Very Impressed, but in Serious Need of Simple Help with OpenCPN

[sailpop]

I am a very senior sailor (70) on an extended cruise (2 years out now) with shall say with definitely not excellent computer skills, currently cruising the Gladstone Qld area in our owner built yacht.

We have been using SOB But recently a passing generous sailor downloaded and set up
OpenCPN on to my main laptop including charts. This was done with me understanding very little of anything about the program and charts he installed.

I am very impressed with the intuitiveness of the program, scale that can be zoomed to and the general presentation (screen image etc).

However i do have a couple of bugs which after weeks of searching through this forum tells me that they are probably known issues.

We are running Windows 7 (64 bit) on an Aspire 5741 laptop.
OpenCpn is 2.2 Build 1007 . What i would like to do is change to a better or more stable version but am hesitant to change that which i don,t know, nor know to do.

In simple terms i really need simple but detailed advice on how to get this program operating reliably - do i go forward to a new version or back to a more stable version and then exactly HOW do i do that? Does the current version need to be uninstalled first ? Will my existing Charts be at risk of loss during any changes ?

The bugs that i notice i have -
1).. When the computer hibernates or or if i go on the net while the prog. is running i loose the gps connection and then are unable to
close/exit OPENcpn. I then have to restart the computer to get OpenCpn to work again.
2)..The latitude and longitude have an extra zero after the decimal
point (you know what mean!!

As we are heading out to Fitzroy Reef in a couple of days we would very much appreciate the help from a generous knowledgeable
person/persons

Many thanks in advance.

I was all ways taught to respect my elders - just find it harder and harder to find them these days.

[John A]

I don't know about your computer program problems but the three digets after the decimal point represent thousandths of a minute/nm. This allows your position to be computed to 1/1000 of a nautical mile which is closer than using seconds which are 1/60 of a nautical mile.
May I suggest a navigation class?

[sailpop]

Hi John,
Thank's for the interest. Perhaps i did not explain myself clearley enough.
I thought that because this was a known issue with 2.2 bld 1007 that all advisers would readily understand this point --let me try to better explain.... the conventional lat would appear thus -23 47.951 s
what i get is -23 47.0951 s
IE. we get extranious "0"
I am extremely willing to engage in any dialogue that can solve our potentially dangerous situation.

Many thanks again to anyone with a willingness and ability to help.

[gmau]

The lastest stable release is 2.1.0 from June 24, 2010.
The release your are running is a Beta release. Beta releases are sent out to any user who chooses to use it to find bugs. The software developers then deceide how severe the bugs will effect the final release. They do not fix all of the bugs.

The current Beta release is 2.2 Beta Build 1111 2010-11-11. You can find the different releases and info at Download OpenCPN | Official OpenCPN Homepage

The developers are shooting for a final release at the end of this month or early December.

My suggestion for you is to wait for the final release as it's only two or three weeks off.

There are lots of detail information at OpenCPN - Cruisers & Sailing Forums.

It may take some reading as there are lots of posts on the forum.

Gordon

[sailpop]

Hi Gordon,
Thank you for that input.
As my need to get stability in this prog. is quite urgent, why not go back to 2.1.0 (as you have mentioned) and if so how do i achieve this without risking loosing what i have now.
PS Any advice on going back would really be appreciated and would need to be explained to me in detail with simple step by step instructions so i don't stuff it up.

Remember - I was all ways taught to respect my elders but they are fewer and fewer these days

[DeepFrz]

sailpop, click on start, and select Control Panel on the right side of the popup. Select Programs (or Programs and Features) depending on what view is selected. Check to see if OpenCPN is listed. Clicking on any program there will start the removal process so be careful. If the program is listed, then removal is simply a matter of clicking on OpenCPN and letting it remove itself. Then download the installer from here: Browse OpenCPN Files on SourceForge.net
where it says download now. Then select run, or save the file, depends on the browser you are using. If run is an option then OpenCPN will install and you just have to follow the prompts. If save is the only option then it will either be saved on the desktop or in the user download directory. Find the file, double click and it should install.

Generally speaking, most software will not remove data files such as your chart files. I can't speak for OpenCPN but with Windows installer you should be okay. Good luck.

