Weather Routing

[rgleason]

Sean, from your recent post
"For interpolation it uses the sailboat transform,..."

I think I got it now. It uses those minimal datapoints from real world measurements by the user, with the VPP calcs to create a kind of virtual polar file that is used and it does not touch the actual file itself?

[siff]

First of all, thank you for the plugin which works fine for me despite for the fact that it takes some time to really understand how it works.

There is however one small shortcoming which could be alleviated :

I am sailing in south america and every time i want to create a starting or ending point i put a minus sign for the degree valu to say S or W and most of the time i forget that i have to do the same for the minutes value.

Could it be possible either to use existing waypoints, or have N/S E/W radio butons, or at least not to have to enter the minus sign for the minutes ?

I am afraid, not to be good enough to program the change myself.
Tanks in advance if you could put that on a wish list.

Frank

[stelian]

Originally Posted by siff

Could it be possible either to use existing waypoints, or have N/S E/W radio butons, or at least not to have to enter the minus sign for the minutes ?

I don't think you need to enter the minus sign for the minutes, only for the degrees. Please give an example.

Also, you know you can create starting/ending positions by right-clicking on the map and selecting "New WR position", right ?

[skipperearly]

Originally Posted by stelian

I don't think you need to enter the minus sign for the minutes, only for the degrees. Please give an example.

Also, you know you can create starting/ending positions by right-clicking on the map and selecting "New WR position", right ?

Thanks Stelian, for pointing this right click feature out, nice but not intuitive. would much prefer to use any waypoint as a starting point for WR and the standardized coordinate format.

[seandepagnier]

Originally Posted by siff

First of all, thank you for the plugin which works fine for me despite for the fact that it takes some time to really understand how it works.

If you can give some details on how to change the plugin to make it take less time to understand this could be helpful.

If you want to move a waypoint, right click, select weather routing position, and enter the same name to replace the existing one.

[siff]

Hi,

I attach 2 screen captures to show you the problem.
Thank you for the right click tip. I hope i will not forget it. I am just sorry it does not wok when right clicking on an existing way point : The option does not show. ( It could be the same way as when you are building a route : wen clicking on an existing waypoint you can use it as part of the route ?)

Frank

[stelian]

Originally Posted by siff

Hi,

I attach 2 screen captures to show you the problem.
Thank you for the right click tip. I hope i will not forget it. I am just sorry it does not wok when right clicking on an existing way point : The option does not show. ( It could be the same way as when you are building a route : wen clicking on an existing waypoint you can use it as part of the route ?)

Frank

You are of course correct about the fact that it would be nice to be able to use existing waypoints for WR.

For the lat/long problems, I'm quite puzzled because it seems to be working here (on Linux). Could this be a mac only problem ?

[seandepagnier]

Originally Posted by siff

Hi,

I attach 2 screen captures to show you the problem.
Thank you for the right click tip. I hope i will not forget it. I am just sorry it does not wok when right clicking on an existing way point : The option does not show. ( It could be the same way as when you are building a route : wen clicking on an existing waypoint you can use it as part of the route ?)

Frank

I entered your position exactly as the screenshot -35 30 and -55 30, and the position on the chart is in the right place. Furthermore, if you inspect the code, the minutes sign is inverted internally if the degree sign is negative. So it should work fine.


As far as using existing waypoints. We have a problem in opencpn for a long time now with the right click context menu. There is a generic menu, waypoint, route, track, and ais target menu. Plugins can only use the generic menu.

If a route and track overlap, it can be very difficult to access the route menu without moving it. The same is true for waypoints etc... So the solution maybe something like..

1) Provide all relevent menus, as submenus, always including the generic menu as well.
2) Allow plugins to install entrees to each type of menu


Either or both of these could solve the issue of using existing waypoints.

[siff]

I am afraid it is not specific of the mac; when on the boat i am using win XP.
I am using linux from time to time, but not the routing plugin. I will try tomorrow.
Maybe it is a version problem ? I am using an old version with XP, but i just loaded the latest "official" version for the mac, i.e. the version you find on the opencpn site (1.10) ...

[seandepagnier]

The negative minutes bug was fixed a year ago in version 1.10 patch 3, not sure which patch the osx release is.

If you use version 1.12 it will work.

[siff]

thank you, sorry for the trouble.

[rgleason]

Sean and crew have updated Weather_Routing_pi with some great new features. This is a Beta Version that needs continued testing. It works fine in my brief tests of this version. Windows user can download it here.

Weather_Routing_pi-1.12.0a

If you have previously installed the plugin and wish to test the initialization of the example files you will first need to run uninstallweatherrouting.exe in the ProgramFiles( x86) OpenCPN directory and then edit your opencpn.ini file searching for all xml fields that reference "weatherrouting" and weather_routing" and removing those fields and saving the file.
Then when you install the plugin, accept the prompt for installing the example files, leaving both boxes checked.
After enabling both Climatology and Weather_Routing and clicking the Toolbar button, there will be a notice climatology is not version 1.0-1.3) don't worry about the message it will still work. Then click on "Compute" and the Climatology should open and load, and then the route should calculate and complete.

Please try this and then go on to test the rest of the plugin and its improvements. Enjoy and please report any problems or bugs. Thankyou.

[mikedefieslife]

Hmm. Seems I've more problems on re-visiting the weather routing plugin.

No matter what I do, even using all the test boats and polars I get the error "Polar Failed" on every compute. Grib files are 1.1km resolution and at 3 hour intervals.

I have searched the thread here: Can't get rid of Polar Failed Error - Page 3 - Cruisers & Sailing Forums but nothing in that works for me. Actually it only really mentions the crossover (not relevant when running a single polar), a clean install (windows related), and the interval times.

[rgleason]

Try turning off use of grib files and try cliimatology_pi by installing, enabling that and then turning that on.

Alternatively, this problem may be related to the question "When"
1. in grib_pi dropdown the time and select a time interval just after the earliest.
2. in wx_config pick "set grib time".
3. Then try to run it.

[seandepagnier]

Originally Posted by mikedefieslife

Hmm. Seems I've more problems on re-visiting the weather routing plugin.

No matter what I do, even using all the test boats and polars I get the error "Polar Failed" on every compute. Grib files are 1.1km resolution and at 3 hour intervals.

I have searched the thread here: Can't get rid of Polar Failed Error - Page 3 - Cruisers & Sailing Forums but nothing in that works for me. Actually it only really mentions the crossover (not relevant when running a single polar), a clean install (windows related), and the interval times.

Maybe you didn't click "save boat" ? The grib start time must be correct.

As mentioned try climatology. I realize it is not what you want, but it would tell us if the problem is related to the weather data or the boat.