Help / FAQ

[Hakan]

Yes and to confuse even more?: https://desk.zoho.eu/portal/actisens...he-right-ngw-1
There are other more or less official brands of this technic but Actisence are known to be reliable although adapted to a commercial clientele and a corresponding price level.
Håkan

[Hakan]

Jeremy...

It may be wise to read more about Raymarine APs and OCPN:
This plugin and links on: https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/do...utopilot_rm_pi

And this thread for example: http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...ml#post2928458
And discussions here: http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...ml#post2930333

[rgleason]

Originally Posted by maJer

Looking for a quick check from people with some experience in integrating seatalk1 equipment to OpenCPN via Raspberry Pi. I am sailing a Gemini 105MC.
My current situation is that all of my Raymarine ST60 instruments and ST4000 autopilot currently work. I do not have a chartplotter which integrates the instruments with a display. Instead I use a Raspberry Pi & OpenCPN with a USB GPS receiver that displays to a tablet. This works fine, but it is not integrated with the instruments.

I have looked at the openCPN manual in depth and it has guided me to the setup as follows:



I have not purchased the seatalk connectors or the Actisense wifi device and am looking for anyone with experience.

My reasoning for going to this system is -
1. I want to integrate my instruments with OpenCPN at low cost.
2. Existing instruments and autopilot work fine right now, but want to future proof the setup and have the flexilibity to add additoinal/replacement instruments to the NMEA2K backbone.
3. I want to go to WiFi for access to info from mobile devices (in the future).

I am looking for feedback to see if this is a sensible approach or if I am heading down the wrong path. Thanks for any help or advice you all can offer. Jeremy

Jeremy,
You might be able to splice your cables to get from STNG to Nmea2000 to save some money. See https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/do...k1_to_nmea2000


Look down at
"As it turns out, I could not get either of those cables to resolve the ambiquity, and I made my own by cutting some other cables in half and splicing them. (A male devicenet connector at the tee end of every drop (or “spur” in STng talk) because a standard tee has two female and one male connectors. ) http://www.panbo.com/forum/2009/08/n...seatalkng.html –Seatalk-to-STng converter also produces valid NMEA 2000 PGNs…”

Also Frank has released a new version for his Tiny Seatalk Link which is intended to fix some issues. It would be less expensive but has not been tested by others yet.

The Artisense devices are good and with some minor programming can be controlled if this is found to be necessary.

[Jon Hacking]

Originally Posted by Charisma1

Looking for advice/help on what are the best cruising charts available for western Caribbean, primarily Yucatan, Belize and Guatemala for opencpn. Running v4.8 on Mac laptop.

Charisma, I didn't see a response to this. If you can get them, the *best* charts (IMHO) are satellite imagery. The georeferencing is superb, with max errors on the order of 10 feet (3m). It's very refreshing to cruise with charts that you know put reefs & land exactly where they're supposed to be, & overlaying them with, for instance, Google Earth landmarks will put some useful labels on them as well (although not necessarily nautical labels). They have no depths, of course, but a practiced eye can read depths by color of water (or you can make mbtiles from Navionics or CMap for depths, but they're not as accurate).

Unfortunately, the tools necessary to make them are Windows based. However, they're all free. Sat2Chart by Paul Higgins will drive either SAS Planet or Google Earth to where you want your charts & then make either KAPs or mbtiles from them (both of which OpenCPN v5 can display).

[Ziggy]

I'm a relatively new user of OpenCPN, currently using version 5.0.0 on a Windows 10 Laptop. Yesterday, I must have inadvertently hit some combination of shortcut keys which resulted in the background color of some (but not all) pop-up text boxes to change to fairly dark gray. For example, the settings window, and waypoint properties window. How can I reset the background color to default?

[.Paul.]

Ziggy,

You entered the night color mode. It is intended to protect your night vision.

The day/night color scheme can be changed when the chart canvas has the focus. You must exit the "Options" settings window or "waypoint properties" window to switch the focus to the chart canvas.

