OpenCPN on 4.3" display

[seandepagnier]

This is olinuxuno with a 4.3" touchscreen lcd display. Power consumption under 3 watts.

There are 8 buttons on the board as well which get remapped (using xmodmap) to important opencpn functions.

Some small changes are needed to opencpn for the ui to work at a resolution of 480x272.

[Hakan]

Rather nice but I think I would need to include costs for a magnifying glass

[rgleason]

Looks pretty nice. Hakan -Maybe get a big magnifier to cover the entire screen?
To bad you couldn't do a google glass thing, but it is touch screen too which is nice.

https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLin...ource-hardware
https://github.com/OLIMEX/OLINUXINO
https://www.olimex.com/forum/

Is this the board?
https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLin...ource-hardware
CS-E9302 DEVELOPMENT BOARD - Dontronics

[bcn]

https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLin...ource-hardware

We are using the A20 board and it seems to me that Sean as well.
Would love to see an Deb.img with OpenGL, as this beyond of the stuff we are doing by ourselves right now.

4.3" as an exercise to see with how little amp one can live can be interesting.
But navigating ?? A wearable perhaps?

Hubert

[rgleason]

Hurbert, Is this the one?
https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLin...ource-hardware
Allwinner A20 dual core Cortex-A7 processor, each core typically running at 1GHz and dual-core Mali 400 GPU

Maybe it has no built in OS
https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLin...ource-hardware
Allwinner A20 dual core Cortex-A7 processor, each core typically running at 1GHz and dual-core Mali 400 GPU , 1GB DDR3 RAM memory , NO NAND FLASH memory, NO BUILT-IN OS

Is it reasonably fast?
I have Virtualbox Linux with Opencpn using 1 Gb RAM but the processor is i7.

[rgleason]

Building A20-OLinuXino-MICRO Debian image with hardware accelerated video | olimex

[rgleason]

Sean has young eyes. Here are some other possibilities...
https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/LCD/

[bcn]

We have a 22" TV hooked to it as display (1920x1080). Slow. But as the main purpose is to be the AIS/GPS server here that's ok.
No disk. One SD card with the OS and a second one with the charts.

I would imagine that navigating would be ok, route planning with zooming and panning is some kind of PITA.

For a boat the wide range power input is interesting.

And as the test bed for ARM compiled - well you start the build and after 20 minutes you come back. That's for a clean build. No issue with that.

Hubert

[rgleason]

Hurbert do you think it is slower because of the size of the display? I have an old 21" Flat LCD Monitor screen I might use... but it is a little big for our boat I think.

[bcn]

Wouldn't do that. Salty air will not be that nice.

I would just go for one of the latest Intel chip set based systems.
Notebook. Even with Windows now as it comes free with the small systems.
The test with i3 stuff are showing really little consumption. At 250$. or even a bit less. They do not feel very sturdy though neither.

If you sum up the components plus decent housings - decent means at least somehow robust - for a A20 system plus display (13" + as you say, the letters are every time a bit smaller) the delta is not that big.
Without counting time for provisioning and assembly - but this is hobby, I know.

My opinion

[seandepagnier]

Maybe a 3d printer could make a housing?

The larger displays are generally slower because they have to process and display that much more data.

I believe with the right interface it would be all that's needed. Now with android support, most smartphones can run opencpn, but there are issues that need to be worked out because of the limited screen size (options and other dialogs are not completely usable)

[bcn]

Originally Posted by boat_alexandra

Maybe a 3d printer could make a housing?

A 150x90x30mm 3D custom printed housing (thats what I see for the Olimex w/o display) would not be cheap neither. Robust will depend from the material used. A carved wooden case would be great...
And you have to seal everything very well. Get a good epoxy.

The larger displays are generally slower because they have to process and display that much more data.
I believe with the right interface it would be all that's needed.

You want to explore the minimalistic way.
A 4.3" phone or similar gadget for navigation would make me very nervous.
Put 50 AIS targets on it. How much do you have to zoom in for details? I can't see intuitive awareness. And a magnifier will not do it neither

Now with android support, most smartphones can run opencpn, but there are issues that need to be worked out because of the limited screen size (options and other dialogs are not completely usable)

Sean, from your post in the other thread it is very clear that OCPN an Android is still a "proof of concept".
That you getting something very limited to run on one platform is one step. An important one. But this is very far away from having OCPN on Android for the mortal.
User interface is just one - and not small - issue. You are listing a lot more.

Just remember how long it took from you stating "rendering of raster charts is now much faster" to get a usable beta.
This not not to discourage you - but keep in mind that there is a very big difference that something somehow is running on your development environment and a distributable version.

Keep on fighting

Hubert

[seandepagnier]

Originally Posted by bcn

I would imagine that navigating would be ok, route planning with zooming and panning is some kind of PITA.

This is solved on raster charts if you have hardware acceleration working.
Vector charts work a lot faster with a sata SSD than off of an sdcard.

[mattkab]

Originally Posted by boat_alexandra

This is olinuxuno with a 4.3" touchscreen lcd display. Power consumption under 3 watts.

There are 8 buttons on the board as well which get remapped (using xmodmap) to important opencpn functions.

Some small changes are needed to opencpn for the ui to work at a resolution of 480x272.

This is so awesome!

I'm going to follow up on this, because I think it would be a perfect secondary display. I imagine it, for example, mounted in the master stateroom and communicating with the primary OpenCPN program running eslewhere to get shared GPS and other NMEA sentances. It would simply display the data with minimal UI interaction.

Main problem I see is that the toolbar would need to be able to be hidden -- maybe by config setting? I'll look into that over the holidays.

[seandepagnier]

I'm able to use the toolbar.

Maybe the toolbar could become hidden with a timeout to touchscreen events.