OpenCPN Runs on Embedded ARM

[Hakan]

Originally Posted by NahanniV

Did you try installing GLshim ?

NahanniV...
No actually I haven't, mostly due lack of time for the very moment and also that I'm not sure it's the solution to get the OpenGL sensitive radar being satisfied with the OpenGLES. What's your experiences in this matter?
Håkan

[NahanniV]

Originally Posted by Hakan

NahanniV...
No actually I haven't, mostly due lack of time for the very moment and also that I'm not sure it's the solution to get the OpenGL sensitive radar being satisfied with the OpenGLES. What's your experiences in this matter?
Håkan

On my CubieTruck (ARM based Allwinner A20).
After installing GLshim OpenCPN runs in OpenGL mode with a dramatic increase in the speed of panning, zooming and rotating with raster charts. Vector charts work too, but there are a few bugs to be worked out.
I am also able to run the Navico RADAR plugin attached to my 4G scanner.

GLshim replaces the OS supplied libGL and converts desktop OpenGL to the OpenGLes that is supported by these ARM based boards.

Here are the instructions for the CubieTruck (extract what you need):
Building and installing on CubieTruck with Hardware Acceleration | Official OpenCPN Homepage

Here is a video that gives an idea of the speed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IV_Zq1bU-A

Cheers,
JM.

[NahanniV]

Originally Posted by Hakan

NahanniV...
No actually I haven't, mostly due lack of time for the very moment and also that I'm not sure it's the solution to get the OpenGL sensitive radar being satisfied with the OpenGLES. What's your experiences in this matter?
Håkan

Actually, you may as well wait.

It looks like bdbcat is in the process of integrating the GLshim code into OpenCPN; I noticed this on GitHub today, it's part of the Android port.

Presumably his changes will also work on ARM Linux, and any bugs will be fixed as well.

Cheers,
JM.

[Hakan]

Originally Posted by NahanniV

Actually, you may as well wait.

It looks like bdbcat is in the process of integrating the GLshim code into OpenCPN; I noticed this on GitHub today, it's part of the Android port.

Presumably his changes will also work on ARM Linux, and any bugs will be fixed as well.

Cheers,
JM.

JM...
Many thanks for your comments. I hope I get time to test your advices and if not Dave's note looks very interesting, not less since I mainly use vector charts. But it's always fun to test things so I'll see what's up for me next week.
Håkan

[Aikiguy]

Originally Posted by NahanniV

Actually, you may as well wait.

It looks like bdbcat is in the process of integrating the GLshim code into OpenCPN; I noticed this on GitHub today, it's part of the Android port.

Presumably his changes will also work on ARM Linux, and any bugs will be fixed as well.

Cheers,
JM.

What is the status on this? Is there anyway that I can help with it, testing, documenting etc?

Thanks,
Guy
:-)

[seandepagnier]

my hdmi lcd was grounded, and the ground wire on the cubie truck accidentally touched +12 which fried the hdmi controller for the display (hdmi cable was connected)

Since it also supports vga as the cubie truck does I just managed to build a vga cable yesterday which worked so.. ok (noisy because not using coax, just ribbon cable) but at least I can use the display again. Unfortunately it's driven at 1024x768 even though it's 1280x768 display.. not sure how to fix that. Also the timings are wrong as there is a 1mm black on the left and the screen disappears for 1mm on the right. I tried tweaking with fbset without luck.

I found some 7 inch displays on aliexpress for $21. I wonder if these are worthwhile? In any case I won't find out for a while as shipping to indonesia is probably not practical.

Now something strange. I am testing opencpn (latest from my git repository), and it crashes from a bus fault. Version 4.0.0 is ok but I did a lot of optimizations since then. Somehow it _must_ call dc.DrawText on a memory dc before opengl is used, or it will crash. This doesn't make any sense, so I suspect some more serious bug somewhere and it will take some time to determine.. not even sure if it's in opencpn or egl or...

