Feature Requests

[Mattzilla]

Originally Posted by alanrothenbush

I'd like to start a new thread with a feature request, but I can't quite figure out how .. all I see is a "Reply" option, hence this reply.

Let me begin by saying that I find OpenCPN fabulous as a pre-trip tool; sitting at my desk in front of a large screen with a mouse in hand, it's absolutely fabulous.

Sadly, what I'll say next is very much along the lines of "I want opencpn to ..."

You see, I find it near useless in the cockpit of my 28' sailboat in anything but the gentlest of seas, and even becalmed, there are functions just not accessible or usable.

One example is the measurement of distance. I frequently want to know the distance to a rock, a buoy, a waypoint, etc., and also want to know long it's going to take me to get there at my current speed.

A rock an hour away is irrelevant. A rock a minute away means stop the sightseeing!

Time/distance measurement is one of the most important features to me of marine navigational software.

But trying to tap with my finger on a tablet screen at JUST the right spot .. twice .. is pretty much impossible, even in my living room. It's absolutely impossible on the boat.

As a result, I don't use OpenCPN on my wonderful Panasonic Toughbook tablet when in the cockpit. Rather, I use Navionics or I-Boating on a much less sunlight friendly, much less rugged Android tablet.

Both these two apps allow a person to move the start and endpoints of a measurement with no problem at all. (They also allow easy access to the function!)

OpenCPN has evolved over the years to include a staggering number of wonderful features. But this most basic functionality is missing ...

So, my feature request: Make OpenCPN tablet friendly when used in the cockpit of an actual boat.

On my laptop, I can move the mouse cursor to any point and in the bar down the bottom, it shows bearing, distance and time @ preset speed (whhich can be configured in settings) - I have 6 knots set.

Do you see this on tablet?

[mgrouch]

Well OpenCPN can’t beat navionics app on a tablet for just short cruises. At least not in current state of development. However OpenCPN shines for offshore cruises with its plugins and opening ways you can customize it. It should be open even more though in my opinion. It’s a bit too monolithic

[alanrothenbush]

Originally Posted by Mattzilla

Do you see this on tablet?

Yes, sort of.

There is no mouse cursor, of course, so to replicate your suggestion, one must tap, quickly. You can't tap and hold, or a menu appears, nor tap and move, or the chart moves.

You must tap quickly. But once you tap, there is no indication where you have done so, nothing on screen at all. So you have a direction and distance to somewhere, but no idea exactly where.

And you have a time to that somewhere, but not necessarily a time when you might be there, unless your speed happens to match the predefined speed.

In other words, the info is not particularly useful.

And even if this was useful, it would only be useful for the current leg. I most frequently use "the two pins" to look at the next leg. While I do pre-plan excursions of more than a few hours, the weather often necessitates a change in route, considered on the fly using "the two pins".

The difference in usability between OpenCPN and Navionics or I-Boating on a tablet in the cockpit is quite striking.

[Tupaia]

Just a suggestion. Would it be possible to provide a "hot key" and/or an entry on the "View" menu to toggle the canvas layout.


I use a small monitor in the cockpit and a large monitor at the nav station and a quick option would be a great feature for me when viewing different screens.


Currently this requires going into settings.

[alanrothenbush]

Originally Posted by alanrothenbush

The difference in usability between OpenCPN and Navionics or I-Boating on a tablet in the cockpit is quite striking.

Let me add that I get that I'm 'dissing free software, that my "complaints" are being leveled against people taking time out of their own lives to give to others.

I get it, and I'm grateful for their efforts, I truly am.

But we must be realistic about the modern world, a world in which a conventional keyboard and mouse have been largely supplanted by a forefinger on a touch screen.

There is absolutely a place for OpenCPN, as it exists now, at the nav station or galley table below deck.

But it's not currently a useful tool in the cockpit, and maybe the developers could give thought to making it one.

[Tupaia]

Originally Posted by alanrothenbush

Let me add that I get that I'm 'dissing free software, that my "complaints" are being leveled against people taking time out of their own lives to give to others.

I get it, and I'm grateful for their efforts, I truly am.

But we must be realistic about the modern world, a world in which a conventional keyboard and mouse have been largely supplanted by a forefinger on a touch screen.

There is absolutely a place for OpenCPN, as it exists now, at the nav station or galley table below deck.

But it's not currently a useful tool in the cockpit, and maybe the developers could give thought to making it one.

There are many applications that do not lend themselves to tablet use.



Have you considered buying a tablet touchpad. These can be very tiny and used remotely or easily attached to the edge of the tablet.



Then using the Accessibility settings. Gives access to, and displays a pointer on your tablet.

[alanrothenbush]

Originally Posted by Tupaia

There are many applications that do not lend themselves to tablet use. Have you considered buying a tablet touchpad. These can be very tiny and used remotely or easily attached to the edge of the tablet. Then using the Accessibility settings. Gives access to, and displays a pointer on your tablet.

I agree, there are many apps that do not lend themselves to tablet use. However, marine nav is not in that category. Marine nav is absolutely an application suitable for a tablet. An impromptu survey of your local marina might surprise you. In my old marina, half the sailors that used anything to navigate used a phone or tablet, half.

I've used Navionics for five or six seasons now, and pretty much all my manual navigation has been done on my Android tablet. My lovely chartplotter is rarely used anymore.

Navionics does most of I want it to, not everything, just most, but it doesn't run on my rugged, waterproof, bright Windows tablet.

