Openplotter

 
And a little more working..

Add a PIR sensor (about £1.50) and the Pi sends a tweet or email, should be simple to sound an alarm, flash lights etc.

Too much geeky fun, the sensor is in under the chart table loose, all I have to do is move my foot and a few seconds later a tweet comes in :cool:
 
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gregcope said:
Any ideas on UK Charts for this?
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CM93 charts are available online if you hunt, but aren't up to date and technically infringe copyright.

(And it would be nice if people could maybe refrain from going off on a rant about the legalities and morality of CM93 charts, then the thread might stay about openplotter).

Or

http://o-charts.org/

But not cheap. from the FAQ..

Q: What does S-63 charts cost (and why are they sometimes so expensive)? A: The retail price is fixed by the individual HOs. Their customers are from the shipping industry or official bodies like governments, not the leisure market. This is a recognized issue and the reason why there are very few users of S-63 charts from this group, for now. We will need a lot of lobbying to get better solutions and better prices. Help or support from those who have the right contacts would be appreciated. Q: Can I use the UserPermit to buy charts for other chart software than OpenCPN? A: No, the UserPermit is only valid for one kind of system – OpenCPN in our case. Q: My temporary license will time out. What will happen? A: The chart will not disappear, but there will be a warning displayed.
 
BlackPig said:
http://openseamap.org/
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Nicht sprechen zie Deusche Graham.

I have followed this thread with interest if, like Aja, little comprehension. Looking at the Youtube video, I am a bit put off by all the whizzing about with menus that seems to be needed. I have problems coping with MemoryMap if I am away from it for a while, e.g. after the winter. And I have CPN but only on laptop as I could not find a tablet version, now explained in an earlier post.

But talking about using Tablets for navigation, I have used a 7" one for two years, with MemoryMap and Antares charts. Only a wee bit of geekery was needed to install the Antares charts. And I see that a 10" tablet by Medion is available this week from Aldi, or from the Medion web site for around £150.
 
agurney said:
http://www.openseamap.org/index.php?id=openseamap&no_cache=1&L=1
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The real problem with this is the lack of soundings data, and this is a lack that is going to afflict pretty much all "crowd-sourced" chart data. The problem is that unless soundings are recorded on a calibrated echo-sounder with precise time as well as position, they aren't much use. Because we use echo sounders mainly for hazard avoidance, the ones we have aren't precisely calibrated - just "good enough". It's worth noting that Hydrographic Offices don't use "passage data", even from survey vessels, unless there is absolutely nothing else - unless the equipment is regularly calibrated (in deeper water using Conductivity/Temperature/Depth soundings), the depths can be off by a significant amount. In shallower water, it needs to be compared with tide-gauge readings taken at the same time as the survey.

Regrettably, "crowd-sourcing" for map data also has the problem of filtering out bad or malicious data. I think that Navionics' user supplied depths data shows this, according to reports elsewhere on the forums.

Under specialized circumstances, Antares have produced useful results for Scottish waters - but they do go to a lot of trouble carrying out their survey, cover very limited areas and do address these matters. But Antares don't crowd-source their data; they do dedicated surveying.
 
GHA said:
And... after waiting an entire day and spending an entire £3.23 we have an accurate barometer and thermometer tweeting from onboard. :cool:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/BMP180-Repl...ie=UTF8&qid=1449947729&sr=1-1&keywords=bmp180

19:10:30 AP:1.0189hPa AT:17.4C
19:15:30 AP:1.0189hPa AT:17.7C
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GHA said:
And a little more working..

Add a PIR sensor (about £1.50) and the Pi sends a tweet or email, should be simple to sound an alarm, flash lights etc.

Too much geeky fun, the sensor is in under the chart table loose, all I have to do is move my foot and a few seconds later a tweet comes in :cool:
Click to expand...

GHA, would you mind pointing me in the right direction on how you connected these up? I haven't ordered them yet as I don't what's involved and what additional items I need, i.e. cables / plugs etc? Also, it it the same method connecting any additional device up?
Thanks in advance.
 
Wight Dawn said:
But talking about using Tablets for navigation, … I see that a 10" tablet by Medion is available this week from Aldi, or from the Medion web site for around £150.
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I doubt this would be a better buy than the Lenovo Tab 2 A10, which also features a 10" 1920x1200 screen.

Lenovo is more of a name brand, and I'd expect their tablet to be better supported and higher quality than the Medion.

The Lenovo's price fluctuates between £150 & £180, but it has regularly been available at the lower price.


