OpenCPN.org and the Pilot Charts

[marshmat]

It appears that the complete set of pilot charts has now been translated to BSB, so here's a new torrent with the entire set (BSB only, no PDFs):

http://www.marsh-design.com/sites/de...t_2010.torrent

Contents:
Mediterranean Sea (PC_MED.7z)
North Pacific (PC_NP.7z)
South Atlantic (PC_SA.7z)
Indian Ocean (PilotCharts_IO.zip)
Central North Atlantic (PilotCharts_NAC.zip)
Northern North Atlantic (PilotCharts_NAN.zip)
Western North Atlantic / Caribbean (PilotCharts_NAW.zip)
South Pacific (PilotCharts_SP_Charts.zip)
South Pacific info sheets (PilotCharts_SP_Info.zip)

I'll seed it whenever my workstation is on. If you use it, please seed for a while (ie. leave the torrent client open in the background) as this greatly reduces the load on the other computers in the swarm and speeds it up for everyone.

[cagney]

Thank you marshmat.

I have just replaced the torrent link on the Download page with your new link. Download OpenCPN | Official OpenCPN Homepage

Thomas

[teneicm]

So very cool! How are people managing their use within OpenCPN? I've loaded them in, and now get all 12 months as individual charts. In some overalpping regions both sets of 12 months show up- plus with all the other charts, it gets a bit overwhelming. Is there a better way of managing what you see other than going into the tools and turning certain sets of charts off?

[dacust]

Originally Posted by teneicm

So very cool! How are people managing their use within OpenCPN? I've loaded them in, and now get all 12 months as individual charts. In some overalpping regions both sets of 12 months show up- plus with all the other charts, it gets a bit overwhelming. Is there a better way of managing what you see other than going into the tools and turning certain sets of charts off?

There is a feature request for user definable chart categories.

FS#138 : Chart Categories - user maintained

Take a look and see if that would do what you want. Please add comments if you have ideas.

-dan

[teneicm]

Originally Posted by dacust

There is a feature request for user definable chart categories.

FS#138 : Chart Categories - user maintained

Take a look and see if that would do what you want. Please add comments if you have ideas.

-dan

I think that would do it. Other thoughts might be to show related charts as a "grouping" within the main display, and then allow the user to turn off/ not display a whole "group" similar to the way you can now "remove a chart from quilt".

[Surveyor]

Originally Posted by marshmat

It appears that the complete set of pilot charts has now been translated to BSB, so here's a new torrent with the entire set (BSB only, no PDFs):

http://www.marsh-design.com/sites/de...t_2010.torrent

Contents:
Mediterranean Sea (PC_MED.7z)
North Pacific (PC_NP.7z)
South Atlantic (PC_SA.7z)
Indian Ocean (PilotCharts_IO.zip)
Central North Atlantic (PilotCharts_NAC.zip)
Northern North Atlantic (PilotCharts_NAN.zip)
Western North Atlantic / Caribbean (PilotCharts_NAW.zip)
South Pacific (PilotCharts_SP_Charts.zip)
South Pacific info sheets (PilotCharts_SP_Info.zip)

I'll seed it whenever my workstation is on. If you use it, please seed for a while (ie. leave the torrent client open in the background) as this greatly reduces the load on the other computers in the swarm and speeds it up for everyone.

Is anyone seeding? I am the only person in the swarm lol

[CarCode]

Originally Posted by Surveyor

Is anyone seeding? I am the only person in the swarm lol

It doesn't work for me either...

[Netsurfer]

You can also try this link: Free File Hosting Made Simple - MediaFire
or have a look at the German website (search yourself the right place).

[marshmat]

I've been seeding the thing all week and thought there was just no interest. It turns out that the OpenBitTorrent tracker has gone dead, at least for the moment (I'm investigating further). So torrent downloads are not an option for now, unless you enable DHT and Peer Exchange- I'm afraid you'll have to download them one by one from the mirror. (I'll continue to seed in case anyone is using a DHT capable client.)
My sincerest apologies for the inconvenience, and I will try to find a more stable tracker solution ASAP.

[idpnd]

hello matt, ive been trying to get it and was wondering why its dead already thanks for your efforts

[marshmat]

The tracker is back online, so torrent downloads are available again.
(Download http://www.marsh-design.com/sites/de...t_2010.torrent and open it in a bittorrent client such as Vuze or uTorrent, then leave it to do its thing; the complete set of all pilot charts is about 567 MB.)

[marshmat]

Forgot to mention... if the torrent gives you trouble, check that your bittorrent client is looking at the correct trackers, and add them to the tracker list if it isn't:

udp://tracker.openbittorrent.com:80/announce
http://tracker.openbittorrent.com/announce

[Netsurfer]

I uploaded the files also to MediaFire:
Free File Hosting Made Simple - MediaFire

Thanks again Thomas for all the good work!

Gunther

[cagney]

A new version of NAW , The Western Part of the North Atlantic, is available for testing.
http://opencpn.avnisoft.co.za/NAW_3.rar
The only difference is that dimming is built into the charts in three levels for OpenCPN. The purpose is of course to make them dusk and night viewable.
I don't know how other plotters handles the "DAY","DSK" and "NGT" attributes in the header of the .kap files, some may only show 2 levels.
Is this feature useful? Shall I update all the Pilot Charts?
Feedback welcome.
Thomas

[fgd3]

Originally Posted by cagney

A new version of NAW , The Western Part of the North Atlantic, is available for testing.
http://opencpn.avnisoft.co.za/NAW_3.rar
The only difference is that dimming is built into the charts in three levels for OpenCPN. The purpose is of course to make them dusk and night viewable.
I don't know how other plotters handles the "DAY","DSK" and "NGT" attributes in the header of the .kap files, some may only show 2 levels.
Is this feature useful? Shall I update all the Pilot Charts?
Feedback welcome.
Thomas

I think of pilot charts as useful for planning purposes. I don't see why you would need dimming built in.

I downloaded the North Atlantic pilot charts and was disappointed. I'm not sure OpenCPN is a useful way to display them. Adding them really degrades the program's performance unless I delete my other charts. Putting that aside, though, the download section needs to be regularized. Three of the North American charts were .zip files. The others were .7z files, a format I'm not familiar with. The chart information that appears when the mouse hovers over a chart button doesn't name the month in the chart title. You can guess at the month because the file names include a number from 1 to 12. But you have to hunt through the buttons because they don't always come up in order and different regions are intermixed because the month number is the most significant character.

Can you change the names of the pilot charts to take the form "Pilot Ocean Region Month"? For example, 1NAOC.kap would change from "Pilot Nort Atlantic Central Section" to "Pilot North Atlantic Central-January".

Can you change the file names so the files will sort by ocean, region, and month? Instead of starting with the number, start with the ocean. 1NAOC.kap, for example, would become NAOC01.kap. The leading zero is needed to keep months 11 and 12 from sorting before month 2.

Can you package each regional chart as a .zip file so that clicking on the link will download the file rather than trying to open it (as happens with the .7z files)?

Fabbian