The color scheme for day, dusk or night is usually toggled from the upper-left menu using the icon containing a quarter moon and a star. There are two "day" schemes. A keyboard shortcut, the letter "C" (on the keyboard), also toggles through these four color schemes. A third way to change the color scheme is to use the menu that is launched when the "Alt" key is pressed. Select "View" and "Change Color Scheme" from the Alt-key menu.

These color schemes are built into official raster and vector charts.

Paul

[Ziggy]

Originally Posted by .Paul.

Ziggy,

You entered the night color mode. It is intended to protect your night vision.
[...]


Paul

Yes, that was it. Thank you!

[Jon Hacking]

I've been playing with mbTiles made from Sat2Chart & SAS Planet. I make them with multiple zooms (usually Z10-18). The problem comes when I'm in a fringe area - that is, I'm looking at a part of the world where 1 or more of my mbtiles only has relatively low resolution imagery, but I'm pretty zoomed in on OCPN. Now I've got a bunch of piano keys at the bottom of my display, but most of them only show a blur. Does technology have a solution here?

Would it be possible for OCPN to match its zoom level up better with mbtiles? That is, not bother to display the piano-keys for mbtiles that only have lower resolution imagery for the area & zoom where I'm currently looking? Or maybe display them in a different color, so the user knows they're not very useful?

Thoughts? Alternate solutions?

[Alan N Crichton]

I run OpenCPN v5.0 on a Dell Inspiron Laptop with a Win 10 pro 64bit operating system. When minimized or screen saver activated it appears that Win 10 suspends the execution and thus no alarms etc are heard. I realise this must be a windows setting but cannot find anything - anyone have a fix ?

[Hakan]

Alan..
Yes, that's how Windows normally works.

If you in order to save power wants the screen only to turn off while OCPN is still active you've to set the energy alternative to switch the screen off after a certain time and the hibernation to never be activated. (Desktop right click -> screen settings)
And turn any screensaver off. The screen saver was initially to not burn a stable (spread sheet?) pattern to the screen and/or not show others what's on your screen while you leave the office or similar.

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by nohal

Waypoint is a waypoint (wpt entity in the GPX file). Route point (rtept entity in the GPX file) may, but does not have to, also be a waypoint. All the navobjects with the exception of track points (trkpt entity in the GPX file) do have a GUID in GPX produced by OpenCPN. The GUID is the primary identifier used to see if the object already exists or not. Two objects with the same GUID can not exist at the same time.
A waypoint may also be included in zero to many routes. A route point may not exist without a route though (= must be included in 1 to many existing routes and unlike a waypoint, it is also for example deleted with the last route it is part of).

Now that we have produced a lot of text describing it, does anybody understand and actually find this information worth something? I honestly do not see much use for it for a normal user except getting totally confused.

Pavel

The problem I'm having is that many waypoints which I have created (as waypoints) have apparently become route points, or something. When the route is made invisible the waypoint disappears, even though it is still shown in the Route and Mark Manager as visible. I cannot use these existing waypoints in new routes as I did in previous versions of O. I found this in the help file:

Click the "eye"
to the far left on the line with the route to toggle if the route is displayed or hidden on the chart. A small dialog let you choose if existing marks included in a route will also become invisible. When a route is turned visible, all the shared waypoints are also made visible. Once a route is deleted, such a mark will go back to be a “normal” waypoint.

However it doesn't seem to matter what I click, the waypoints disappear.

Looking at the GPX file I see that this waypoint is a rtept which I suppose is the problem although I'm under the impression that the previous version I used didn't handle it this way.

