Openplotter

AntarcticPilot said:
Isn't there a drawback in that it won't work with the "Visit My Harbour" charts, which I understand to be only available on Windows machines, because of the security mechanisms? I don't suppose a Raspberry Pi is powerful enough to run OpenCPN under Wine.
Click to expand...
That does seem to be the case with their charts on any software, Mac, linux, Android.. you're out of luck. Doubt if a Pi2 would stand a chance running Wine.
 
I have one of these latest PIPO offerings on order to play around with this winter.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PIPO-X9-M...236857?hash=item4d3c7beef9:g:-S4AAOSwhcJWMDQP

It is an update on what I already use with open cpn. Dual boot android or windows combined with a gps dongle, visit my harbour charts makes for a low cost very low power consumption chart plotter that can also be plugged into a large tv screen ideal for longer passage planning without zooming in and out etc.

Touch screen display Bluetooth, Wifi and loads of usb connections fanless operation and prepackaged in an enclosure makes it a simpler project computer than any Pii.

Will find out how practical the display is in sunlight and potential for water proofing and real life power consumption.
 
affinite said:
I've used OpenCPN on old Windows laptops for years and I think it is great.

I'm a little reticent about OpenPlotter because although the spec is fantastic I'm not sure I want to learn all the Operating System stuff required to get a system up and running on a Pi
ie Don't you need to be a Linux geek to get a OpenPlotter system running ?
Click to expand...

If all you want is OpenCPN on a Pi (any model) just follow my links below. No need to tangle with the OS stuff unless you want to.
 
I don't have experience with Linux or computer programming, but managed to run OpenPlotter on freshly bought Raspberry Pi 2, within half an hour.
It seems to work great, OpenCPN works fast and without trouble.
This is my first post on this forum, so greetings from Poland!
Rafal
 
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Interesting thread. I've struggled with downloading stuff for Linux/Pi - links, generally not just nav, seem to send you round in a circle when all I'm looking for is a button marked 'download' and then 'install' like Windows.
Peeps with more skills (respect!) can cope with command line sudo this, apt that. I'm having to work at it.

That's it... back to paying the gas bill and hoovering-
 
Doesn't raspbian (the Pi OS) have a graphical package manager.

Just hunt for the name of the software in there and it will download and install it for you and sort any dependencies.
 
st599 said:
Just hunt for the name of the software in there and it will download and install it for you and sort any dependencies.
Click to expand...

Disclaimer: I haven't tried OpenPlotter because (a) I don't really need it (my pi does what I want it to) and (b) I'm not a fan of kim dotcom's mega.nz where they've stashed the images and have no intention of using the mega download tool but...

Not all the software is available from the official raspbian repositories. kplex isn't (hmm...I should sort that out).

Also I understand that the OpenPlotter folks have bound everything together with their own GUI for configuring everything.

So despite not having road tested this myself (I'll take GHA's word for it) conceptually this does seem like a huge simplification of the set-up process for non-linux folks so I definitely see the utility of it. The chart situation is the big let-down unless you're ok with out-of-date dodgy charts which many people might be if this is a back up to a more conventional navigation system.
 
laika said:
Also I understand that the OpenPlotter folks have bound everything together with their own GUI for configuring everything.
Click to expand...

With a bit more thrown in..
Running through the tabs:

NMEA 0183 - Basically a front end for your kplex prog with some sentence filterling thrown in.

SignalK - Doesn't do much, shows the inputs & web address of the outputs.

Wifi AP- Again, looks mostly a front end for your work, set up wifi access point with addresses for NMEA stream, remote desktop and signal K stuff. Should act as a local router if you have 2 x Wifi adaptors.

SDR AIS- Not sure if this is piggy backed ontop of the OpenCPN plug in, but lets you use a cheap TV usb dongle to recieve AIS signals and get them into OpenCPN.

Calculate- Calculates true wind & a few other things and turns them into NMEA sentences.

Sensor- Connects to IMU compass/accel sensor and outputs heading & heel. Connects to a DS18B20 temp sensor for engine temp. Connects to pressure/temp/humidity sensor & logs it all.

Switches- Monitors 4 x pins with switches attached, do a whole host of things if a switch changes, including run a linux command, send an email, shutdown or whatever.

