frcurrents_pi - French Tidal Currents

[Rasbats]

Schnapsy pointed me to free tidal current data available from SHOM for French tidal waters and asked if something could be made from this.

frcurrents_pi is the result.

In alpha at present. Packages can be found here:
https://cloudsmith.io/~mike-rossiter...lpha/packages/

You need the harmonics from Merak (v10 I think). Google for these.

The areas correspond to those used for the French Tidal Stream atlases.

The plugin icons are a problem at present. The plugin icon is the same as that for otcurrent_pi.

A pot file has been placed in Crowdin:
https://crowdin.com/project/opencpn/sources/files
French translations in particular would be welcomed.

The github source code (repo) is here:
https://github.com/Rasbats/frcurrents_pi

Please use issues in the repo for bugs or discussion.

Thanks Schnapsy for all the help.

Mike

[AISEAG]

Hello,

French translation in Crowdin done

Serge

[Corsair63]

Spanish Translation done

[Rasbats]

AISEAG, Corsair63 ... Thanks for the translations.

A manual (English) is now available:
https://opencpn-manuals.github.io/ma...nts/index.html

Mike

[Cafe noir]

Thanks a lot for this new plugin !


That's something we where dreaming about... and you did it !


So, I tried the plugin, and I noticed some problems I shall tell with the more accuracy I can in a next post soon.


Thank you for this hard work.


Laurent.

[Rasbats]

Cafe Noir et al ...

Working with Schnapsy, Gilletarom etc a number of issues are known.

Next week I am going to work on the following:

• Allow users to select arrow colours (like otcurrent)
• For hi-def displays fix rendering of text. Again fixed in otcurrent.
• Include option in preferences for arrow size.
• Try and set current date/time for tidal current at Calais when the plugin is started.

Please come back if there are items you can add.

Due to copyright issues the Merak16 Harmonics will not be part of the plugin but will need downloading by the user. A link is in the manual.

Mike

[Cafe noir]

Hello,
OK, so may be I am going to wait th next version before posting my difficulties !

Thanks a lot


Laurent.

[Schnapsy]

Due to copyright issues the Merak16 Harmonics will not be part of the plugin but will need downloading by the user. A link is in the manual.

Mike,
What manual are you talking about and where is it?
And if there is a link, where does this link point to?
I couldn't find anything like that in the download.

[Rasbats]

Schnapsy ...

As above!

https://opencpn-manuals.github.io/ma...nts/index.html

In the final plugin the entry in the catalog will have this website link.

Mike

[Schnapsy]

In the final plugin the entry in the catalog will have this website link.

Mike,

Sorry for the late reply but I hadn't checked the link in the manual.
Is this link a mistake or did you not have time to click and follow this link?

The catalog's link you gave me send to a web page which is a description of the tides on OpencPN and nothing clearly indicates where and how to download the harmonic.idx file.

I think the simplest and most effective solution is to make a direct link, which leads directly to the harmonic file...
For example: https://tinyurl.com/nchezbss

In this example, the link is on the site of an association of sailors in the north of France which agrees to host it, but it is possible to find other accommodation in direct link.

[Rasbats]

Latest alpha package should have addressed a lot of the issues shown above.

The Information button of the plugin now has a direct link for downloading the Merak56 V10 zip file.

Please raise further issues on the github repo to make it easier to track problems:

https://github.com/Rasbats/frcurrents_pi

Or continue to note them in this thread if you do not have a github account.

Preferences now allows a choice of arrow style. If other styles are needed please let us know.

Cafe Noir ... you will see the reason La Rochelle currents are not yet available.

Mike

[Rasbats]

Big problem with my understanding of the French tidal coefficients. These should all be based on tides at Brest. The plugin needs work to fix this.

Mike

[Rasbats]

Tidal coefficients are now calculated using Brest tides.

Latest alpha package on Cloudsmith has the update.

Mike

[Erickalon]

Hello Rasbats, many thanks for your work, like a lot of french sailor, I think it will be very useful.

To help in the development of this plugin, I report you that I have noticed an issue for some values of coefficients and for the related currents. It appears each day where the Brest tide table issued by Merak56 give only 1 HW and 2 LW. For all these days the coefficient is higher than expected, often around 86. I suppose that the calculation of the coefficient is made using the difference between HW and LW, and if one value is missing the result is corrupted.
Exemples for 2023: 10/08, 26/08, 08/09, 24/09...
By the way, is it possible to install this plugin on OpenPlotter ? If yes, which repository must be chose please.
Thanks again,
Eric

[Rasbats]

Eric ... thanks for the report. This needs fixing.

TBC

The repo is here:

https://github.com/Rasbats/frcurrents_pi

Mike