipper.com
    

The progress on these sites has been tremendous this summer, with him on it
full-time.

I really think the people you meet in the Bay Area justify the cost of running
a business here.

~~~
sbuccini
I'm pretty sure I know Anting (Cal student here too) and he's crazy smart.
Keep up the good work!

------
PanMan
Looks Nice, does it work in europe, or is it US only?

~~~
andrewljohnson
The charts and tides are US-only, though the app does include aerial, topo,
and road maps, and weather info, from all over the world.

If this launch goes well, we'll almost certainly start getting international
charts in there. There are only a few countries where you don't need a
license, so it's boats a development and business management challenge.

I'd also like to figure out how to either license or crowd-source inland lake
data. We don't have much besides the Great Lakes (and topo maps) for inland
right now.

~~~
vmarsy
Are your maps ENC maps ? [1] If so, are your updates encrypted ?

It seems to be a requirement to use the app as the official maps, otherwise
you would still need a paper version of it.

Also : Is the US one of the countries where you don't need a license ? (I'm
not from the US)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_navigational_chart](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_navigational_chart)

~~~
andrewljohnson
The charts are the official BSB raster charts from NOAA. The US is one of the
few countries that makes their charts free and open. There is no encryption of
any sort.

------
cpursley
As the owner of www.fsailbo.com, I approve.

