ORCA | a tablet based navigation that's smarter than the rest
33,412
Published 2024-07-13
In the early days there were some glitches but the product showed good promise and there have been a constant stream of updated to iron out and improve things. I think they've come up with an impressive, powerful bit of kit that's definitely worth looking at, so here's my review.
You can learn more from their website here;
getorca.com/
The coverage map is difficult to find, but if you want to see it it's here... getorca.com/orca-experience/
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All Comments (21)
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Great to see the innovation these folks are bringing to the navigation market. Thanks for the thoughtful review.
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Great review and fascinating especially given the RYA have now moved to a digital first approach.
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very insightful and informative! thank you for the run down
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Hi Steve. Excellent review. Thanks. Certainly will be adding this to the navigation installation on my boat as our refit progresses. Hopefully we'll be in the water for January/February next year. All the best. Steve G
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Thank you for another great bit of info. Orca seems to be a nice piece of kit to have and play with ;-) I like the customizability, the log seems a great thing to have. It takes the boat navigation to the level of aircraft navigation. Whether it is necessary or not is a different question; but then cruising sailing is about having fun more than just travelling from A to B.
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Excellent overview/review.
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Perfect timing for us, I’ve been playing with a few apps lately and wondering how to interconnect with my Raymarine to provide a system suitable for all crew onboard. I downloaded Orca a few months ago but hadn’t really got to grips with it. Your video convinced me to subscribe, I’ll try it for a while and may upgrade to the Core for next season. Thanks for a very informative video.
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Very interesting! I love the in depth tech reviews! 😊
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I use Orca too. I also have a Simrad. Orca is lightyears ahead. I use my Simrad as backup only nowadays.
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Thanks Steve. Loved it. Just wish there was more on the logbook.
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Thanks for your overview and insights, very interesting.
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I like the concept. If that concept is central unit that manages and logs all the data and you connect to it with whatever you want. I am growing tired of these £2k chartplotters that are out of support in 3 or 4 years 😞 but tablet chartplotters can be a bit flakey and prone to running out of power at that crucial moment. Equally, opencpn is now very good. Sooner or later someone will relase a turnkey opencpn/raspberryPi/ip68 plotter for £500...
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Very good review, thx. I've been using the app on my phone as I carry out a lot of deliveries and every boat has a different system to get used too, so orca has been a big time and hassle saver for me. Now looking at the features of core based system I'm very tempted to add it to my own boat.
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Impressive .
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Thanks I found that interesting. I’ve got to make some decisions on electronics options soon. Am anticipating one of the main instrument manufacturers for primary systems but would like to understand backup options so this was good info and looking at the website I didn’t think it was ‘too’ expensive. I’d really like to understand differences of Navionics and Orca to OpenCPN capabilities at another time.
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So... you cood map out pirats from old data points. Very usful!😀🤙
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Looks like it works great in sea state 2 !
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Thanks for the informative review Steve. I wonder do you also have a traditional plotter like B&G or Raymarine alongside navionics and Orca ?
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Thx a lot… I am going to buy mine now…
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Am I correct to assume, that those are Raymarine ST60 you are using? Those are SeaTalk1 connected devices, right? How do you have them connected to the NMEA2000 net (and thus the core)? I have the same instruments and was wondering if I could get them to work with ORCA. Thanks in advance. Greetings from Hamburg!
