Cruisers Forum
 


Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread Rate Thread Display Modes
Old 09-01-2015, 10:19   #1
Registered User

Join Date: Mar 2011
Posts: 45
Create kap file with Mac?

How can I create kap files with a Mac. I looked for an alternative to GE2KAP but could not find one.
tinpusher is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-03-2017, 07:24   #2
Registered User

Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: Plymouth, UK
Boat: Dufour 36 Classic
Posts: 13
Re: Create kap file with Mac?

Quote:
Originally Posted by tinpusher View Post
How can I create kap files with a Mac. I looked for an alternative to GE2KAP but could not find one.
Did you ever get an answer to this?? I'm really surprised that its not been tackled????
lone_viper is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-03-2017, 08:27   #3
Registered User

Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: Hannover - Germany
Boat: Amel Sharki
Posts: 2,537
Re: Create kap file with Mac?

You can use imgkap for Mac.
See https://topperdiek.de/dl/Bild-Kap-OSX.zip

Gerhard
CarCode is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-03-2017, 11:47   #4
cruiser

Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Probably in an anchorage or a boatyard..
Boat: Ebbtide 33' steel cutter
Posts: 5,030
Re: Create kap file with Mac?

If it's google earth images you want as kap files then this site will do just that. Not as powerful as ge2kap but quick and easy.

https://www.venturefarther.com/
conachair is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 24-07-2017, 02:55   #5
Registered User

Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: East Coast USA
Boat: Tashiba 40
Posts: 83
Re: Create kap file with Mac?

Quote:
Originally Posted by conachair View Post
If it's google earth images you want as kap files then this site will do just that. Not as powerful as ge2kap but quick and easy.

https://www.venturefarther.com/

Hi, Jon the developer (and cruiser) behind VentureFarther here. VentureFarther is in my estimation (hey, I wrote it I may be a bit biased ) the simplest/fastest way to generate satellite charts (from Google Maps, Bing and Nokia here) without installing any software. You are right, it is not as feature rich as GE2KAP, but it is much easier for the average computer user and since it is 100% web based it can run on any computer, including your smart phone! As of today over 101,000 charts have been generated and more are generated each day. Since also VentureFarther does more than just KAPs, I am moving forward integrating the features. What does this mean to cruisers, well as an example say a country like Vanuatu (satellite images are great for here) has 50 anchorages shared (the crowd source part of VentueFarther), wouldn't it be really cool to come in and request a KAP pack of all these anchorages in a single zip download? I have everything in place for this already (a database that can locate GPS coordinates to any country/state/island) in the world. What am I waiting for? Well since this is a self funded site it is currently running on a fairly low powered server, I have plans to upgrade to a much better one soon as the server prices have dropped considerably since I started 4 years ago. Once one the faster server these kind of features are possible.

Now what does VF offer that is found nowhere else. Currently anyone can record NMEA using the VDR plugin in OpenCPN. If you have your depth sounder integrated into the NMEA stream a simple upload of this recording will share your recorded depths, both online and in KAPs. If you check out VentureFarther, go to the Spain page, there you will see "Survey's" listed. Click on any of them and you will see the recorded depths, if you go the KAP generation page to the same area and select the "depths layer" you will see them there and will be included in your generated KAP. Really cool for those places where the water is not so clear and ready a satellite image not great. Any questions just please let me know.
jonturgeon is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 29-07-2017, 04:39   #6
Registered User
 
yachtvalhalla's Avatar

Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Philippines
Boat: Formerly Fuji 32 Ketch
Posts: 1,017
Re: Create kap file with Mac?

Quote:
Originally Posted by conachair View Post
If it's google earth images you want as kap files then this site will do just that. Not as powerful as ge2kap but quick and easy.

https://www.venturefarther.com/
Be careful! I registered and tried to make charts that downloaded as small (12kb) files that were a black box and crashed the OpenCPN program.

Terry
yachtvalhalla is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 29-07-2017, 06:20   #7
Registered User
 
rgleason's Avatar

Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Boston, MA
Boat: 1981 Bristol 32 Sloop
Posts: 17,523
Images: 2
Re: Create kap file with Mac?

Terry, how recently? Was it perhaps an internet connection problem? Perhaps others have had better success?
rgleason is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 29-07-2017, 06:28   #8
Registered User
 
yachtvalhalla's Avatar

Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Philippines
Boat: Formerly Fuji 32 Ketch
Posts: 1,017
Re: Create kap file with Mac?

