Ideal Boat Computer?

[CarinaPDX]

Yes, replacing particularly Windows 10 with Linux will give a performance boost on any computer. If using Linux, though, there is little enough difference to argue to stay with Intel. Consider that the Odroid N-2 I mentioned has a 6-core CPU, something Intel reserves for its most expensive silicon. I do not wish to mislead however, as there are many products that don't have drivers for Linux, ARM or Intel, so it makes sense to check first that you can assemble a system with parts that are supported on Linux.


Greg

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Svan

If you think a boat needs a computer you clearly like
Playing with wires and a Pi is as a good choice. Open CPN is acceptable. The 7” touchscreen and case can run off a good enough 12v to 5v adapter I have yet to find.

I use raymarine and standard horizon for safety things. Stuff I build myself is for entertainment and teaching my son. I would not stake anyone’s safety on my electronics hacking.

Mere mortals should get a laptop. Try hards already have a tough book running Expedition

I might enjoy playing with wires, but that is not indeed the only reason why one might need a boat computer. Commercial plotters like Raymarine and SH are perfect for pilotage, but nearly unusable for any kind of serious navigation. Those are very different jobs which both need suitable tools. Most sailors on here never do any serious navigation and don't care, but some of us have to by the nature of the kind of sailing we do. For those of us, we have a choice of either doing traditional paper chart work, or doing it on a large screen, preferably with raster charts, and with a tool like OpenCPN which makes doing real navigation possible. There is a strong impetus to that even for the oldest farts and most hard-core chart work guys among us because of the sheer impossibility of storing and keeping updated the massive amount of paper it would take to cover a large cruising area, like in my case, almost the entirety of Northern Europe and the old Viking seaways from Greenland to Russia, and South into the Bay of Biscay, latitude 45N to above 70N, longitude 28W to beyond 28E. That's the waters of 15 countries, some of them explored in great detail over more than 30,000 miles of sailing over the last 10 years. I guess I have more than 1000 charts on my boat computer, a significant number of which I do update every year.



So for some of us a boat computer is definitely not just a tech toy.






As to trusting the lives of people on board, to the quality of one's hacking -- well, we do that every day, don't we? I trust the lives of all on board to my splices, to my diesel engine repairs, to my rigging hacks, to the quality of wiring and electrical work. What's one more hack? Good ocean sailors are consummate "hackers" -- we can't call in professional technical support in the middle of the ocean, so we have to fix it or improvise it ourselves, and we have to learn how to do it excellently enough, in a wide variety of disciplines, that it's OK to trust people's lives to what we've hacked up. I go up the mast all the time on my own spliced ropes; my Jordan Series Drogue was made and spliced by myself. A computer I assembled and set up myself? Child's play.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by CarinaPDX

Yes, replacing particularly Windows 10 with Linux will give a performance boost on any computer. If using Linux, though, there is little enough difference to argue to stay with Intel. Consider that the Odroid N-2 I mentioned has a 6-core CPU, something Intel reserves for its most expensive silicon. I do not wish to mislead however, as there are many products that don't have drivers for Linux, ARM or Intel, so it makes sense to check first that you can assemble a system with parts that are supported on Linux.


Greg

Sounds pretty convincing.


I don't think I'm much concerned about drivers. This is a dedicated nav computer which only needs to run 3 or 4 programs and will not have to deal with much of any hardware other than USB sticks and an Ethernet connection to the boat network. I won't be printing with it or doing any kind of general computing, for which I have other devices.


OK, I'll look at those boards.

[conachair]

Originally Posted by blu3534

Do people use OCPN for logging purposes? I see the point of a Raspberry when running continously, but I don't think I could cope with its sluggish behaviour.

The pi/SignalK is perfect for logging, either in the opencpn logbook of saving all data (or a selection) coming in to a database so it's simple to view as graphs. Plotting data is great for showing trends in the data which you'd never spot just looking at numbers.
What sluggish behavior? Rpi/openplotter isn't great for viewing webpages, or I haven't found a good lightweight browser though not looked very hard, laptop/tablet does all the with the pi serving the pages over wifi but everything else is just fine, scrolling/zooming in OpenCPN no problem at all.

[markdj]

Just got this, great little Windows box. It has 2 hdmi out, VGA out, ethernet and plenty of usb ports. It runs off 12v.

I'm using this with OpenCPN v5, Neptune Planner+ (for tides) and zyGrib for weather. I must say I am most impressed with the box. I got a set of raster charts from VMH and have the old global cm93 running split screen with the new OpenCPN so it's doing double the work, I have AIS, wind, depth, STW coming into OpenCPN and it runs flawlessly.

I haven't had any issues with storage space, I think I'm using about 25Gb of the 64gb MMC.

I bought this for £180, plugged it into the 12v and had OpenCPN running within 20 minutes, even going through the windows 10 setup.

https://droidbox.co.uk/ak3v-windows-...nipc-6-64.html

[250224]

Originally Posted by CarinaPDX

Yes, replacing particularly Windows 10 with Linux will give a performance boost on any computer.

Excuse me, can you back this up with data (tests)? I don't think such blanket statements are true. Of course there are lightweight Linux distributions. And of course if you use Win 10 Home with all 'default features' enabled instead of Pro and some sane config you can get a boost...

