Engine Data dashboard for windows and Android

[GreenHeaven]

Something like this:


CONFIGURABLE

[rwidman]

Naw, I would rather have the display on the dash in front of me.

[Nicholson58]

Originally Posted by rwidman

Naw, I would rather have the display on the dash in front of me.

Totally agree. Just one more piece of kit to maintain with little reason to exist. I can’t see sitting at the helm (where one must be to operate the boat) and hold a computer screen in front of me, draining power that must be replaced, while the real gauges are right there. Backup gauges are throughout the boat anyway.

I have plenty of real equipment to maintain.

[Dsanduril]

Well, that's couple of useful opinions

How is the data getting into the device? CANbus/J1939? NMEA2000? That makes a difference as to the tools that could be used for display. With NMEA2000 you could use SignalK and their dashboards, with J1939 Grafana gets used a lot.

[GreenHeaven]

Originally Posted by Nicholson58

Totally agree. Just one more piece of kit to maintain with little reason to exist..

You are thinking too narrowly. If you were on this boat you would understand why this is important.
But this thread is not about justifying WHY displaying engine data is valid to the peanut gallery....

I think I misunderstood what twocan does..

How is the data getting into the device? CANbus/J1939? NMEA2000? That makes a difference as to the tools that could be used for display.

rudder angle and depth come in from raymarine seatalk
rpm, temp, oil pressure, tak levels etc over nmea2k
other data ove nmea 0183

All converted to nmea xxxx at baud yyyy, multiplexed and tx via wifi

The Maretron app is free. I could use that if I knew what format their datstream is in I suppose

https://www.maretron.com/products/N2KView-mobile.php

With NMEA2000 you could use SignalK and their dashboards, with J1939 Grafana gets used a lot.

Aa far as SignalK. I am not a fan of bloated data packets like JSON etc when running on portable devices for hours and battery life is important. In fact I wish JSON and Javascript and all the other hideosly bad flavors would just die a death. A well packed data packet is not hard to parse and I frankly dont believe the claim that it JSON plays nicely with xxx. Its just easier for junior developers to work with cos they covered JSON in programming 101
A low level parser is not hard to write in a good language.

On that note, I am still not clear why some plugins work on windows but not Android. Ist the point of the API to provide all the functonality for a plugin like a dashboard overlay? access to the drawing engine, parsed data etc etc?

[bdbcat]

Green...


" I am still not clear why some plugins work on windows but not Android."


The OCPN plugin API is not the problem. The main hurdle is the UI. A Windows laptop generally provides a large, high definition display for complex UI actions, like dialogs, etc. Combined with a precision pointing device (e.g.mouse), the UI possibilities are quite rich.


Compare to an Android phone device. High definition display, all right. But limited size, operated by a low definition pointing interface (finger touch).


Result: Many of the OpenCPN plugins will require complete rework of their control dialogs to be usable on a small Android device. And we do not have the resources for that level of effort on all plugins simultaneously. So we progress as we are able, however slowly....


Thanks
Dave

[GreenHeaven]

Understand. This is not meant to sound critical, but there are some libraries available that might work. I dont know if they will compile in VS2013 tho...
https://philippegroarke.com/posts/20..._ui_solutions/
Is most of it in C or C++?
If I had time..... but I dont.
Regardless, thank you for getting it this far. Design is always eaiser with hindsight!

[rwidman]

Originally Posted by Dsanduril

Well, that's couple of useful opinions

.

This is a solution in search of a problem.

[Dsanduril]

Well, every ship control system on which I work has a display like this, fed directly from J1939. And it can be useful on a small boat too. Can you see those dash gauges while in the engine room? Having the tablet mounted on the wall showing the J1939 data while adjusting the idle screw is a whole lot easier than putting down your tools to aim a light or yelling up to the cockpit to ask someone to read the gauges.

Gauges on the dash are only in one location (or a few distinct locations), having a portable display allows you to "move" the gauges without having to re-wire the whole boat and opens up operating options that you simply don't have with fixed systems.

YMMV

[GreenHeaven]

and dont forget the logging possibities... oil pressure dipped when we did what?
engine rpms are what when motorsailing and fuel level went from what to what over how many nautical miles?

Then there is the confirmation of a guage reading. Is there no oil pressure or did the guage loose a connection?

[Dsanduril]

Absolutely. It all depends on what sensors/data you have available. What's the pressure drop across the fuel filter? Or the fuel suction pressure? What does it look like over time? Time to change the filter? Lots of what we do now is "once a season" or "once a year" or "once every xxx hours". With the data available those can now be transferred to condition-based maintenance, which is where they belong but have been hard to put there without the supporting data.

And just look at the OP example, do you have all those gauges on the dash? Room to add a few more? How about the %load gauge, which can be some really useful information? I recently increased the pitch of our propellers based on %load values, the other test is "can I reach WOT?", and that's not really accurate (if you can, how much was in reserve, if you can't, by how much?). The tech who installed the engines made us go to WOT during sea trials and that's all he needed to check his box, but it really tells you very little about engine loading (only that it's not, by a crude measure, overloaded).

[stevead]

I am still not clear why some plugins work on windows but not Android

From the TwoCan plugin perspective, simply because to the best of my knowledge, there are no Android devices that incorporate a CAN Bus transceiver circuit and a NMEA 2000 micro-C connector.

So if you cannot physically connect an Android device to the NMEA 2000 network, there's no point in porting the plugin. Plus the build process and test matrix is becoming an increasing burden.

In the future perhaps when the NMEA OneNet standard is supported by marine equipment vendors then it may be a consideration.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by GreenHeaven

Aa far as SignalK. I am not a fan of bloated data packets like JSON etc when running on portable devices for hours and battery life is important. In fact I wish JSON and Javascript and all the other hideosly bad flavors would just die a death. A well packed data packet is not hard to parse and I frankly dont believe the claim that it JSON plays nicely with xxx. Its just easier for junior developers to work with cos they covered JSON in programming 101
A low level parser is not hard to write in a good language.

Uh, well, beggars cant be choosers. 😉

Seriously, JSON works just about anywhere, there are JSON libraries for just about every major programming language, and is less fussy than XML. The SignalK folks are totally on the right track; no reason to re-invent the wheel.

[GreenHeaven]

Originally Posted by stevead

So if you cannot physically connect an Android device to the NMEA 2000 network, there's no point in porting the plugin. Plus the build process and test matrix is becoming an increasing burden.

Ah so thats it. Got it

Seriously, JSON works just about anywhere, there are JSON libraries for just about every major programming language, and is less fussy than XML. The SignalK folks are totally on the right track; no reason to re-invent the wheel.

And with all that said, there is still no engine dashboard that will run on ANDROID from NMEA 0183 data...

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by GreenHeaven

And with all that said, there is still no engine dashboard that will run on ANDROID from NMEA 0183 data...

There are Android dashboards. And others. And anything that can be incorporated into a web display can be viewed on any device with a web browser.

No need to re-invent the wheel.