Development of a Sonar Plugin

[Sea Patroller]

Hi there,

I was searching for a sonar integration into a PC based plotter with OpenCPN. At first a side by side window solution came in mind but it had some no go's.
Now I came across the EchoZilla DSP-1000 which seems to be a good solution (connects to a wide range of sonar devices). There is also an open protocol description to it which makes it possible to integrate into other applications.
It is obvious to write a plugin for OpenCPN.
I do have a strong software developing background but mainly with Java, Python and Q'n'D scripting. C is only done on microprocessors for electronic devices.
So my question is, how to get started best developing a graphical plugin for OpenCPN (like the radar one)? Is there anybody out there to lead me into the right direction? I have seen the information on the Wiki pages but could not get a starting point. Does anybody maybe wants to do a team development?
Available systems on my side are Mac, Linux and Windows.

Cheers

Nicholas

[mgrouch]

Originally Posted by Sea Patroller

Hi there,



I was searching for a sonar integration into a PC based plotter with OpenCPN. At first a side by side window solution came in mind but it had some no go's.

Now I came across the EchoZilla DSP-1000 which seems to be a good solution (connects to a wide range of sonar devices). There is also an open protocol description to it which makes it possible to integrate into other applications.

It is obvious to write a plugin for OpenCPN.

I do have a strong software developing background but mainly with Java, Python and Q'n'D scripting. C is only done on microprocessors for electronic devices.

So my question is, how to get started best developing a graphical plugin for OpenCPN (like the radar one)? Is there anybody out there to lead me into the right direction? I have seen the information on the Wiki pages but could not get a starting point. Does anybody maybe wants to do a team development?

Available systems on my side are Mac, Linux and Windows.



Cheers



Nicholas

Why does it have to be a plugin?
It should be just standalone application.

[Sea Patroller]

The system is on a touch screen and the buttons in OpenCPN are sized bigger to be selected easily.
That will ease switching the plug-in on/off. Just using the touch display is not really handy in resizing windows and/or fiddling around with a desktop GUI. Besides that it would be a feature to also get the depth into the NMEA network.