Thanks for the OCPN feedbacks, interesting. With sluggish I meant that the chart build-up was slow (but admittedly this was about 3 years ago with a low-spec old Labtop; and for lazyness reason I then went with a plotter -- chart ist still slow though... ).

[conachair]

Originally Posted by blu3534

With sluggish I meant that the chart build-up was slow (but admittedly this was about 3 years ago with a low-spec old Labtop; and for lazyness reason I then went with a plotter -- chart ist still slow though... ).

Not sure what chart build-up is...

But reckon you'd need to be fairly picky is the Pi pan/zoom sems too slow, real world not as jerky as it comes across on youtube..

Sorry, last "I love my Pi and everyone else should too" thread drift

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcrQZ2j_rWo

[250224]

Originally Posted by markdj

Just got this, great little Windows box. https://droidbox.co.uk/ak3v-windows-...nipc-6-64.html

Sounds cool. Do you have any energy consumption measurements? Thank you... <3 ...

[250224]

For the price of a bit more than 15 Raspberries or 3 'minipc-droidboxes' one gets a fitlet-iA10 [1,2] having a metal housing with integrated heatsink. I think for me, this (in concept, not necessary the exact model) is the ideal no-nonsense board computer. In addition and as a redundancy a ThinkPad.

(This is not meant against Raspberries/Odroids etc., I do find them interesting).

[1] https://www.fit-pc.com/web/purchasing/order-fitlet/
[2] https://www.tinygreenpc.com/pdfs/Dat...heet-v-1-7.pdf

[markdj]

That ifitpc looks expensive since it doesn't include ram, SSD etc.

I'll test the power usage this evening on the htpc AcePC though it is running through a 24-12v converter.

[Dockhead]

OK, well, for the record, I have been talked into Linux. I've actually been looking for an excuse to play with it.


So, next I need to choose a box. If it's really much lighter than Win10 (everyone agrees about that?), will it run properly on low powered multicore 64 bit processors like the Gemini Lake Celerons or Pentiums? Or is it not optimized for these processors?


One more question: how much disk space does a Linux Mint (etc.) installation need?

[250224]

Originally Posted by markdj

That ifitpc looks expensive since it doesn't include ram, SSD etc.

It is, yes. The link [1] had a model with RAM: 8 GB, SSD: 64 GB, OS: Linux Mint for $601 (*excluding* tax). But if it works very well, lasts 5+ years, doesn't need much energy (they claim 4.5 - 10 W), is robust, ... it might be ok? I'm writing this on an old MBA from 2013 which still works great (with a new battery). As computer hardware progress has slowed, maybe it's a valid approach to buy better quality and replace less often? (I'd probably have replaced the Mac this spring but hate the new thin keyboards).

[1] https://www.fit-pc.com/web/purchasing/order-fitlet/

Originally Posted by markdj

I'll test the power usage this evening on the htpc AcePC though it is running through a 24-12v converter.

Looking forward to it.

-- Regarding the Linux Mint Celeron question, I don't know. In case you don't get an answer here, there is a forum: https://forums.linuxmint.com. 64 Gb will be enough spacewise (but personally I'd add more space, more future proof...)

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

OK, well, for the record, I have been talked into Linux. I've actually been looking for an excuse to play with it.


So, next I need to choose a box. If it's really much lighter than Win10 (everyone agrees about that?), will it run properly on low powered multicore 64 bit processors like the Gemini Lake Celerons or Pentiums? Or is it not optimized for these processors?


One more question: how much disk space does a Linux Mint (etc.) installation need?

Whatever you buy, spend the $35 on a Raspberry Pi as well. Does it all.

On power consumption: like others already indicated, it is as much about what processes are active and if you need those, as it is about which CPU. A modern CPU that idles is very energy efficient, even if it's a very powerful one. My MacBook Pro can go days on battery.

Also, Windows vs Linux vs MacOSX: I think Windows is evil so I can't give a fair judgement on it (it sux) but don't forget that OSX is just a windowing shell around BSD Unix, just like what Linux does. Both are equally energy efficient, the differences are too small to discuss. The new MacMini is a beast but if use as a chart plotter is the task, then the Raspberry Pi will do a better job than most expensive marine chart plotters I know.

[jmh2002]

Another suggestion while you are doing all of this, and if you are going to choose a relatively inexpensive solution, and maybe with respect to future cruising plans, is to purchase and install TWO identical units.

And of course set them up with independent power supplies, and maybe some other independent peripherals too, and be able to flip a switch or switches (or maybe just disconnect and reconnect cables) to change computers and/or peripherals as required.

I have had this on some large vessels (and in some cases it's actually a regulatory requirement) and it adds a nice piece of mind when everything starts to rely on 'the electronics' working.

These examples were high dollar installations but there is no reason that a similar concept couldn't also be achieved on a smaller boat at a sensible price point.

Anyway, maybe it's some additional food for thought.

[markdj]

If I had hours and hours of free time and programming skills to figure things out when things go wrong, I'd be happy to try Linux or the raspberry pi, but the sheer speed and simplicity of getting a Windows box going was what did it for me. All nav software is optimised for Windows and you get maximum compatibility with software and hardware. My next step is to link the radar into OpenCPN with an additional heading sensor.