John Lewis have had it a number of times at the £149.99, so you might ask them if they'll price-match Very.co.uk (who are currently listing it at that price).
 
Harry Brown said:
GHA, would you mind pointing me in the right direction on how you connected these up? I haven't ordered them yet as I don't what's involved and what additional items I need, i.e. cables / plugs etc? Also, it it the same method connecting any additional device up?
Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Not that difficult, but you do need to do some soldering as the BMP180 barometer chips I've seen all come without the header pins attached to the board so these pins need to be soldered on, the PIR sensor i can't remember, might be the same. As the Pi has pins rather than sockets some female to female cables are handy.
$_57.JPG


Then the sensors attach to the GPIO pins along the side of the Pi. These are "general purpose in/out" pins and an excellent feature of the Pi to allow it to talk to the outside world.

FN1YEKZHN824U1E.MEDIUM.jpg


So the BMP180 has 4 pins, Vin (or sometimes Vcc), gnd, scl & sda. Vin is power in and gets connected to Pi GPIO pin 1 which outputs 3.3v. Gnd is ground, or 0v (a bit like the negaitve) and connects to any of the ground pins-6,9,14 or 20.
Scl & sda attach to pins 3 & 5, these are used for the 2 devices to talk to each other.

The PIR sensor has 3 wires, Vcc which attaches to the 5v Pi pin 2 and Gnd which attaches to any gound pin. The output then attaches to whatever Pi pin number you set in the openplotter Switches tab. (Needs to be set to "pull down". )

There are a lot of breakout boards available as well which attach to the Pi pins and make life easier when attaching wires.

Hope that all makes sense, not too difficult really and openplotter does a good job of hiding most of the software setup side of things.
 
Headless! We don't need no steenking monitors :cool:

If you don't have a monitor you can still get into openplotter from an android tablet.

I tried this with an older Pi model B , slower than the Pi 2 and only has 512Mb memory. Doesn't like OpenCPN though.

So download the image from http://www.sailoog.com/en/blog/download-openplotter-rpi-v060-beta3 and unzip it. On the card look for "config.txt" and open it in a text editor, change the top lines to this and save it..

Code: 
[OPENPLOTTER]
#uncomment to force screen resolution when monitor is not present (headless)
framebuffer_width=800
framebuffer_height=600
#uncomment to set WiFi access point when monitor is not present (headless)
device=wlan0
ssid=OpenPlotter
pass=12345678

Stick a wifi dongle in and wait , soon there will be a wifi access point called OpenPlotter.

Then on a tablet install VNC Viewer. Log onto the openplotter network with password 12345678. In VNC viewer create a connection using the address 10.10.10.1:5900 and connect.

Hopefully your in. ! :cool:

So, assuming the Pi Zero has enough ummph for 4 quid and a wifi dongle plus a couple of serial/usb adaptors you can broadcast all your nmea data around the boat.
 
GHA said:
Headless! We don't need no steenking monitors :cool:

...
I tried this with an older Pi model B , slower than the Pi 2 and only has 512Mb memory. Doesn't like OpenCPN though.
...
Click to expand...

I have builds of OpenCPN that work on the original PIs, although your problem may just be a couple lines needing added to config.txt.
 
agurney said:
I have builds of OpenCPN that work on the original PIs, although your problem may just be a couple lines needing added to config.txt.
Click to expand...

Yes, I've had them running in the past, but with the cost of a Pi 2 being the same and so low seems silly not to go for a 2 these days.

I've just got it working as a wifi hotspot as well using a high power alfa adaptor to get to the internet and rebroadcast through a little nano adaptor.

Anyone want to buy an alfa R36 router? ;)
 
Hi Everyone,

I'm afraid I'm late here :)
GHA, it seems that you are finding out all the OpenPlotter secrets on your own :encouragement:

Let me read all the posts of this thread tomorrow and I will try to answer all the questions and doubts about the OpenPlotter project.
 
Sailoog said:
Hi Everyone,

I'm afraid I'm late here :)
GHA, it seems that you are finding out all the OpenPlotter secrets on your own :encouragement:

Let me read all the posts of this thread tomorrow and I will try to answer all the questions and doubts about the OpenPlotter project.
Click to expand...

Sailoog
I think GHA is already working with you in the Cruisers Forum under a different name. :)

Your blog page seems empty so which forum is your main Q&A
(I am tracking this forum/thread and the Cruisers forum thread) !

Bye the way - congratulations on a great project. I'm lovin it
Steve
 
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