OpenCPN Version 4.0 Released

[nohal]

Wurm...
More detail, please. The catalogs for US charts come directly from NOAA, if a chart is "not featured", whatever it means, there, it is not a problem in OpenCPN.

What exactly is cumbersome about reporting a bug in OpenCPN::Tracker All Projects: Tasklist ?

Thanks

Pavel

[Wurm]

Originally Posted by nohal

Wurm...
More detail, please. The catalogs for US charts come directly from NOAA, if a chart is "not featured", whatever it means, there, it is not a problem in OpenCPN.

What exactly is cumbersome about reporting a bug in OpenCPN::Tracker All Projects: Tasklist ?

Thanks

Pavel

I used the standard seqeunce of steps on the Chart Download plugin for ENC - by States - New York which downloaded working charts for the coastal regions, but the charts for the Hudson only went as far north as Troy and showed no depth soundings north of the George Washington Bridge. The same procedure for the RNC charts downloaded the same region but with more detail. The charts for the Canal system, Lakes George, Oneida, Placed etc., and Lake Onario show as outlines on the generic background map on OpenCPN but do not turn into charts at any zoom.

When I searched the OpenCPN site for procedures for reporting a bug the page you have linked did not come up, perhaps because I did not create a login to edit the wiki.


EDIT - I will try reinstalling OpenCPN.

[rgleason]

It is possible the NOAA site has glitches. It may get fixed in a couple of days. You could report it to Noaa. Are you sure you got the full catalogue's download? Re check the charts in Chartdownloader. Sometimes it takes several passes.

Yes, you do need to create your own login for the Tracker, and the more people do this the better the software in the end.

Thanks Wurm.

[nohal]

Originally Posted by Wurm

I used the standard seqeunce of steps on the Chart Download plugin for ENC - by States - New York which downloaded working charts for the coastal regions, but the charts for the Hudson only went as far north as Troy and showed no depth soundings north of the George Washington Bridge. The same procedure for the RNC charts downloaded the same region but with more detail. The charts for the Canal system, Lakes George, Oneida, Placed etc., and Lake Onario show as outlines on the generic background map on OpenCPN but do not turn into charts at any zoom.

When I searched the OpenCPN site for procedures for reporting a bug the page you have linked did not come up, perhaps because I did not create a login to edit the wiki.


EDIT - I will try reinstalling OpenCPN.

Wurm...
If you look at Interactive Catalog somebody already linked, there are no ENC cells available between Troy and Whitehall and for the Mohawk River, the area is covered only by RNCs. Always remember that the RNC and ENC coverage is not the same and vector is not equal to better, actually often the exact opposite...

The tracker is linked from the main menu on the top of every opencpn.org page as well as from Bug and Feature Tracking | Official OpenCPN Homepage and Help the Developers Fixing Bugs! | Official OpenCPN Homepage

Pavel

[RhythmDoctor]

Originally Posted by RhythmDoctor

Guys,

I've been using 4.0.0 since it came out, and loving it. Really stable version - great job! I've been busy changing jobs lately and spending what little time I have actually sailing. Thus I haven't been able to do the kind of "abuse testing" of OpenCPN betas that I normally do.

But in my normal use of 4.0.0 on my boat, I have noticed one problem vs. 3.3.???? that I was using last season. In my setup (Win8.1 tablet) I have GPS data coming in on COM3, and I also have autopilot data (VTG,ECRMB,ECAPB) going out COM3 to my autopilot's NMEA input. This allows the autopilot to operate in "Track mode" and also allows me to display XTE, SOG, and other data on the Autopilot's control panel.

This issue is with the Autopilot's display of SOG data. Within OpenCPN's dashboard plugin, SOG is very stable, predictable, and correlates well with my own visual observation (it goes up when the boat speeds up, goes down when the boat slows down, etc.). When running 3.2.2, the SOG displayed on the autopilot agrees well with the OpenCPN dashboard. It doesn't agree exactly, but it's very close. The differences are easily explained by an apparent time-averaging algorithm, since the two values move in the same direction, just at slightly different rates. It was very reliable.

But when running 4.0.0 to send the NMEA data to the autopilot, the values displayed on the autopilot are crazy and in wild disagreement. I can see the boat slow down from 5 knots to 4 knots (with dashboard as well as my own eyes), but the autopilot may continue going up to 5.7 for several seconds before starting to drop. And by the time it's dropping, a puff may have come up to speed up the boat, but the autopilot does not register it nearly fast enough. The values are so far off that SOG display on the autopilot is basically worthless....