Basically I had to revert 8287d37f4105f42d5bfc519858cf258828fd17e1 and I have no idea why that fixed it.

My next step after that was to switch to the internal glshim. Then.. there are a lot of pretty annoying bugs that seem to exist only on the cubie truck. Sometimes missing tiles for raster charts (there must be some obvious bug there) and a few other ui glitches.

Now to ask a question:

Are there any arm devices at all which have good full opengl acceleration or do all use opengles? T

[monstads]

The newly announced/released Tegra XI SOC will have OpenGL 4.5 support, but I don't know of any boards that use it yet (except the also announced $200 game console ).

I know there are some efforts to port in your glshim , which seems like a decent idea, assuming that O can't just limit itself to OpenGLES calls)... Basically, even if the Tegra soc supports opengl, you'd still need the OS (such as Android) to support it.

Sent from my A0001 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

[seandepagnier]

I am having trouble getting glshim builtin on the cubie truck.

cairo links with libEGL, and cairo is used by wxgtk. libEGL -> libMALI as does libGLESv1_CM -> libMALI both symlinks to the same file.

If I make libGL a static library and build into opencpn (glshim dlopens libGLES so it can relocate the symbols) it just doesn't work because I believe libEGL also dlopens libGL. So I must build libGL dynamic (it's no problem making libGLU static builtin to opencpn) but then I still must set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH to get it to work... so very annoying.

[Aikiguy]

Originally Posted by boat_alexandra

Are there any arm devices at all which have good full opengl acceleration or do all use opengles? T

None that I have found.

The idea of these little boards is wonderful, but without a realable opengl implementation they are little use to us in trying to make a ships computer.

Guy
:-)

[akopac]

Originally Posted by Aikiguy

None that I have found.

The idea of these little boards is wonderful, but without a realable opengl implementation they are little use to us in trying to make a ships computer.

Guy
:-)

LOL. Guy,... Boat Alexandrea is in the philipines last time I checked. As un-useful as this may be to you, many of us use opencpn the way it is on embedded systems on a regular basis. Power is not abundant on a cruising boat and arm based opencpn uses a fraction of what a laptop based system uses.


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[CarCode]

Originally Posted by akopac

LOL. Guy,... Boat Alexandrea is in the philipines last time I checked. As un-useful as this may be to you, many of us use opencpn the way it is on embedded systems on a regular basis. Power is not abundant on a cruising boat and arm based opencpn uses a fraction of what a laptop based system uses.


Sent from my iPhone using Cruisers Sailing Forum

You forgot to mention that it takes nearly 2 years to get OpenCPN working again after the implementations of Boat Alexandrea OpenGL changes...

Gerhard

[Aikiguy]

If all you want is a rudimentary chart plotter that only works with some charts. Then it is I will admit functional.

However the potential to have so much more is there, to make it a ships computer, not just a rudimentary chart plotter.

Even the much touted cubie truck solution is not working again.

My definition of a ships computer has the following items:
Chart plotter
Instrument consolidator and rebroadcast ability
Radar overlay
Instrument display
Email via sat phone, ssb or Ham.
Office Suite
Weather fax receive,
Grib integration and overlay
Inventory and maintenance management database.
Ais Plotting on Chart

I think we are almost there, but the problems getting the radar overlay and the instrument displays and the reliability seems to be not quite there yet.

I want it to be, I think this is an awesome idea. Don't get me wrong, I would love these little boards to do this, and have spent a bit of money to be try to get them to do it. I am not saying it isn't possible, just we are not there yet.

Guy
:-)

[seandepagnier]

Guy,

Which item on your list doesn't work? Maybe radar overlay is the only one?

[Aikiguy]

Radar overlay does not seem likely to work until we get opengl on these little things, which does not seem likely in the short term.

The email client I can't find anything that seems to work.

Those and stable vector chart support, which is a biggie, are the current issues I have.

Guy
:-)

[seandepagnier]

why doesn't the radar overlay work with opengles?