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cagney · 12-04-2010, 10:14

A lot of people have asked for a data window, like the one above, in OpenCPN. This is not a part of OpenCPN, but a freestanding application that can easily be used together with OCPN. It even has built in support for kml and Google Earth!

Gippy is the brainchild of Manimaul. Congratulations Will, good on ya!

The full story here.....

Manimaul has just made the first beta release. Let's help him with some testing.

Thomas

manimaul · 12-04-2010, 20:39

Gippy 1.0beta is available for Debian/Ubuntu Linux now. I do have tentative plans to port it over to Windows in the future. I wrote Gippy to complement OpenCPN for those of us with minimal electronics and data displays.

Download Link here:

Gippy-1.0beta.deb

Gippy home page here

Another teaser shot here:

MarkJ · 12-04-2010, 22:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by manimaul

Gippy 1.0beta is available for Debian/Ubuntu Linux now.

Well that'll keep the downloads down to about zero.

I still haven't met someone who actually cruises with anything but Windows. I may be totally deluded.

Good work on doing it

Can't wait to get it for windows

By the way, I love your split screen setup with Google earth on one side. I can't get that to operate as my Garmin 76CX USB wont share between 2 applications. I have been using Franston GPS Gate but it doesnt work.
Damn pity as having both up at once would be fantastic.

manimaul · 12-04-2010, 22:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by MarkJ

Well that'll keep the downloads down to about zero.
I still haven't met someone who actually cruises with anything but Windows. I may be totally deluded.

Deluded indeed. Actually, more people you know are probably cruising with Linux since that is what Raymarine uses under the hood of their MFDs.

I'm not opposed to Windows, its is a good OS for its uses. But, you really ought to give a real operating system a try.

I use Linux on-board my boat as do a lot of Opencpn enthusiasts.

Here is a link... give it a go: Ubuntu Home Page | Ubuntu

Couple Linux with Polar Navy, OpenCPN, Gippy and Google Earth = One really nice marine navigation setup.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MarkJ

By the way, I love your split screen setup with Google earth on one side. I can't get that to operate as my Garmin 76CX USB wont share between 2 applications. I have been using Franston GPS Gate but it doesnt work.
Damn pity as having both up at once would be fantastic.

Thanks, Gippy is pretty much a light-weight implementation of 'Franson GPS Gate' for Linux.

Have fun and let me know how Linux works out for you.

Will

HamishB · 19-04-2010, 06:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by MarkJ

Well that'll keep the downloads down to about zero.

I still haven't met someone who actually cruises with anything but Windows. I may be totally deluded.

Pleased to meet you then.

Also perhaps you have run across someone with an Olex system at some point? Many of these embedded systems don't actually say "linux inside" because there is no linux marketing dept. forcing them to. But there are a number of very good reasons why they do...

As a counterpoint, for the life of me I can't understand why people would use Windows for something that your life could depend upon. Seriously, it makes me shudder, like if you went into the cockpit of a plane you were flying in and instead of the altimeter you saw a blue screen of death. It's just not built with that usage in mind.

None the less, folks should use whatever works for them and I look forward to checking out this new tool.

regards,

HamishB · 19-04-2010, 06:40

look forward to see if it can do red on black night-time B&G mode :-)

idpnd · 19-04-2010, 06:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by HamishB

look forward to see if it can do red on black night-time B&G mode :-)

I use redshift to make the screen redder at night

svaletheia · 19-04-2010, 06:49

+1 for Linux (and Mac) based cruising.

I use both extensively and refuse to use Windows for anything. One of the reasons I love the products that manimaul mentions.

HamishB · 19-04-2010, 07:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by idpnd

I use redshift to make the screen redder at night

... please I wish to know more about this redshift you speak of ...

later when I get onto my laptop I will post my red-instruments setup, it will fit in nicely with this.

manimaul · 19-04-2010, 07:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by HamishB

look forward to see if it can do red on black night-time B&G mode :-)

The ability to change display font size and color is on my short list.
Perhaps an auto-night mode would be cool.

I'd like to hear any other suggestions/feedback. Especially any problems or bugs. I've tested Gippy quite a bit. It has been extremely stable for me running continuously for over 96 hours, using different GPSs and throwing random garbage data at it.

Current bugs I know about:
1. Gippy cannot kill the gpsd process if it was previously started by root, therefore gpsd output will not work.
Temporary Fix:

Code:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure gpsd

choose No for autostart
choose No for automatic USB

Code:

sudo /etc/init.d/gpsd stop

2. KML output checkbox has to be unchecked and checked again after changing GPS ports

Future features list:
Google Earth follow controls.
Analog gauge displays
UDP and TCP nmea ouput
Customizable display colors and sizes

HamishB · 19-04-2010, 07:21

why do you have to kill gpsd in the first place?

posted a bug and a wish to the github issue tracker.

regards,

HamishB · 19-04-2010, 07:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by MarkJ

Can't wait to get it for windows

it appears to be written in wxPython, which is fully cross platform, so it shouldn't be too much of a wait.

python-gps may be an issue, as gpsd is (more or less) a UNIXes-only toy. for Windows you may need some sort of serial port splitter or relay. (gpsd will rebroadcast your nmea to as many programs as call in for it; last time I checked Windows only lets one program at a time connect to COM1, etc.)

idpnd · 19-04-2010, 07:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by HamishB

... please I wish to know more about this redshift you speak of ...

later when I get onto my laptop I will post my red-instruments setup, it will fit in nicely with this.

Redshift « jonls devblog

It's really a port of f.lux for windows, it doesnt do a true ngiht view, it just makes the desktop redder/warmer depending on location lat/long and time of day, it takes some getting used to but I'm now firmly addicted to it