I've finally gotten back to my boat, and I think I have a handle on this problem. Fortunately, the problem is NOT caused by OpenCPN 4.0. Concurrent with my upgrade to 4.0, I also added a vYacht router/Seatalk converter to my boat which provides depth and heading data and DSC hailing targets into OpenCPN. Apparently what is happening is that OpenCPN's output to the autopilot (VTG, ECRMB, and ECAPB on COM3 via the autopilot's NMEA input terminals) are getting transmitted onto the SeaTalk network and then coming back into OpenCPN though the Seatalk converter via TCP input on Wifi. The result is a lot of echoing which causes obsolete VTG data to mix in with the current data.

The fix is simple - I just added a filter to the vYacht's input so that OpenCPN will reject VTG, ECRMB and ECAPB. I have yet to confirm that this fix actually worked, but I loaded the VDR data into a spreadsheet and plotted up some results from last year (before adding vYacht) and this year (after adding vYacht), and the root cause is obvious from the data.

[rgleason]

This off topic R Dr, but how is vyacht working out?

[RhythmDoctor]

Originally Posted by rgleason

This off topic R Dr, but how is vyacht working out?

It works OK. I have my Seatalk stuff getting translated to NMEA and sent via TCP, and DSC targets from my radio sent. I can't test the latter, though, because nobody ever sends DSC hails around here.

There were initially some severe firmware issues (magnetic variation was the wrong direction, causing wild fluctuations in the compass heading), but he eventually fixed it.

The only other issue is that there are not many adjustable parameters in the router. He can provide the source code for customization, but that is beyond my skills.

The echoing problem that I described above was definitely fixed by filtering out the offending sentences (confirmed the fix today). Only problem left is some odd time lag in OpenCPN's display of depth data vs. what I see on the control panels. I don't know what's causing that, but will play with the time-averaging parameter to see if it fixes the problem.

[redog]

Hi
Coming home on a 7 leg route under AP and a strange thing happened after turning into the last leg of the route.

The boat turned past the line of the route, so to the left of the route line, yet the routing window showed a variation of left then right repeatedly, all the time we were actually to the left of the line, and the boat proceeded to steer further left.

Screen shot shows boat to the left of the route line but the navigation window shows XTE L 0.05



I saved a VDR but couldn't upload, if this will help I can try again.

Ubuntu 14.10 opencpn 4.0.0

Redog

[rgleason]

Redog do you know if this is repeatable? I see your tracking ended too. What changed that? Did you rurn it off? The program is only as good as the data being recieved. Possibilities.
1. Charts
2. GPS
3. Occured at the turn. --Something changed.
4. There is a way to reset the xte look it up in the manual. Sometimes this is necessary to do. I have had to use it to reset. Why it happened, I am not sure. This is why a good sharp lookout is needed. It could be a number of things. Low batt, electrical glitch, memory used up, etc.
Did you try reboot?

[redog]

rgleason

Thanks for your response. To answer some of your points
1. Charts (unsure of your meaning)
2. GPS (would this be identifiable in the VDR stream)
3. Occured at the turn. --Something changed (everything appeared normal except that the boat proceeded to steer further left)
4. There is a way to reset the xte look it up in the manual. Sometimes this is necessary to do. I have had to use it to reset. Why it happened, I am not sure. This is why a good sharp lookout is needed. It could be a number of things. Low batt, electrical glitch, memory used up, etc.

Tracking was not enabled. That is an old track I use to sneak behind the green beacon and is just visible to help ensure safe passage.

Full battery, running on inverter power dedicated to navigation.

8Gig of RAM no other programs running.

Repeatable?? To pushed for time on the day but I can in the future give it another try.

I have had a look through the APB sentence and think that the L and R of the XTE are the problem.
How it got to this I cannot explain.
I will look at resetting the XTE as you suggest.

I have added .pdf to the VDR file and uploaded.
Hopefully someone with a better understanding will see faults in the data.

Cheers all
Redog

[rgleason]

Not a valid pdf is it to be changed to .txt?

[redog]

Rick
In ubuntu no extensions are added to files, as I stated in my previous post "I added .PDF" so as to allow upload.

I would remove the .PDF and view in gedit.

If using windoz I would think add .TXT

Thanks
Redog

[rgleason]

redog, thanks. Had a linux install under virtualbox. Ran out of space and had to uninstall it.

I just looked at the file and think we should run it in VDR, as you have suggested,
perhaps we'll be able to figure it out. Nice that you have it available. In any case I'll find out where this occurred.

PS: I assume you are using 4.0 correct?

[rgleason]

Ran it in 4.0 and found your route in Aus off North Reef.
Turned on tracking and perhaps you can tell me how this route compares to what you experienced. I am not sure where the problem with the change actually occured.

--Any ideas?, anyone?

[RhythmDoctor]

I think I know the problem. I have had it before, and fixed it.

You need to recalibrate your autopilot by driving around in circles. Look it up in our instructions.

The calibration method constructs an electronic correction table for magenetic deviation. It need to be redone every year or so.

What happened is that your boat oversteered because of magnetic interference on your boat.