Airmar OnSiteWX Weather and Instrument Display

Application: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, iOS 6 or greater
Function: Weather and Boat Instrument data display
Rating: *****
Cost: Free


Instrument data is more prevalent than ever on modern cruising yachts. Having easy access to this data can be very useful for monitoring your yachts engine performance and function.

Sailors will be interested in instrument data like Speed, COG, Wind speed and Direction. The ever popular Depth indication is needed on all yachts. Most of these can be viewed from the helm station or at the chart table if you have instrument repeaters.

Having all of your instrument data broadcast over WiFi makes it available to mobile devices like tablets or mobile phones wherever you are on the boat.

There are many NMEA to WiFi devices that can be connected to your navigation systems to broadcast the data over WiFi. I have written about many of these apps over the years on this blog.  I have a list of my top 10 instrument data apps shown here. I think this app may be worthy to make the list.

I recently acquired a DMK Marine 11a module for my yacht.
This device has the option of connecting to NMEA 0183, NMEA 2000 or Raymarine SeaTalk instruments and broadcasting this data over WiFi.  The versatility of this unit is the reason I selected it.

MillPort Media has developed an app called OneSiteWx to display all kinds of weather and NMEA 0183 and 2000 data. It is compatible with all the Airmar weather station products so it can provide all the weather data directly to your mobile device.

The app is unique in that it can provide weather data but also can display any of your boats NMEA 2000 or 0183 data.The app is available from the AppStore from here.

There are several pages of instruments already developed for the most popular readings you will need.  Custom pages can also be created with 1, 2, 3 or 4 instruments per page so you can group the instruments as needed.

Features:

• Custom pages
• Air temp Celsius or Farenheight
• Air pressure
• Wind speed and direction, true and apparent
• Water depth and temperature
• System time and date
• GPS position
• COG/True or Magnetic
• Heading True or Magnetic
• Pitch and roll
• Page selection
• Black and white gauge display
• Digital or analog gauge display
• US or Metric units
• Tachometer
• Speedomenter
• WiFi capable
• NMEA 2000 and 0183
• Compitable with SeaSmart SSN2K, HelmSmart, DMK 11a, Navico GoFree, Digital Yacht NavLink, WLN10, Miniplex 2Wi, Vesper Marine and MailaSail Redbox.
• Optional dual engine speed fuel tank gauges available with an in app purchase.

The beauty of this OnSiteWX app is that you can use the standard pages to display data and you can also create custom pages of any grouping of instruments that you want.

Select the green MENU button on the upper right of the app display. The Menu page contains the options to display some Demo data on the displays, Select Display Preferences, Manage pages, Create custom pages and more.

Select Create Custom Pages to develop your own pages for the data you want to display. A screen with four selections will come up. Select the number of instruments per page. Simply hold your finger down on the instrument and a menu of instrument types will come up.

Select the instrument type for each of the custom instrument displays on your page. 

There are 60 different types of instrument to select from.  The custom display can then be save or renamed for your reference. 

The Adapter Selection provides a list of the many WiFi devices that the app is compatible with. The adapter is the device that provides your yachts weather and marine data over WiFi. If your WiFi device is not listed select the NEW button on the top to create the IP address, port and protocol settings for your device.

I am impressed with the OnSiteWX app not only for the ability to display all the weather data I need but that it also can display all of my instrument data from my yacht. Having all of this data in one app makes it more convenient and easily accessible. This means I don't have to jump between several apps the get the data I need.  

The apps is free so you can't complain about the price. It is definitely worth picking up and giving it a try.

~~~ Sail On ~~~ /)

Mark