OpenCPN on Raspberry PI2

[NahanniV]

Originally Posted by boat_alexandra

the software could be improved to handle any chart size with any amount of memory, but I am discouraged after having the memory corrupted so many times on the sd card.


I tried with gles to attempt to gain etc1 compression and it seems a total failure.

If compressed textures worked, then it can handle 6x more data, so your 50mb chart is no longer a problem. Unfortunately it is not working, it does work with the original closed broadcom drivers.

Remember it is an "Experimental" driver.

The developer is actively working on improving it.
How could we help him ?

Do we need to ask if compressed textures can be implemented ?

How could we debug the SD card corruption ?

[verkerkbr]

The problem seems only to happen with OpenCPN.

If I use other programs I can zoom in and out without problems.

Is it a problem caused by the VC4 driver or is it more related to OpenCPN ? Does it work better with the beta OC 4.5 ?

I have read somewhere that in kernel version 4.5 OpenGL will be present in the kernel.
Now the latest kernel version is 4.4.19.

If OpenGL works flawlessly, it is a big improvement for all the "Raspi O users". But if you don't zoomout too much it allready works very good. By trying higher zoomouts it sometimes has the effect that the OpenCPN settings are gone. But no SD card corruption. File system here is Ext4.

This small system with a micro SD card seems an ideal computer system to have on board.

Worried about faillure of the SD card or computer ? Take a copy of the SD and/or a spare Pi board. About the same cost as a single NMEA2000 cable.

Is the Radar plugin working well with the Raspi OpenGL ?

[petter5]

Originally Posted by verkerkbr

The problem seems only to happen with OpenCPN.

If I use other programs I can zoom in and out without problems.

Is it a problem caused by the VC4 driver or is it more related to OpenCPN ? Does it work better with the beta OC 4.5 ?

I have read somewhere that in kernel version 4.5 OpenGL will be present in the kernel.
Now the latest kernel version is 4.4.19.

If OpenGL works flawlessly, it is a big improvement for all the "Raspi O users". But if you don't zoomout too much it allready works very good. By trying higher zoomouts it sometimes has the effect that the OpenCPN settings are gone. But no SD card corruption. File system here is Ext4.

This small system with a micro SD card seems an ideal computer system to have on board.

Worried about faillure of the SD card or computer ? Take a copy of the SD and/or a spare Pi board. About the same cost as a single NMEA2000 cable.

Is the Radar plugin working well with the Raspi OpenGL ?

Anyone who has tried to run the PI from a USB flash drive, it might solve the problem with corrupted SD card,,, https://www.stewright.me/2013/05/ins...b-flash-drive/

[rgleason]

Adrian Studer (dAISy) is working on a new 2-channel AIS reciever with GPS input which works in conjunction with RPI. Some of you may wish to contact him about it.

[petter5]

Originally Posted by verkerkbr

The problem seems only to happen with OpenCPN.

If I use other programs I can zoom in and out without problems.

Is it a problem caused by the VC4 driver or is it more related to OpenCPN ? Does it work better with the beta OC 4.5 ?

I have read somewhere that in kernel version 4.5 OpenGL will be present in the kernel.
Now the latest kernel version is 4.4.19.

If OpenGL works flawlessly, it is a big improvement for all the "Raspi O users". But if you don't zoomout too much it allready works very good. By trying higher zoomouts it sometimes has the effect that the OpenCPN settings are gone. But no SD card corruption. File system here is Ext4.

This small system with a micro SD card seems an ideal computer system to have on board.

Worried about faillure of the SD card or computer ? Take a copy of the SD and/or a spare Pi board. About the same cost as a single NMEA2000 cable.

Is the Radar plugin working well with the Raspi OpenGL ?

It seems that RPI3 has experimental support for booting from USB mass storage - this will mostly eliminate the SD card corruption problem: https://www.raspberrypi.org/document...otmodes/msd.md

[seandepagnier]

maybe the mass storage gets corrupted instead?


I want to know why the new graphics driver causes the sd card to become corrupted.

[petter5]

Originally Posted by boat_alexandra

maybe the mass storage gets corrupted instead?


I want to know why the new graphics driver causes the sd card to become corrupted.

Yes, I agree with you about the reason for corruption of the sd card. On the other hand, Mass storage is known to be more stable and the possibility to boot from mass storage opens up new possibilities regarding dependability and performance.

[verkerkbr]

In the past I also had some SD corruption and had to reflash the SD card. But with latest kernel versions it works OK.

File system Ext4. Using microSDHC UHS-1 Speed up to 80 mb/sec with 32 and 16 Gig.

But remember to enlarge the partition after flashing the image.

The only problems now are zooming-out too far and the screen redraw.

Bram

[seandepagnier]

both times my card was corrupted very quickly after trying to use gles with the vc4 driver, not gl. I want gles because the hardware in theory supports etc1 compression which would help large raster charts...

[verkerkbr]

Dear B_A,

Does this solve the problem ?

https://github.com/anholt/mesa/wiki/...spbian-upgrade.

[seandepagnier]

I didn't try it can you?

[verkerkbr]

Dear B_A,
I have no experience with kernel compilation. But did some tries. PI3 cloning did not work, delta index errors.

Then tried the Pi2, first reduced the video memory setting to 64. Cloning and deltas seems to work without errors.

Latest kernel version appeared to be 4.8.0-rc5

Changed the config.txt settings. Restart: result, rainbow splash screen.

Removed the config.txt settings, then the system bootet in the original 4.4.20 kernel version.

Perhaps better for me to wait for the original 4.5 version.

[seandepagnier]

I understand... for now we patiently wait.


Once opengl is fully stable on the raspberry, there is another problem as it creates a new target which is "arm" but also "opengl" not "opengles"

I this means we don't need glshim, but how to distribute binaries? Other boards need opengles and share the same binaries as armv7.

Could extend glshim to fit on top of opengl as a simple wrapper to allow selecting opengl vs opengles at runtime?

[verkerkbr]

Kernel 4.8.0-rc5 is working now. And without the activation of the VC4 driver GLXgears is running at 59.955 fps.

And OpenCPN works with OpenGL setting to on and with very fast screen movements. And this on a PI2 ! Not yet tried it on my Pi3

Screen fragmentation by zooming-out is however not gone.

But I have not tried the other driver options.

But anyhow it works with OpenGL in the kernel. But it seems still experimental.

Bram

[seandepagnier]

so the driver isn't crashing anymore when zooming out?