Quote:
Originally Posted by rgleason View Post
Terry, how recently? Was it perhaps an internet connection problem? Perhaps others have had better success?
Not an internet problem ... and it was a few hours ago. A clue may be that my location is at longitude 125 East and the downloaded file had a title with longitude 234 West?

In any event I had to delete the navobj.xml file to get OpenCPN to run.

I made another attempt about an hour later and could see the chart that was created was very small again.

Emailed the developer but will be surprised to get an answer.

Terry
yachtvalhalla is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 29-07-2017, 07:37   #9
Registered User

Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: East Coast USA
Boat: Tashiba 40
Posts: 83
Re: Create kap file with Mac?

Hi Terry, surprise ;-) Jon from VentureFarther here. First sorry you had an issue, here is a little background about VentureFarther. I am a full time cruiser who started building this site 4 years ago (yup, the site is a part time while cruising one man show), this is on the "About' page which I am pretty sure people don't see (I know because I rarely check this on other sites). Up until about a month ago it was completely free as I personally paid for the server. The credit system was put in to help with the monthly costs.

Now about the blank KAP. I know exactly what causes this and it is a direct result of "free". Google will randomly throttle the free level (VentureFarther uses this) requests. What they nicely do is instead of an error message they pass back a completely black image instead of the sat image. I have a couple of things in place to try and catch this but since this happens randomly it is a bit hard test to make sure my fix works.
Now, I do know this. I use VF for our cruising. Every few months get someone that reports this problem (they usually get it once). I need to figure out a test scenario to trap these files, I actually try and trap for file size and retry if too small, but since the time between retries is sub-second I get the black image again. I am not sure as to why this KAP would cause your OpenCPN to crash though. I have had it happen once, and mine just showed a black image. I can personally assure you that there is no malice behind this, just a bug induced by Google (actually you could try both Bing and Nokia as they do not seem to throttle). I do know this though, this seems to be pretty rare and other users have download literally thousands of KAPs (as of today over 101,000).

I see that you pm'd me. Anyone can feel free to contact me using the "Contact" page in VentureFarther (email address venturefarther at outlook dot com.

Now, also as VentureFarther is starting to become more widely used the server is starting to come under a bit of stress. With the recent subscriptions ($20 a year) I can now afford to move VentureFarther to a faster server with way more capacity. Should reduce KAP creation time as although the KAP engine is multi-threaded I can not really take advantage of it as the current server it too small.

And to anyone else that reads this, if at any time you have a problem (or even better a suggestion) with VentureFarther please contact me right away using the email address on the contact page. If I don't get back to you right away it is because we are away from internet (like yesterday, we were underway from Cartagena Spain to Morocco).
jonturgeon is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 29-07-2017, 07:48   #10
Registered User

Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: East Coast USA
Boat: Tashiba 40
Posts: 83
Re: Create kap file with Mac?

Quote:
Originally Posted by yachtvalhalla View Post
Not an internet problem ... and it was a few hours ago. A clue may be that my location is at longitude 125 East and the downloaded file had a title with longitude 234 West?

In any event I had to delete the navobj.xml file to get OpenCPN to run.

I made another attempt about an hour later and could see the chart that was created was very small again.

Emailed the developer but will be surprised to get an answer.

Terry
Ah hah, Just clicked. I think this is a new problem that I have not seen yet with KAPs. I don't think this is the Google throttle issue and I think I can fix this one. Here is the problem. The mapping software I use for the front end is a library called "Leaflet". Great open source product that is great to use but it has a quirk. If you scroll the page past the 180 degree mark instead of swapping to the widely used -180 is goes on past 180 (your 234 comment nails this), keep scrolling by 180 again and it adds yet another 180. Still have not figured out why they do this. This is an invalid coordinate (I did already deal with this in the marker create but forgot that KAPs could also be a problem) and I am guessing caused the OpenCPN issue. As I said in an earlier post I am in Morocco, actually sitting on a wall in the sun outside the marina office as we currently have no internet on the boat. We are heading to Spain tomorrow and should get internet back, this is an easy fix. Once I get it in and tested, I will make a release and let you know. Until then, if you could just try a KAP, but just open the KAP create page and click download. I think you will find the KAP is ok (as it does not do this over 180 issue since you do not move the page). Please let us know.
jonturgeon is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 29-07-2017, 13:56   #11
Registered User

Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: East Coast USA
Boat: Tashiba 40
Posts: 83
Re: Create kap file with Mac?

