Active Captain Discontinued - An Opportunity?

[CaptTom]

With reports that (not unsurprisingly) Garmin has discontinued the sharing of Active Captain data, I'm wondering if the OpenCPN community could use this as an opportunity to start its own crowd-sourced review system.

The (understandable) lack of AC integration has been a repeated area of frustration for OpenCPN users. With the potential demise of AC, or at least its unavailability in other apps, I could see lots of folks looking to OpenCPN who had in the past used other apps.

I certainly understand this is a pretty complicated thing to implement. But if there's any way, now might be the time. I'd certainly be willing to contribute whatever efforts I'm able (retired IT guy.)

[rgleason]

Squiddio_pi has been operating for years. Try it out! Integrated with Opencpn.

Also VFkaps_pi has some of these features too and some other very interesting ones for cruisers, like position reporting.

Originally Posted by CaptTom

With reports that (not unsurprisingly) Garmin has discontinued the sharing of Active Captain data, I'm wondering if the OpenCPN community could use this as an opportunity to start its own crowd-sourced review system.

The (understandable) lack of AC integration has been a repeated area of frustration for OpenCPN users. With the potential demise of AC, or at least its unavailability in other apps, I could see lots of folks looking to OpenCPN who had in the past used other apps.

I certainly understand this is a pretty complicated thing to implement. But if there's any way, now might be the time. I'd certainly be willing to contribute whatever efforts I'm able (retired IT guy.)

[coupdemistral]

Originally Posted by rgleason

Squiddio_pi has been operating for years. Try it out! Integrated with Opencpn.
.

Thanks @rgleason. The plugin has not undergone any major upgrades in at least a couple of years, so this may be the right time and place to start a conversation about how to make it better and perhaps feel the void potentially left by the reported unavailability of AC.

Squidd.io (and the squiddio plugin) were never intended for commercial use, but rather as a way to create a user-sourced and open database of points of interest. In that sense, it has exceeded the original expectations, with over 10,000 POIs currently in the database (from all corners of the world), thousands of registered users and thousands of API requests to its severs every month.

However, the plugin itself is still fairly basic, and I am sure both the OCPN developer and user community have lots of ideas to contribute on how to make it more useful, not just as an alternative to AC, but as a compendium to OpenCPN. What the system has to offer today is an online front end to create and update POI info and user feedback, and an API to fulfill requests of data of any type.

The sky is the limit, so have at it with feedback, ideas etc....

[Franziska]

Can it be assured somehow that Squiddo will not go down the same path as AC?
Crowd sourced knowledge should stay fully crowd available. Without attachment to specific hardware or expensive(!) subscription rates.

There are many budget boaters out there who would contribute if its not too complicated to do.

I think a crowd sourced non commercial system would be great!

Maybe the Open Sea Map folks could also collaborate?

[steamgoat]

I made myself a reminder to keep checking zuluwaterways.com It is a crowd sourced site.

[Franziska]

Will it stay that way?
Does its data stay with the crowd?

[seandepagnier]

Originally Posted by Franziska

Can it be assured somehow that Squiddo will not go down the same path as AC?

squiddio respects user rights. Unlike AC, anyone can fork the database and host it somewhere else.

I'm not sure about zuluwaterways, it is unclear if they respect user rights or not.

[Franziska]

+ for Squiddo than!

[Mike OReilly]

https://www.waterwayguide.com is both crowd sourced AND paid staff sourced. It gladly includes crowd data, but unlike pure crowd source tools, it has paid on-the-water people who do their best to confirm inputs.

(I am one of those people )

[Franziska]

Nice, but unfortunately only US.

There is a full world of sailing people around.

Why limit to a local service? The best would be a world wide crowd sourced database.

[atmartin]

As an avid OpenCPN user, I think this is a great idea!

Sadly, I could only contribute on the water data. I can barely type, much less code.

[rgleason]

I encourage you all to try squiddio with OpenCPNv4.8.2.
https://opencpn.org/OpenCPN/plugins/sQuiddio.html

It is quite easy to use. It does require you to register for a free account so that you can add data. The website is very good and the plugin works reliably.

As the developer said, now is a good time to suggest improvements, however all the basic POI features needed are there! There are certainly other features that could be added.

The website is Squidd.io: Find and rate the best marinas, anchorages and other sailing destinations. Display them on your OpenCPN chart |

[did-g]

Originally Posted by boat_alexandra

squiddio respects user rights. Unlike AC, anyone can fork the database and host it somewhere else.

.

Huh, are you sure? From their term and service they don't claim ownership of your work but you can't fork the database.

sQuidd.io Content and Member Content License
Subject to your compliance with the terms and conditions of these Terms, sQuidd.io grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable license, to (i) access and view any sQuidd.io Content solely for your personal and non-commercial purposes and (ii) access and view any Member Content to which you are permitted access, solely for your personal and non-commercial purposes. You have no right to sublicense the license rights granted in this section.
You will not use, copy, adapt, modify, prepare derivative works based upon, distribute, license, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, broadcast or otherwise exploit the Site, Applications, Services, or Collective Content, except as expressly permitted in these Terms. No licenses or rights are granted to you by implication or otherwise under any intellectual property rights owned or controlled by sQuidd.io or its licensors, except for the licenses and rights expressly granted in these Terms.

[rgleason]

Where is the opensource part? I guess it is not.

[Paul L]

Originally Posted by did-g

Huh, are you sure? From their term and service they don't claim ownership of your work but you can't fork the database.

Yea, there's nothing liberal or open source about this license.