Engine Dashboard plugin

[stevead]

Thanks for the feedback, something that is worth consideration.

I have no plans for the next release, so unfortunately I can’t commit to anything as yet. Slight problem is that because the engine dashboard uses the same code base as the built-in dashboard, it is limited to 32 different gauges, as a 32 bit integer is used to identify each gauge.

With the addition of engine exhaust temperature in the last release, it has now reached that 32 limit, so to incorporate additional gauges, dials or text, that identifier wil need to be changed to a 64 bit long integer.

I believe that limitation was overcome in Tactics Dashboard, so worthy of further investigation.

[rgleason]

Originally Posted by stevead

I believe that limitation was overcome in Tactics Dashboard, so worthy of further investigation.

Steve, I believe Hakan refactored Dashboard sometime ago to increase the number of instruments. There would be big benefits to improve the instrument panel presentation,flexibility and user selection. Perhaps this project will be undertaken by some user programmers some time.

[farotherside]

hey - I can't seem to find the 'engine dashboard' plugin anymore. running OpenCPN 5.8.4 on amd64 under Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS. I've refreshed the plugin list and am seeing a catalog with the last update being today's date.

first off - thanks very much for your work creating and maintaining this plugin!!

a couple of questions:

- is the plugin missing from the catalog because it's not being compiled for Linux anymore? is this due to lack of Linux users?

- has the plugin been updated to allow text-only or small bargraph gauges? I'd love to have my fresh water and fuel tank levels on screen all the time, to be viewed at an easy glance, but the circle gauges take up too much screen real estate to be on-screen all the time, and if I have to do an operation to make them visible there's already several other places I can go to pull up that information.

- has the stability under Linux been figured out? it's been about a year since the last time I looked into this project, but I seem to recall OpenCPN crashing on launch when I enabled the plugin, causing me to have to rebuild my opencpn.conf in order to get it working again. admittedly it's entirely possible I'm thinking of a different plugin, but this is the one my old brain says was the problem.

again, thanks so much for your work building and maintaining this plugin!

[rgleason]

As a solution, I have offered to Stevead, to update his plugin and distribute, so that he can maintain the plugin code.

[stevead]

is the plugin missing from the catalog because it's not being compiled for Linux anymore? is this due to lack of Linux users?

With the release of OpenCPN 5.8.x there has been quite some churn in the plugin compilation and release process with the result that many plugins, Engine Dashboard included, have not been updated nor added to the catalogue. Now that the process has stabilised somewhat, expect to see the catalogue updated.

In the meantime, for Ubuntu Jammy x86_64 download the tarball from the following link and import it using the plugin manager.

Linux users have not been forgotten and the Engine Dashboard will be available on those versions of Linux that OpenCPN supports.

has the plugin been updated to allow text-only or small bargraph gauges? I'd love to have my fresh water and fuel tank levels on screen all the time, to be viewed at an easy glance, but the circle gauges take up too much screen real estate to be on-screen all the time, and if I have to do an operation to make them visible there's already several other places I can go to pull up that information.

Thanks for the feedback, something that can be considered for a future release, perhaps just a simple wxWidgets Gauge control. The next release has only been updated to take advantage of the new NMEA 2000 support built-in to OpenCPN 5.8.x

has the stability under Linux been figured out? it's been about a year since the last time I looked into this project, but I seem to recall OpenCPN crashing on launch when I enabled the plugin, causing me to have to rebuild my opencpn.conf in order to get it working again. admittedly it's entirely possible I'm thinking of a different plugin, but this is the one my old brain says was the problem.

I have yet to hear any reports of the Engine Dashboard causing OpenCPN to crash. Should you experience OpenCPN crashing because of a plugin, the correct process would be to disable all plugins, then enable them one by one until you find the culprit. Should it be the Engine Dashboard, please forward a bug report detailing the version of OpenCPN and the plugin, what operating system & version, a description of how the engine or fluid level monitoring is performed and if possible, a data dump.

[farotherside]

Originally Posted by stevead

Thanks for the feedback, something that can be considered for a future release, perhaps just a simple wxWidgets Gauge control. The next release has only been updated to take advantage of the new NMEA 2000 support built-in to OpenCPN 5.8.x

without knowing a damned thing about your workflow or codebase, I wonder if the fastest/easiest would be to implement the current 'Dashboard' text widgets with unicode 'block' characters, oldschool BBS style, something like

|Fuel Level: 50%|   |Fresh Water: 74%|
| ███████░░░░░░ |   | ██████████░░░░ |

...might even be something worth suggesting to the 'Status Bar Plugin' people.

I have yet to hear any reports of the Engine Dashboard causing OpenCPN to crash. Should you experience OpenCPN crashing because of a plugin, the correct process would be to disable all plugins, then enable them one by one until you find the culprit. Should it be the Engine Dashboard, please forward a bug report detailing the version of OpenCPN and the plugin, what operating system & version, a description of how the engine or fluid level monitoring is performed and if possible, a data dump.

*blush*... ahhh you know in retrospect I bet I'm thinking of the 'SignalK Dashboard' plugin. I was messing around with it yesterday and caused an opencpn crash that felt very familar...

[stevead]

Announcing Engine Dashboard V1.6.0

This release is only available for users of OpenCPN 5.8.x as it uses the new API's that are only available in this release of OpenCPN.

It supports the following platforms:

• Windows
• Mac
• Ubuntu Jammy (x86)
• Flatpak (x86)
• Flatpak (Arm64)
• Debian Bookworm (x86)
• Debian Bookworm (Arm64)
• Debian Bookworm (ArmHF)

My understanding is that other Linux variants are supported as derivatives of Debian.
Android platforms are not supported.

