OpenPlotter project

[fbraad]

Originally Posted by fbraad

Hi
I am looking at options for adding temperature-sensors in the front of the boat, but i am not so keen on all the wiring that needs to be done if i use a cabled temperature sensor. Ive been looking at setting up remote arduinos, but I also found this little Bluetooth sensor. And as my Pi3 already has a builtin bluetooth radio, the setup seems a lot easier. Does anyone have any experience using remote bluetooth sensors? or any idea if it could work with OpenPlotter?

BlueRadios provides Low Energy Bluetooth 4.0 Smart Ready wireless sensors and single-mode modules for wireless medical patient monitoring

It seems that the product i linked to is extremely closed and proprietary, but digging around some more, i found this instead: https://mbientlab.com/metawearc/

[Arne Henriksen]

Hello!

I bought a couple of old Autohelm ST50 instruments in a moment of temporary insanity, one speed and one depth.

As far as I can understand they speak SeaTalk - is there any way I can get the output from these to NMEA0183 through OpenPlotter?

[Arne Henriksen]

Originally Posted by Arne Henriksen

...
As far as I can understand they speak SeaTalk - is there any way I can get the output from these to NMEA0183

Kind of answers my own question - found this, rather expensive though: Tiny SeaTalk NMEA Bridge

[hwater]

found this bidirectoral Device - gadgetPool.de

As the old SEA-Talk1 Protocoll users 9Bit you need an special Converter to get the normal 8Bit into the Serial Ports. Someone wrote this for Arduino, but i can´t remember where i found it.

Holger

[affinite]

Originally Posted by Arne Henriksen

Kind of answers my own question - found this, rather expensive though: Tiny SeaTalk NMEA Bridge

I have Raymarine ST50/ST60 instruments.
I managed to buy a Raymarine E85001 SeaTalk to NMEA converter on eBay a few weeks ago so might be worth looking out for one yourself. I will be fitting mine in a week or so when I commission my OpenPlotter Pi
regards
steve

[HappyMdRSailor]

Originally Posted by Arne Henriksen

Hello!

I bought a couple of old Autohelm ST50 instruments in a moment of temporary insanity, one speed and one depth.

As far as I can understand they speak SeaTalk - is there any way I can get the output from these to NMEA0183 through OpenPlotter?

What??? You bought something for your boat the was an impulse buy???
Nahhh... I never done that...

Originally Posted by hwater

found this bidirectoral Device - gadgetPool.de

As the old SEA-Talk1 Protocoll users 9Bit you need an special Converter to get the normal 8Bit into the Serial Ports. Someone wrote this for Arduino, but i can´t remember where i found it.

Holger

Welcome to CF Holger !

[Arne Henriksen]

Originally Posted by affinite

I have Raymarine ST50/ST60 instruments.
I managed to buy a Raymarine E85001 SeaTalk to NMEA converter on eBay a few weeks ago so might be worth looking out for one yourself.

Thanks for the heads up - I'll keep my eyes on eBay (OK, even more than before) ;-)

Originally Posted by HappyMdRSailor

What??? You bought something for your boat the was an impulse buy???
Nahhh... I never done that...

Yep. I'm guilty. And this last year, since I bought the boat as well as something of an impulse buy, it just keeps adding up...

But d*mn it's FUN!

[Alekoy]

Tested OpenPlotter on a friends boat yesterday.
I am very impressed!

Running on a Rpi3, and with GPS, AIS, the B&H H3000-system and a IMU connected, I was feeding lots of data to it, and it still ran OpenCPN smootly.
The current setup uses an ITX-computer running NavMonPC, OpenCPN and Digiboat SOB.
The computer will still be there to handle the charts.

So I decided that I will use a 7" raspberry display, and install this on the instrument panel.
The plan is to display some gauges on the screen, and I am looking for some software that can show some nice looking gauges on the Rpi, so if you know about something, please share :P

I will update on the progress

[Alekoy]

Looking for USB hubs, and when looking at the recommended one in the openplotter documentation i remembered that "BigClive" on youtube made a video about the same hub earlier this week so I officially warn people about using that hub..