I appreciate your suggestion of an external TouchPad, but that's not really a viable option. It's one more thing to keep powered, I know of none that are ruggedized or waterproof, and none look like they'd survive a bashing in the cockpit of a roiling sea. And quite aside from all this, it's still nowhere near the usability of an app designed for touch use.

Now, I have installed Android-X86 on this tablet and gotten my Android nav apps to run. Sadly, this has resulted in a love hate experience. There's all the usability I want, but they miss some of the cool features of OpenCPN.

Worse, there is a showstopper, related to Android itself, that I can't seem to figure out. My NMEA data is sent to OpenCPN under Windows via WiFi. Windows is connected to a "fake" access point and that access points streams the data. Works great.

However, under Android, the O/S connects to the NMEA access point, finds that there's no internet access and soon disconnects and looks for another access point. After a few seconds to a minute, it reconnects to the NMEA gateway, streams data for a few seconds, finds it's not connected to the internet, disconnects, looks for another access point ...

I'm in the process of building a Bluetooth "gateway", which might solve this problem, but still leaves the issue of "missing" features that OpenCPN provides.

[mgrouch]

Originally Posted by alanrothenbush

Let me add that I get that I'm 'dissing free software, that my "complaints" are being leveled against people taking time out of their own lives to give to others.



I get it, and I'm grateful for their efforts, I truly am.



But we must be realistic about the modern world, a world in which a conventional keyboard and mouse have been largely supplanted by a forefinger on a touch screen.



There is absolutely a place for OpenCPN, as it exists now, at the nav station or galley table below deck.



But it's not currently a useful tool in the cockpit, and maybe the developers could give thought to making it one.

I use OpenCPN with BBN Marine OS in a cockpit on touchscreen attached to raspberry pi4. This OS implemented solutions to make finger gestures work in OpenCPN.

[hans-martijn]

Originally Posted by alanrothenbush

However, under Android, the O/S connects to the NMEA access point, finds that there's no internet access and soon disconnects and looks for another access point. After a few seconds to a minute, it reconnects to the NMEA gateway, streams data for a few seconds, finds it's not connected to the internet, disconnects, looks for another access point ...

I use a 4G router to be connected to the internet when near shore. All devices use that internet connection (it's an unlimited one) and stay connected. They don't disconnect if I'm to far off shore, since the devices can't reach anything else either, so they stay online.

-Hans

[sparticle]

Just posting here in respect of a headless server based OpenCPN rendered via a browser.

We are experimenting with AVNAV it is a revelation. PI4 connected to the instruments and our nav station simply using a browser for the chart display and navigation.

It lacks the richness of OpenCPN without the plugins but the access via just a browser is awesome and multiple device access to the server is a breeze.

I am not sure what the future looks like for OpenCPN but it would be great to see it take this sort of direction with rendering done in a browser.

It's good enough for Google maps/Earth etc.

AVNAV approach could be a very cool direction. You could still use it on a single device if needed, but for more than basic you can use it as a pure server.

We are using it currently in completely headless mode connecting to the boat wifi network and it has the primary feeds from the DY AIT5K and DY NMEA and DY ST1 adaptors.

Cheers
Spart

[Jon Hacking]

Very interesting, Spart!

You might want to post this over on the "OCPN data sharing Focus Group" that Dave has recently setup. Probably more appropriate there.

[sparticle]

Originally Posted by Jon Hacking

Very interesting, Spart!

You might want to post this over on the "OCPN data sharing Focus Group" that Dave has recently setup. Probably more appropriate there.

Done thank you.

Cheers

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by sparticle

Just posting here in respect of a headless server based OpenCPN rendered via a browser.

We are experimenting with AVNAV it is a revelation. PI4 connected to the instruments and our nav station simply using a browser for the chart display and navigation.

It lacks the richness of OpenCPN without the plugins but the access via just a browser is awesome and multiple device access to the server is a breeze.

I am not sure what the future looks like for OpenCPN but it would be great to see it take this sort of direction with rendering done in a browser.

It's good enough for Google maps/Earth etc.

AVNAV approach could be a very cool direction. You could still use it on a single device if needed, but for more than basic you can use it as a pure server.

We are using it currently in completely headless mode connecting to the boat wifi network and it has the primary feeds from the DY AIT5K and DY NMEA and DY ST1 adaptors.

Cheers
Spart

Anyone want to translate this for us luddites?
Headless?
Use what? as a server, Hardware, software?
What are the clients? Browser based O? on PC's tablets phones?
What boat WiFi network?
What is DY AIT5K and DY NMEA and DY ST1 adaptors?

This sentence: "You could still use it on a single device if needed, but for more than basic you can use it as a pure server." What is "it"?

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by wingssail

Anyone want to translate this for us luddites?

Headless?

Use what? as a server, Hardware, software?

What are the clients? Browser based O? on PC's tablets phones?

What boat WiFi network?

What is DY AIT5K and DY NMEA and DY ST1 adaptors?



This sentence: "You could still use it on a single device if needed, but for more than basic you can use it as a pure server." What is "it"?

The post is very clear as to what he’s doing , and if you Google a few terms it will be clear to you too

[Franziska]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

The post is very clear as to what he’s doing , and if you Google a few terms it will be clear to you too

Actually most people here are not electronic engineers or computer specialists and it is all but clear to us dummies.
Wingsail, and myself are puzzled as are many others likely too.

So if you have a great understanding of it, maybe you can explain the posts meaning in few short simple layman terms, so we can also understand the general drift of its meaning without the need to dive deep into the subject.

Thank you.