<rtept lat="20.685910000" lon="-105.354573333">
<time>2015-01-02T16:13:52Z</time>
<name>M1</name>
<desc>20º41.05'N 105º21.23'W Orange Tetra</desc>
<sym>circle</sym>
<type>WPT</type>
<extensions>
<opencpn:guid>00b80000-6c8a-4661-a945-d661442affff</opencpn:guid>
<opencpn:viz>0</opencpn:viz>
<opencpn:viz_name>1</opencpn:viz_name>
<opencpn:shared>1</opencpn:shared>
<opencpn:arrival_radius>0.050</opencpn:arrival_radius>
<opencpn:waypoint_range_rings visible="false" number="0" step="1" units="-1" colour="#FFFFFF" />
<opencpn:scale_min_max UseScale="false" ScaleMin="2147483646" ScaleMax="0" />
</extensions>
</rtept>

Is there a solution? Can I bulk edit all the waypoints?

Fred Roswold

[rgleason]

wingsail,
In O v5.00 when I right click on a waypoint that is part of a route, I am able to select "Remove from route". When I do that the waypoint guid does not change. In fact all waypoints have a guid whether they are part of a route or not.

When I search for a waypoint under "Waypoints" that is part of a Route, it is not shown regardless of the Route being visible or not.

When I make the route visible and right click and remove the waypoint from the route, it immediately shows up in the the "Waypoint" listing.


Additionally when I delete a route all waypoints are also deleted.


Would you provide links to the documentation you have quoted so that we can correct it.

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by rgleason

wingsail,
In O v5.00 when I right click on a waypoint that is part of a route, I am able to select "Remove from route". When I do that the waypoint guid does not change. In fact all waypoints have a guid whether they are part of a route or not.

When I search for a waypoint under "Waypoints" that is part of a Route, it is not shown regardless of the Route being visible or not.

When I make the route visible and right click and remove the waypoint from the route, it immediately shows up in the the "Waypoint" listing.


Additionally when I delete a route all waypoints are also deleted.


Would you provide links to the documentation you have quoted so that we can correct it.

I am sorry I was unclear.

My problem is this:

1. I have created about 25 waypoints which WERE NOT PART OF ANY ROUTE WHEN I CREATED THEM.
2. They appear on the waypoint list and are visible on the chart or not depending on the the icon is "x'd" or not.
3. I can include them in a route ("use nearby waypoint")
4. But if I make the route invisible then they disappear from the chart, even if I answer "No" to the question, "Do you want to make the shared waypoints being part of this route invisible".
5. They are still on the waypoint list, just not visible on the chart and cannot be used in any other routes.

The problem I have is in step 4. Once I have included a waypoint in a route, then made that route invisible, the waypoint is lost to me. I cannot make it reappear on the chart unless I either make the route visible or delete the route.

The help file Route and Mark Manager, under Routes, https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/do...ark_managerthe following statement, in red, does not work, and I think it should.

Click the "eye"
to the far left on the line with the route to toggle if the route is displayed or hidden on the chart. A small dialog let you choose if existing marks included in a route will also become invisible. When a route is turned visible, all the shared waypoints are also made visible. Once a route is deleted, such a mark will go back to be a “normal” waypoint.

I would like to use all these waypoints to create routes but I cannot because once used the waypoint disappears unless I keep all the routes visible.

OpenCPN 4.0.0 works as stated in the Help file, If you say "no" to the small dialog when making the route invisible, the waypoints stay visible like they should.

You can test this by creating two waypoints (by dropping marks, for example) then create a simple route from one to the other. Then make the route invisible.

I view this as a bug.

Fredrick Roswold, SV Wings

[fgd3]

I can confirm that this works properly in 4.8.8. If I create some waypoints, then created a route which uses those waypoints, then make the route invisible a dialogue box asks if I want to make the shared waypoints used in the route invisible. If I choose "No" the route will be invisible but the waypoints remain visible.



Fabbian

[transmitterdan]

Originally Posted by wingssail

My problem is this:

snip

I view this as a bug.

Fredrick Roswold, SV Wings

wingssail,

Can you try an experiment? In the Settings->Display->Advanced turn off "Use Accelerated Graphics" option. Then see if you have the same problem. Report the result here.