[gmau]

The following looks like the problem you are having with your GPS dropping out. The con is your lap top will use power. If your boat doesn’t have the ability to keep the laptop going, you may drain your batteries after a long time.
This is a post from http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...out-49391.html.

I may have discovered the problem and the fix. The GPS has been running for more than an hour without dropping out. Here is what I think was causing it and what I did about it:

Windows 7 (don't know about other versions) turns off power to USB devices. I don't know when or why. But you can defeat that by going into device manager and with the proper USB Root Hub device click on it and then power management. Then unclick the box that says allow the computer to turn off power to this device. Then click ok to apply it and exit.

This change seems to allow the usb to continuously power the gps and not drop out periodically. Why the gps was still active when I closed OpnCPN and then used the GPSinfo utility I don't know. Presumably power was returned to the usb port and the GPS started working again. But when I restarted OpnCPN the gps didn't work.

So, one the question remains, how to quickly restore GPS functionality to OPNCpn if power is cut off to the GPS, you unplug it or whatever without rebooting the whole computer.

David

On the zero problem. I haven’t seen any post on it. That doesn’t mean there hasn’t been one. If it was me, it wouldn’t be a show stopper. You know it’s there and you could just compensate for it.

A FYI. There has been major changes to the install and un-install part of Open CP/N. I’ve seen post of the install procedure not working. I ran into a problem with the chart directories. It was easy to fix.
If you do decide to go to other releases I would follow DeepFrz post. It’s really important to use the un-install procedure. If you just start deleting, things from the program will be left on your PC.

I just clicked Start on my computer running Vista.
Scroll down to OpenCPN which is a directory.
Clicking on it brings up two programs. OpenCPN 2.2.918 and Uninstall.
The Uninstall is what you would click to start the uninstall process.

Here are two things that can go wrong:

If you have any tracks, routes or waypoints, I would use GPX to save those. GPX can be daunting to use if you don’t understand how it works and what it does. The first help file had some information on how to use it. It worked for me.
An older help file can be found at OpenCPN Help File

The latest release has changes for GPX IN/Out.
It’s re-named to “The Route Manager and Data Import/Export” and can be found at The Route Manager and Data Import/Export | Official OpenCPN Homepage

Loosing references to your chart directories. Really easy to re-create. Before you do anything make a copy of your chart directories. That way you can re-enter them if you have a problem.

Start Open CP/N.
Go to Tools.
In the Tool Box click Charts.
In the Active Chart Directories, copy those entries. I mine I have only one entry and it’s “D:\MyFiles\Chats\Cm93\CM93”

Then you can do the un-install and install any release you want.

I generally just do an install. If it doesn't work, I do the uninstall. So far I only had one instance that I had to use the uninstall. Then go back and fix what ever doesn't work.

[sailpop]

Many thanks to DeepFrz & gmau .
Your input and the time it must have taken to prepare is most appreciated.
I will now digest all and let you know the outcome.

Again thanks muchly.

[MarkJ]

By the way, Sailpop, welcome to the forum

Hope you are enjoying Gladstone. Not many good writeups about that port.

With Opencapn stopping work whenever the computer hibernates, that a computer setup problem, niot really a Opencpn problem

Most power is used with the display so I make my display turn off after 60 seconds but never hibinate or sleep.

Hope it helps

Mark

[sailpop]

I finally bit the bullet and uninstalled 2.2 bld1007 then installed 2.1.0
bld 624a.
The charts are also up and running (Not sure how i achieved this).
The only issue that i have been unable to solve is that of losing the good gps feed whenever i open and work in another window ie My Docs or My Pics or go online when this nav program is open. Then when i go to close it (OpenCPN) it freezes and i have to reboot.
Any suggestions would be most welcome

We are on Windows 7 (64bt.) so as previously suggested " XPort "
would not work. ??????????

[cagney]

sailpop

Welcome to OpenCPN!
Your problem with the extra "0" is well known. It was introduced as a side effect of fixing another bug, and appeared in a few beta releases. It was fixed in 2.2.1012.

gmau
One reason you did not find any posts about this problem, is that most of the bug related things now are handled in the new bug tracker, called Flyspray

There are several entries in flyspray about this start here.

Thomas