Alarms- Whole host of triggers inc. nmea data to do same options as the switches, so if wind gets up above whatever, sound an alarm.

Monitoring- Send any data to twitter or gmail at definable intervals.

All in all, it's a nice interface, works and early days yet. I've been having a brief chat on another forum with the author, there's work being done on cheap GSM dongles to send SMS, adding battery monitoring and probably more temp sensors (adding the temp was my idea :) ). Plus talk of a add on board for the wiring bits needed to connect the various sensors to the right pins.
Exciting stuff, and all without us mere mortals having to even open a console to type a command. (And most probably not even realizing we're standing on the shoulders of kplex:) )

I've just ordered a raspberry Pi Zero, so will be interesting to see how that works, could be ideal for a (very! ) cheap boat monitoring system which will send you a text if the batteries get low or tweet when the bilge pump switches on.

As for OpenCPN charts, well that debate will run and run. You can always buy some, but they're full on ECDIS big ship charts and ain't cheap.
 
I did a quick ebay search for the bits I think I need doing this from scratch.

Rasbery Pi2 b £25 to 30
box for Pi £3
USB cable £2
HDMI cable £3
HDMI car 21v monitor £45
8g SD Card £5

Software I could not find the price with out logging in?


Wifi Dongle £3.99
GPS dongle £30

I guess that's the basic stuff required. + the charts £116. "Sailing with free hardware" most of this could be done taking my car sat nav on board and using that. Or am I missing something?
 
GHA said:
there are a lot of nasty bits you might not miss if you think a car sat nav is a good idea to navigate with.....

The software is free.
Click to expand...

With out charts and other data, tides etc.. it is only good for position, speed direction. My car sat nav does that. (I would then transfer them to paper charts if I was using this system.
 
GHA said:
there are a lot of nasty bits you might not miss if you think a car sat nav is a good idea to navigate with.....
Click to expand...

Garmin used to do a range (Nuvi 500) which could be used with road atlas or marine chart data. That seems to be discontinued, but I wonder if there is a modern equivalent.
 
BlackPig said:
I did a quick ebay search for the bits I think I need doing this from scratch.

Rasbery Pi2 b £25 to 30
box for Pi £3
USB cable £2
HDMI cable £3
HDMI car 21v monitor £45
8g SD Card £5

Software I could not find the price with out logging in?


Wifi Dongle £3.99
GPS dongle £30

I guess that's the basic stuff required. + the charts £116. "Sailing with free hardware" most of this could be done taking my car sat nav on board and using that. Or am I missing something?
Click to expand...

You can also have the following installed/running if you so wish:

- OpenCPN 4.0.0 Chartplotter and all the plug-ins available for Linux.
- Chart Converter and Calibration Utility. Make pictures from your paper charts, calibrate them and use them inside OpenCPN.
- zyGrib 7.0.0 Grib Weather Data.
- qtVlm 5.0 Sailboat Router. Optimize your route according to current weather condition.
- QGrid 3.0 Distance and Bearing Calculation using QRA Locater or Lat/Lon.
- Weather Wizard 3.0.1.5 Superimpose weather fax and grib files to cross check for tropical phenomenons.
- GnuAIS Decoder 0.3.2 integrated into OpenCPN. Turn your old VHF into a fully functional AIS receiver.
- RTLSDR and AISDecoder (beta) integrated into OpenCPN. Use the RTL2832U Dongle to receive AIS signals.
- PolarCOM 1.9.6 A Full Screen Navigation Instruments Panel.
- Matrix Mariner 1.0beta3 A Large GPS Panel.
- Airmail 3.5.025 for HAM and Sailmail with the latest frequency list and added zyGrib support.
- JWX 2.8 and HamFAX 0.8.1 to receive Weather Fax through SSB.
- JNX 1.4 Navtex Decoder.
- YaDD 1.6.3 DSC Signal Decoder.
- JTides 5.3 Worldwide Tidal Calculator with the latest tide definition files.
- WXTide 4.7. The classic Tidal Calculator you may already know from Windows.
- XTide 2.13. Tidal Calculator for the United States.
- Nautical Almanac 1.5-1. Never need to buy the Almanac again.
- CelNav 0.2.2 Celestial Navigation Calculator and Astronomical Almanac Interface. Works until Year 2100 and beyond. Now even more accurate than ever!
- flDigi 3.21.80 and jPSKMail 2.0.30 Send and receive eMails over SSB without a Pactor Modem.
- gpsd 3.9 Supports many GPS receivers out of the box and needs no additional drivers.
- gpsbabel 1.4.3 converts your GPS routes and way points to many different formats.
- gpstrans 0.41 communicates with your Garmin GPS receiver.
- wvdial 1.61 Ready to connect and use your Inmarsat IsatPhone Pro or Iridium Satellite Phone.
- XGate 3.85 Use your SatPhone with your compressed email account.
- Stellarium 0.12.4 Complete Planetarium for your actual GPS Location.
- FoxtrotGPS 1.1.1-5 Download maps to find your way on land, even if you are offline.
- Google Earth shows satellite images from the whole world.
- Kiwix 0.9 Take the whole Wikipedia with you and access it whenever you want - without the Internet!
- hdparm 9.43 will turn off your hard drive temporarily while you run Navigatrix from a USB Stick or a Memory Card.
This gives you full protection against permanent hard disk damage due engine vibrations and boat movement while under sail.
- redshift 1.7 sets the color temperature according to the position of the sun, click the red light bulb to activate night vision for all applications,
the color will change smoothly to allow your eyes to slowly adapt.
- OSD Depth script to display water depth with big digits above any application.
- Muplex scripts for your NMEA multiplexer.
- RTL2832 EZcap USB SDR receiver support.
- Calibre 2.29 Electronic Library ready to connect your eBook reader and convert/transfer all the books you like.
- Easy to setup data encryption. So nobody gets your sensitive data if you loose your USB Memory.
- wine-1.7.38 ... runs Windows Programs too! So you may also install your favorite Windows applications (e.g. EchoLink, Yotreps, HamRadioDeluxe, VisualPassagePlanner).
- DSP enabled Kernel 3.19.0-26 so you can use all the included SSB tools which usually wont run under newer Ubuntu versions.
- Free online support and a fast growing community ready to help you.
- and many more useful tools for Videos, Music, Pictures, Word Documents, Spreadsheets, Web-browsing, Email, Internet Telephony and Data Rescue....

http://http://navigatrix.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=639
http://www.sailoog.com/en/navigatrix
 
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Harry Brown said:
You can also have the following installed/running if you so wish:

- OpenCPN 4.0.0 Chartplotter and all the plug-ins available for Linux.
- Chart Converter and Calibration Utility. Make pictures from your paper charts, calibrate them and use them inside OpenCPN.
- zyGrib 7.0.0 Grib Weather Data.
- qtVlm 5.0 Sailboat Router. Optimize your route according to current weather condition.
- QGrid 3.0 Distance and Bearing Calculation using QRA Locater or Lat/Lon.
- Weather Wizard 3.0.1.5 Superimpose weather fax and grib files to cross check for tropical phenomenons.
- GnuAIS Decoder 0.3.2 integrated into OpenCPN. Turn your old VHF into a fully functional AIS receiver.
- RTLSDR and AISDecoder (beta) integrated into OpenCPN. Use the RTL2832U Dongle to receive AIS signals.
- PolarCOM 1.9.6 A Full Screen Navigation Instruments Panel.
- Matrix Mariner 1.0beta3 A Large GPS Panel.
- Airmail 3.5.025 for HAM and Sailmail with the latest frequency list and added zyGrib support.
- JWX 2.8 and HamFAX 0.8.1 to receive Weather Fax through SSB.
- JNX 1.4 Navtex Decoder.
- YaDD 1.6.3 DSC Signal Decoder.
- JTides 5.3 Worldwide Tidal Calculator with the latest tide definition files.
- WXTide 4.7. The classic Tidal Calculator you may already know from Windows.
- XTide 2.13. Tidal Calculator for the United States.
- Nautical Almanac 1.5-1. Never need to buy the Almanac again.
- CelNav 0.2.2 Celestial Navigation Calculator and Astronomical Almanac Interface. Works until Year 2100 and beyond. Now even more accurate than ever!
- flDigi 3.21.80 and jPSKMail 2.0.30 Send and receive eMails over SSB without a Pactor Modem.
- gpsd 3.9 Supports many GPS receivers out of the box and needs no additional drivers.
- gpsbabel 1.4.3 converts your GPS routes and way points to many different formats.
- gpstrans 0.41 communicates with your Garmin GPS receiver.
- wvdial 1.61 Ready to connect and use your Inmarsat IsatPhone Pro or Iridium Satellite Phone.
- XGate 3.85 Use your SatPhone with your compressed email account.
- Stellarium 0.12.4 Complete Planetarium for your actual GPS Location.
- FoxtrotGPS 1.1.1-5 Download maps to find your way on land, even if you are offline.
- Google Earth shows satellite images from the whole world.
- Kiwix 0.9 Take the whole Wikipedia with you and access it whenever you want - without the Internet!
- hdparm 9.43 will turn off your hard drive temporarily while you run Navigatrix from a USB Stick or a Memory Card.
This gives you full protection against permanent hard disk damage due engine vibrations and boat movement while under sail.
- redshift 1.7 sets the color temperature according to the position of the sun, click the red light bulb to activate night vision for all applications,
the color will change smoothly to allow your eyes to slowly adapt.
- OSD Depth script to display water depth with big digits above any application.
- Muplex scripts for your NMEA multiplexer.
- RTL2832 EZcap USB SDR receiver support.
- Calibre 2.29 Electronic Library ready to connect your eBook reader and convert/transfer all the books you like.
- Easy to setup data encryption. So nobody gets your sensitive data if you loose your USB Memory.
- wine-1.7.38 ... runs Windows Programs too! So you may also install your favorite Windows applications (e.g. EchoLink, Yotreps, HamRadioDeluxe, VisualPassagePlanner).
- DSP enabled Kernel 3.19.0-26 so you can use all the included SSB tools which usually wont run under newer Ubuntu versions.
- Free online support and a fast growing community ready to help you.
- and many more useful tools for Videos, Music, Pictures, Word Documents, Spreadsheets, Web-browsing, Email, Internet Telephony and Data Rescue....