Hi all, I have just released a fix for the bug that Terry found. Hopefully this resolves the issue with the 234 longitude. Luckily it was a cut and paste of 2 lines from the marker create code to correct the odd way the Leaflet mapping library handles paging over the international date line.
jonturgeon is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 29-07-2017, 16:12   #12
Registered User
 
yachtvalhalla's Avatar

Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Philippines
Boat: Formerly Fuji 32 Ketch
Posts: 1,017
Re: Create kap file with Mac?

Quote:
Originally Posted by jonturgeon View Post
Hi all, I have just released a fix for the bug that Terry found. Hopefully this resolves the issue with the 234 longitude. Luckily it was a cut and paste of 2 lines from the marker create code to correct the odd way the Leaflet mapping library handles paging over the international date line.
Many thanks for the quick response and fix.

And apologies for the abrupt reaction I had after crashing OpenCPN.


Happy sailing

Terry
yachtvalhalla is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 30-07-2017, 10:57   #13
Registered User

Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: East Coast USA
Boat: Tashiba 40
Posts: 83
Re: Create kap file with Mac?

Quote:
Originally Posted by yachtvalhalla View Post
Many thanks for the quick response and fix.

And apologies for the abrupt reaction I had after crashing OpenCPN.


Happy sailing

Terry
No worries Terry, most people distrust the internet (and for good reason) and who has heard of VentureFarther? Really no advertising budget ;-). After a few PM's with Terry I sort of see how this all happened. Terry did find a bug in VF (thanks for letting me know) that is now fixed.

I am still working with Terry though on an issue that I think others may benefit from (helping him undo the deny location permission in his browser). VentureFarther is a online mapping site (KAPs, markers and position reporting). Because of this I request that you allow VentureFarther to access your location. I do this to locate the map as close to where you are as possible. I think a lot of people deny this permission when asked out of concern VF is trying to do something nefarious (sorry, I have always wanted to use that word ). This sort of hamstrings the mapping location in these VentureFarther pages. What Terry is seeing is the KAP page locates him in Russia (others have seen this). This is a sign to me that the location permission has been denied because this Russian location is a last ditch default location (I just picked a random place, I am from Vermont) as the map needs to display something. This caused him to have to drag the map all the way to the longitude 125 to try the KAP creation. This uncovered the bug (the long drag). I would think pretty inconvenient for use. Anyway, I thought I would pass this along for new users (or existing ones that wonder why they have to start in Russia all the time) that it would make the site a bit more friendly if the location permission is granted.

If anyone else has any questions,concerns or problems please let me know.
jonturgeon is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 30-07-2017, 14:20   #14
Registered User
 
rgleason's Avatar

Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Boston, MA
Boat: 1981 Bristol 32 Sloop
Posts: 17,523
Images: 2
Re: Create kap file with Mac?

I downloaded a Kap file quite easily from VentureFurther, for an area I am interested in that has shifting sands. Just had to create an account and log in.
https://www.venturefarther.com/kap/Charting.action

I am wondering how to overlay it in Opencpn on top of another chart with about 50% transparency. We do not seem to have tools for that.

These tools would also be useful for use of the weatherfax KAP files.

IE: Right click on a Chart Button and pick Transparency....45%
or Right click on a Chart Button and pick "Hide all other Kaps"
or Right click on a Chart Button and pick "Show all Kaps in the Group"\
Attached Files
File Type: pdf VF41_18.891_N_71_52.457_W.zip.pdf (179.5 KB, 35 views)
rgleason is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 13-08-2017, 06:44   #15
Registered User

Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: East Coast USA
Boat: Tashiba 40
Posts: 83
Re: Create kap file with Mac?

Hi Rick, not sure this is possible. Here is what I "think". The kap file format is a bit old. In sort of layman's terms (to help anyone who is non technical) in the old days images did not support transparency. If I am incorrect please jump in as my KAP creation software was the first image manipulation coding I have done.
jonturgeon is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes Rate This Thread
Rate This Thread:

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are Off
Pingbacks are Off
Refbacks are Off


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
KAP-File Utility Netsurfer OpenCPN 8 29-10-2021 08:24
Imgkap - kap File Converter Tool MdJ OpenCPN 318 01-07-2020 05:43
SENC file create makes OpenCPN almost unusable pcmm OpenCPN 27 21-12-2014 07:41
mm2 to kap file conversion Tristan OpenCPN 5 25-01-2013 02:43
Create A Gpx File From Celestial Navigation Data? sdowney717 OpenCPN 10 23-10-2012 23:31

Advertise Here


All times are GMT -7. The time now is 00:54.


Google+
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.8 Beta 1
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
Social Knowledge Networks
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.8 Beta 1
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.

ShowCase vBulletin Plugins by Drive Thru Online, Inc.