There are some new features, most of which will be unapparent to most users.

1. Supports OpenCPN's native NMEA 2000 connections
2. Uses the new publisher/subscribe listener model for both NMEA 183 and NMEA 2000 data (perhaps only of interest to geeks !)
3. Some refactoring so that in future releases gauges can be added for other things, such as battery charger status etc.
4. By popular demand (OK, one user requested this feature!), a "text" style gauge for tank levels.

Please report any issues to either the forum or via email to twocanplugin@hotmail.com What is of interest to me is if there are any platforms on which OpenCPN 5.8.x is supported, but on which this version of the dashboard does not appear in the plugin manager.

Thanks.

[farotherside]

hey,

running OpenCPN 5.8.4+8089+1637c28fb~ubuntu22 (installed from ppa.launchpad.net/opencpn)... I've just refreshed my plugins list to 2023-09-03 00:49, and I do not see Engine Dashboard. I do see Dashboard and DashboardTactics.

[stevead]

Thanks for the feedback, disappointing as it may be.

Could you please provide the following information:

• the output from cat < /etc/os-release
• copy of the opencpn log file (probably in ~/.opencpn, although if you click on the about icon, OpenCPN will display the file location)
• What other plugins are displayed ? Ignore the built-in plugins; dashboard, grib, world magnetic model & chart downloader as they are part of OpenCPN and not controlled by the plugin manager)

[farotherside]

Originally Posted by stevead

Thanks for the feedback, disappointing as it may be.

Could you please provide the following information:

• the output from cat < /etc/os-release
  

xwing@xwing:~$ cat /etc/os-release 
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS"
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION_ID="22.04"
VERSION="22.04.3 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish)"
VERSION_CODENAME=jammy
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://help.ubuntu.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/"
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/privacy-policy"
UBUNTU_CODENAME=jammy
xwing@xwing:~$

• copy of the opencpn log file (probably in ~/.opencpn, although if you click on the about icon, OpenCPN will display the file location)

sure, it's big though, like ~400k. I put it here: https://farotherside.com/opencpn.log

• What other plugins are displayed ? Ignore the built-in plugins; dashboard, grib, world magnetic model & chart downloader as they are part of OpenCPN and not controlled by the plugin manager)

I see 48 plugins listed in total, including the built-in ones. would you like a series of screenshots? it's about five pages of plugins.

I'm sailing from Broome, Australia to Exmouth, Australia, leaving... well, right now actually. it's about 500 miles, so I will be at sea for the next few days, please excuse any lag in replies!

[stevead]

Thanks for the info.

I know what the problem is. Just have to work out how to fix it properly. I clearly have stuffed up a configuration file used in the Continuous Integration (CI) build process.

The quick & dirty workaround, if you feel confident enough to do so is to edit the file named ocpn-plugins.xml which is located in ~/.opencpn

Perhaps make a backup copy just in case.

Look for the following entry for Engine Dashboard:

 <plugin version="1">
    <name> Engine Dashboard </name>
    <version> 1.6.0.0 </version>
    <release> 0 </release>
    <summary> Engine Dashboard, Displays Engine parameters. </summary>
    <api-version> 1.18 </api-version>
    <open-source>1</open-source>
    <author> twocanplugin@hotmail.com </author>
    <source> https://github.com/TwoCanPlugIn/EngineDashboard </source>
    <info-url> https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=opencpn:developer_manual:plugins:beta_plugins:engine-dash </info-url>
    <description>
Engine Dashboard, Displays Engine RPM, Oil pressure, Water temperature, Alternator output and Tank levels.
</description>
    <target>ubuntu-x86_64</target>
    <target-version>22.04</target-version>
    <target-arch>x86_64</target-arch>
    <tarball-url>
https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/steven-adler/engineplugin-prod/raw/names/engine_dashboard_pi-1.6.0.0-ubuntu-x86_64-22.04-jammy-tarball/versions/v1.6/engine_dashboard_pi-1.6.0.0-ubuntu-x86_64-22.04-jammy.tar.gz
</tarball-url>
  </plugin>

change

<target>ubuntu-x86_64</target>

to

<target>ubuntu-wx32-x86_64</target>

Let me know if that works for you.

Enjoy your trip, I know of some folks who cruised much further north in the Kimberleys.

[DrStS]

Hello,
may I kindly ask is it possible with the plugin to display multiple (3) battery states received each through PNGs 127506,127508,127513?
Thanks!
Best

[stevead]

Thanks for the feedback.

To clarify, you want to support three (3) battery banks, instead of the two (2) that are currently supported today for PGN 127508 (voltage & current)?

For PGN 127506, what information is of use to you ? Time Remaining, Remaining Capacity ?

I don't think PGN 127513 is particularly useful in a dashboard. It's static information concerning what type of batteries you have installed, eg.that battery bank #1 is an AGM battery, with a nominal voltage of 12v and capacity of 200 Amp Hours.

[DrStS]

Sorry for not being clear.

I would like to get the status (SoC,Voltage and Current)
For three battries

Starter Battery 12v
Traction Battery 36volt
Battery 12v for all the electronics - fish finder etc.

Plus there is a DC DC charger from the starter Battery to the traction Battery... it would be nice to check the charging current...

Please let me know if I should provide more info and thanks a lot for your help!

Best Stefan

[stevead]

OK, will be taken into consideration for a future release. I can only say that a future release of the Engine Dashboard will be some time away as I have other projects I am working on.

Thanks.