5000 Miles with OpenCPN 2.1.0 - Thanks for the Software !

[PjotrC]

I've just completed a cruise around Northern Europe in varied and crowded waters (from Stockholm skerries in the Baltic to the Bay of Biscay down to St Nazaire/Nantes, also up the rivers Thames, Trave, Elbe and Loire). OpenCPN was the primary navigation tool, with paper charts as backup. Just a quick summary:

- It was constantly used on 2 computers on board - Vista (non-stop underway) and XP (backup and planning)
- by 4 people with various computer experience, little or no previous OpenCPN exposure
- with CM93ed2 only, COMAR AIS (serial), Furuno GP32 GPS (serial), Holux GR-213U GPS (USB)

I was just busily, defensively navigating from A to B, not attempting to try, compare, test or improve anything, so no long, detailed lists of features this time... It just did what expected, great "Thank You" to all developers! Well done indeed!

What I really, really would like changed is not much at all:

1. the night screen appearance (mainly: texts - not visible well, windows/dialog elements - too bright)
2. "remove from quilt" should be not so easily accessible for CM93 users (:-))

Strangely enough, I think I can recall only 1 persistent issue with functionality (looks like wx problem):

- when changing time zones one needs to restart the program to get correct local time (for log entries and bells)

Thank you again!

Cheers,

Piotr

[donradcliffe]

I also have cruised about 5,000 this year with OpenCPN as my primary navigation tool. It just keeps getting better. Most of the issues I had at the beginning have been resolved (with the exception of a GPS averaging function). There are occasional crashes, but I can quickly start back up from the same spot.

My only concern is that adding more and more features will be at the cost of performance and stability of the basic function. Performance on a netbook is acceptable if you turn off the chart outlines, but I wouldn't want to wait any longer for zooming and panning.

Again, many thanks to the development team!

[MarkJ]

Originally Posted by PjotrC

I've just completed a cruise around Northern Europe in varied and crowded waters (from Stockholm skerries in the Baltic to the Bay of Biscay down to St Nazaire/Nantes, also up the rivers Thames, Trave, Elbe and Loire). OpenCPN was the primary navigation tool,

Yes. But where did you INTEND to go? Saturday afternoon cruise?

[cagney]

Welcome back Piotr!
I'm looking forward to your contributions over the next few months
Thomas

[edsailing]

I too have used OpenCPN for about 5000 miles this year on deliveries (Med, N Europe) with CM93 charts as well as a few others. With Vista I had quite a few crashes but now, on a netbook running XP it has been great and I have used in preference to the onboard chartplotters. Only problem occurred when using the route manager - on a couple of occasions it hung up and I had to exit and restart but this only btook a minute or two. Also found that the ENC text was often offset from the location but this also was the case with the chartplotter using cmap chips.

I have just added AIS capability, using a NASA 3 AIS engine coupled with a stubby VHF aerial tuned to 160 MHz on 5 metre cable - it will be interesting to see how this performs.

Great program - I love it!

Thanks to all involved with the development.

[James Baines]

Congratulations to all of you, and a very great "Thanks" to the open source folks who work so hard to make this sort of thing possible for all of us.

I confess to having using OpenCPN only as a planning and backup tool but my next, quite short sail, in waters well known to me will now be undertaken using only OpenCPN.

And if that goes as well as I think it will, I will happily ditch my outdated Nav Station mounted Raytheon plotter and cockpit repeater and use my Navman 6600 as my primary "Wide Card" navigation system with my laptop sitting where my outdated Raytheon stuff used to sit.

I have nothing against Raytheon, It's just that replacing the main Nav station unit and the top side repeater with more up to date wide area capable units would cost a lot of money and since my wide area capable Navman is perfect for the UK coastal areas, and given that CPN gives me even more detail than that, and GLOBALLY as well, I am a convert.

Thanks for sharing your experiences with us,

James

[PjotrC]

Something handy after a long stretch:

Attached is a simple Python script that converts OpenCPN half-hourly LOGBOOK: entries into a GPX track. Some preliminary hand editing is necessary, however:

- to concatenate multiple archived opencpn.log files into a single file in the right order
- to avoid problems with short input lines (it is best to delete all non-LOGBOOK: lines first)
- to ensure just the right timespan is included
- to ensure uniform line format (local time may be shown in the log in varying number of fields, depending on the locale/version, so delete all AM:/PM: )
- to fold blank strings into a single blank

The script expects input in 'logbook.csv' text file, producing 'logbook.gpx'.

I'm sure it could be fully automated and improved in many ways...

Cheers,

Piotr

[Tia Bu]

Yeh. I did 1600 miles this summer with OpenCPN. Greatest thing since sliced bread. Only issue: one morning later in the summer it just wouldn't open up. I had a slightly older version that I had downloaded last winter.

Solution: I downloaded the newest version over a tether link to my cell phone. Took me about ten minutes. The new version cranked right up, my chart and the little red boat popped up on the screen, and off we went.

What's the world coming to?

Many, many thanks to all who have worked on this remarkable tool.