I found some nice usb-hubs from a company called startech.
They have a 4-port and a 7-port version.
I hope i can even power the PI from one of the ports

7-24v power input, mounting-ears etc.. a really nice hub for this use IMHO.
They also have some really nice usb to serial converters, so you can save on shipping :P

[Sailoog]

Originally Posted by Alekoy

Looking for USB hubs, and when looking at the recommended one in the openplotter documentation i remembered that "BigClive" on youtube made a video about the same hub earlier this week so I officially warn people about using that hub..


I found some nice usb-hubs from a company called startech.
They have a 4-port and a 7-port version.
I hope i can even power the PI from one of the ports

7-24v power input, mounting-ears etc.. a really nice hub for this use IMHO.
They also have some really nice usb to serial converters, so you can save on shipping :P

I disagree. That cheap USB-HUB backfeed the host but you can see this as a problem or as an advantage. From Raspberry 2 backfeeding is no longer a risk because now you can not power your raspberry from the USB port.

I chose it precisely for its backfeeding properties. Providing power to the host cable means that it can get power too and this is a great advantage to use them with laptops without powering the hub. Example, you can connect a NMEA-USB converter, a SDR-AIS, a USB GPS... to a hub without powering the hub, it will take all the needed current from the host port.

I have been using this hub for a year in OpenPlotter development and I can assure you that I have tortured the system a lot. No problem or killed raspberry/computer at all. All my raspberries, laptops and desktops computers are protected from backfeeding. Never tested on MAC, so you may be right here. I think such an expensive computer should be backfeeding protected.

You can use this hub with your raspberry without problem. When you use this hub with normal computer you do not need to power it and if you are not sure your computer is backfeeding protected do not power it.

The links you provided are $99 and $79 hubs. If you are willing to pay that for a hub maybe OpenPlotter is not what you need. Any commercial plotter + a domotic system will do the work if money is not a problem.

[Alekoy]

Ok, that is also a way to do it
As long as the user is aware of the risk and don't plug it into something that takes damage if backfed 5v over the usb, it is ok for me.

I did not see the price as a problem in my case, I just felt that the nice software needed some reliable hardware to compliment it

Thanks for making the great software btw!

[Sailoog]

Yesterday I uploaded to v0.8.0beta repository a lots of changes in MQTT feature. Now you can easier create all the topics you want but the main change is that I have set a local broker server on OpenPotter.

That means that if you are connected to OpenPlotter through a remote broker server, you will be able to get and send information from home. But what happens if you have a beautiful phone app with lots of switches, graphs, gauges... to manage the data from your boat but you are sailing on it out of internet? Then you will be able to connect your app directly to the build in broker server on OpenPlotter

I have found and tested a wonderful and free android app to create many types of switches and buttons to trigger openplotter actions, get data from any sensor on board and create graphs...

MQTT dashboard
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...tmqttdashboard







It works like a charm connected remotely with cloudmqtt.com broker server and locally with openplotter broker server

[Sailoog]

Originally Posted by Alekoy

Ok, that is also a way to do it
As long as the user is aware of the risk and don't plug it into something that takes damage if backfed 5v over the usb, it is ok for me.

I did not see the price as a problem in my case, I just felt that the nice software needed some reliable hardware to compliment it

Thanks for making the great software btw!

I will try to explain it better on the documentation

Good documentation is always a problem, I know very good projects that didn't work because a poor documentation or support. I hope to have more time to work on it after v0.8.0 release.

Now, development takes all my time because you don't stop suggesting new exciting features and I can't resist to test them

[affinite]

Sailoog
I know you have your head in The Cloud at present but ... How is the analogue sensor input module going ?

I have built my own MCP3208 fuel sender reader and bargraph display.
It runs off the SPI interface and is connected to my resistive fuel gauge sender. I've shamelessly copied code from others in order to write a little python prog which captures fuel level data and displays it on an Adafruit LED bargraph over I2C. (Works just great)

I'm installing my OpenPlotter Pi on my boat on Friday but I don't want to go too far "off-piste" with my developments as Id rather stick to the Openplotter framework

[richarddaneel]

Hi Sailoog

Is there a way to connect my PC (Cape Town) with another RPi 2 in Switzerland running OP. I have used teamviewer between PC's but is there something similar to connect to OP over internet, many thanks

Richard