http://http://navigatrix.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=639
http://www.sailoog.com/en/navigatrix
Click to expand...


90% of this seems to be dross google earth? am I suppose to be online all the time? tides for USA or windows software, apps for smart phones etc.

I'm trying and failing to work out how or if I could use it sailing around the Clyde and west coast. At £100+ I could use my tablet with most of the apps downloaded and no hassle.
 
BlackPig said:
90% of this seems to be dross google earth? am I suppose to be online all the time? tides for USA or windows software, apps for smart phones etc.

I'm trying and failing to work out how or if I could use it sailing around the Clyde and west coast. At £100+ I could use my tablet with most of the apps downloaded and no hassle.
Click to expand...

I think its pretty amazing really, especially for free. When you have bought the hardware, it can be used for many many other things, also including redundancy for other systems. No hard drive to get damaged either due to vibration. This software just scratches the surface!
 
BlackPig said:
HDMI cable £3
HDMI car 21v monitor £45
[...]
GPS dongle £30
Click to expand...

BlackPig said:
At £100+ I could use my tablet with most of the apps downloaded and no hassle.
Click to expand...

People with a GPS receiver installed already on their boat can use that instead of buying a dongle. You could use a tablet instead but then you're faced with the question of how you get your boat's data (wind, log, AIS for those that have it, GPS...) onto it. You could buy something expensive, or you could use OpenPlotter on a pi to create a wifi access point and bridge data from NMEA onto it.

As for the dedicated screen....has anyone tried it using VNC or whatever on a tablet? As mentioned somewhere above, my pi isn't running OpenPlotter but I use similar functionality sans OpenCPN and I don't have a screen for it (I log in via my laptop).

As GHA implied though..everyone has different needs and interests. This is good for people who are short on cash and don't have required functionality already covered by existing devices and/or have an interest in home-brew electronics. If stuff you already have does what you need it to then why change?
 
laika said:
As for the dedicated screen....has anyone tried it using VNC or whatever on a tablet?
Click to expand...
Worked but wasn't great. Slow and clunky, but you could get by. On a Sony Xperia. I just used OpenCPN for android instead, the AIS implementation is excellent, with openplotter on a Pi2 broadcasting the gps & ais nmea data over wifi. Easypeasy to set up. From a cockpit with just a log & depth display it really has transformed things. No wires required :)
 
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