Passage Planner
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Passage Planner
This project is realy just meant for myself, but I put it here anyway. For the first time I do a project in Access and Visual BASIC, partly to learn how it works, parly to get a passage planner program that looks good and do what I want it to do, and partly to waste time when I have to be on duty, and nothing else happens. Another reason for undertaking this project is that while at work I can ask for advice on Access/VB as I have a collegue who works semi-proffesionally with it. I believe understanding Access/VB can help me get a better understanding for other projects using databases, forms and code.
The background for this is my experiences as a Navigating Officer on commercial ships. I have worked with many different systems, home made, semi-professional, and professional systems, and none of these have been fully satisfactory. Over the years I have formed an opinion of how the system should work, how it should be used, and how a completed result should look. There is a need for the system to allow editing information, and it should allow for various information, such as speciffic harbour information and reporting points during the voyage. In many cases, reports to be sent at various check points can be generated in advance, but until now have yet seen a system do that.
A future version of the program might be developed in a different language to enhance the GUI and to give a wider support between different systems. It is important to me to remove the need for other type software to run this. (First version need to run on systems able to interpret and execute MS Access and MS Visual Basic.)
System requirements
As I am aiming for platform independence in all my projects, MS Access seems to be a step in the wrong direction. Though it should be possible to run it under OpenOffice.org with mdb-tools. I will keep you updated with which tools are available to run this under different systems.
Features
- Waypoint editor and waypoint list
- Port list
- Vessel Information
- Chart database, with chart identifier and possition identifier.
TODO
- Get a working beta.
- Export route to excel, waypoint tables readable by common GPS units and ECDIS systems.
- Import routes from excel, waypoints tables from common GPS units and ECDIS systems.
- Print a good looking passage plan
- Make a user manual
- Synchronize charts with external sources such as ChartCo.
- Get port and VTS information from Admirality Digital List of Radio Signals 6 (ADLRS6)
- Get tide information from Admirality Total Tide (ADTT)
