Live Sharing is the brand new functionality that allows every user to share Boat and Navigation info with the entire Aqua Map Community.
Enabling this function, you will be able to display on your nautical charts all currently active Aqua Map users and easily find boating/sailing friends in your area. But that’s not all…!
Find your friends on the water…
Let your relatives track your boat trips…
Track all participants in a regatta…
Find all the members of your sailing association…
You can literally find your own use for this new feature!
In the settings page tap on “Live Sharing” item to access the main page and see all Live Sharing parameters, your shared data and the list of Aqua Map users currently connected with the community.
At the top of this page, you have the switch to enable/disable the whole functionality.
NOTE: To start using Live Sharing you will first need to create a GEC Account (if you don’t already have one) and explicitly approve our Privacy Policy; a pop-up box will automatically open during activation.
Then you will have 2 options to define what to see on the map.
Show on map will allow to select which Live Sharing users you will see on the map. “None” and “Favorites” are quite obvious choices (we will see later how to mark a user as “favorite”).
With “All” you will see on the map your favorite users and all the currently active users. With “ac-tive” we mean all the users that sent their position at least once in the last day.
Map symbol will allow to select how each user is shown on the map.
“Avatar” will show users with their uploaded image (we will see later where and how to upload a profile image) or a default image if no image has been uploaded.
Switch to “Depth” or “Wind” to show, instead of the image, respectively live depth and live true wind direction & speed. Obviously these two values will be available only if the user has an active Wi-Fi connection with its NMEA sensors on board.
NOTE: This option is available only with an active Aqua Map Master subscription, if not only the Avatar option will be selectable.
Enabling the “Send in background” item the app will continue to send data to the server even if you close it. This option does not impact on how you receive data and has a very small impact on the amount of used cellular data.
Second part of this page contains all the currently available users.
First row (the magenta one) identifies your profile, what the other users can see about you and your boat.
In the list below your profile, you will see Aqua Map Community’s users. You will be able to switch between:
- Favorites – users that you selected as favorite (tapping on the “empty gold star” icon), ordered by distance from your GPS position.
- Active users – will show all Aqua Map users with the Live Sharing feature enabled; active means they have sent a data update at least once in the past day).
Active users are also sorted by distance from your GPS position. Here a search box will help you in case of a long list. - Search – will allow to search in our server between all the users even if they are not active or have the Live Sharing function disabled.
Users can be found by GEC Account name, username, Boat name and Captain name (these last two info taken from the MyBoat page within the setting menu).
NOTE: This list is ordered alphabetically, and you shall enter at least 3 characters to start the search.
For each user in the list, you will have the following info (and you can do the following actions):
- Avatar: The first icon has an image in the center (a user uploaded image or a default ava-tar if no image has been uploaded), an external-colored border (yellow for favorite, blue for active, grey for non-active, red for highlighted user).
- Favorite status: The gold star icon can be filled (favorite user) or empty (not favorite user). Tapping on the icon will toggle the favorite status. If you are in the favorite list, tapping on the icon will remove the user from the list.
- User quick info: Boat name and captain name are shown in this area. Tapping will close the page and center the map in that user’s position. - Info page: Tapping on the “i” icon will open the Live Sharing user details page.
You can open the Live Sharing user details page in two different ways:
- Tapping on the Live Sharing user icon on the map will open a pop up box, then select the “i” button on the right.
- In the users list, tap the “i” button near quick info (as already described above).
In the top bar of this page, you will see the user’s GEC Account name; below will be available all personal information and boat info (taken from the MyBoat page) as well as navigation info (taken from any active WiFi connections on the application).
From the bottom menu you can toggle the favorite status (filled/empty gold star icon), center the map on user position and toggle the user Highlight status (Red star icon).
NOTE: When a user is highlighted his icon on the map is red and flashing.
Once you activate the Live Sharing feature you will display on the map all the received users (accordingly to your settings).
At the bottom, on the map view, will be displayed also the Live Sharing box, just above the GPS box, showing in real time the main Live Sharing info.
Last, you will be able to access the Live Sharing also from the “GEC Account manager” web application. Just login with your credentials and you will be able to find all the My Boat settings as well as the list of favorites you selected from the app.
Here you can change your My Boat settings as well as add or remove favorites and all the changes will be sync next time you open the app.
Here you will be able to see your Live Sharing history too.
Pietro Ferri, Aqua Map Team.
Find out what's new in Live Sharing 2.0
