Google Earth Plugin

[janp391]

Originally Posted by nohal

VERY weird, the act of automatically unchecking the checkbox is not there at all... I have absolutely no explanation for that as it is not possible that it happens without the message being written to the log...
Will think about what else could be done to track it down.
If anybody else has this problem, please let me know.

Pavel

Pavel,
Has played a little bit more with the GE plugin after installed the last beta 2.4.324.
When I uncheck the "Disconnect from viewport on GE action", the behavior is the same, the GE picture doesn't move or zoom. But if I uncheck "Disconnect from viewport on GE action" AND "Update plugin settings from GE". Then the GE-picture moves and the zoom in and out is working.
But I can not see my boat on the GE-picture (Yes GPS connected)

Jan

[nohal]

Jan,
I will be releasing a new version during the weekend. Quite a few "surpirses" arised lately

Pavel

[Gilletarom]

Hello,

ASUS W XP SP 3, GE 6.02, OpenCPN 240 - 324, Plug-in GE : 0.3. GPS connected.

If I run GE by OpenCPN using the plug-in GE, then, I have not image on the window of GE in OpenCPN.

If I run GE first and then I run OpenCPN and the plug-in GE, then I have image on the window of GE in OpenCPN.

Best regards,

Gilletarom.

[nohal]

Guys...

Version 0.5 beta of the GE plugin is available

Changes since the 0.3/0.4 beta:

• The plugin kills and restarts GE if it's running when the plugin window is first shown
• Changed the viewport disconnection logic completely to handle course-up and similar scenarios
• Added even more logging to be able to debug problems (the log grows quite big with this version)
• Window properly cleaned up on plugin shutdown
• Boat displays correctly with OpenCPN 2.4.324 and above
• Fixed all the crashes found here

Known problems in this version:

• Course-up mode does not work as expected (Dave, what's PlugIn_ViewPort.rotation? Thought it will be degrees from north-up, but never get anything outside -5/+5 range as far as I can tell...)
• While displaying the boat in GE, Google Earth keeps eating memory all the time (with no limit, after hours of operation it will be really a lot). The reason for that is that we can't delete the objects we once create through the API and can just set them invisible. Google crippled the API in this way for "security reasons" in GE 4.02. There are basically three possible ways to do the boat display differently.

1. Simulate a COM port and emit NMEA to it, so GE can have the GPS data as well. Definitely not going to implement it - if you want it, use external tool like PolarCOM or MMG
2. Implement a WEBSERVER in the plugin to circumvent another crippled part of GE's design disallowing it to use <NetworkLinkControl> with local URLs
3. Try to simulate user's keyboard input to GE

I have to say I like neither... Currently the updates were reduced to one per second so the growth got slower, but the problem is still there of course.

• Toolbar icon state on enabling the plugin is wrong
• Plugin window size resets to default when it's reopened - I'm slowly but surely running out of places where I can try to force AuiManager not to resize the window to a size it chooses
• AUI code generally needs rework

Important note for GE offline use GE tries to connect to the internet on startup and if it's not available it waits for some time (about a minute on my machine), hoping the connection will come alive. There is nothing that could be done about it, so you have to be patient waiting for the plugin to start in this scenario. After another while, GE displays two dialogs telling you, that there's no internet connection and whether you want to troubleshoot the problem. Answering No to the question is the thing to do. Unfortunately while displaying these dialogs, GE "steals" the focus and mouse wheel events don't get to OpenCPN anymore. To reclaim the mouse for OpenCPN, resize the GE plugin view a little bit and you are set again. This is inconvenient, I know, but currently I can't find any other workaround.

Populating the GE cache for offline use Google Earth is designed with a permanent highspeed connection to the internet in mind, but can be used offline if the necessary imagery data is available in the local cache on disk.
To make the data available locally, it's necessary to visit all the places we want to see before the computer is disconnected from the internet.
Fortunately we are not the only people facing this problem and several tools exist, helping to simplify this process. Probably the best for our use is GoogleEarth Voyager - read about it and find the download links at Google Earth Caching Programs III
GEV comes with a comprehensive documentation covering the whole problem - definitely worth reading to understand what's going on.

Installation and usage instructions
It does NOT work with OpenCPN 2.3.1 as it relies on the API extensions introduced in version 2.4

Before you use it:

• Make sure you are using Microsoft Windows. Sorry, there is no chance to get this running on any normal operating system
• Download OpenCPN, version 2.4.324 beta or later from Download OpenCPN | Official OpenCPN Homepage and install it
• To make the view sizing work reasonably, run Google Earth and turn off the toolbar and the sidebar in the View menu or Ctrl + Alt + T and Ctrl + Alt + B respectively
• Download the attached file gecomapi_pi.doc, change the extension to .dll and place it into the plugin directory in your OpenCPN installation

Run OpenCPN, go to Toolbox and enable the GE plugin on the Plugins tab
The plugin icon appears in the toolbar

Happy testing

Pavel

[janp391]

Nice
Thanks for your work. It works nicely, just tested it in my armchair.
but.....
The boat symbol in GE is a black square with text BOAT. The text BOAT is moving from N to NO and back to N of the square all the time (app. 1 sec). Is it design to do so? If yes - can that movement be turned off?

[nohal]

Jan,
the boat display is for now implemented by injecting a (very) simple KML into Google Earth. That said, it's impossible to control how and where GE is going to render the text (as far as I know) the KML can be changed to whatever we want though.
We should probably replace it with something like GE itself does when a GPS is connected. Already investigating on it.

Pavel

[Gilletarom]

Hello Pavel,

In my previous post, I explained that my home, the plug-in, version 03, only works if I run GE first.

Now, with version 0.5, the plug-in GE closes if I run it first and then reopens GE.

So, I have no image in the display window of GE OpenCPN.
Best regards

Gilletarom.

[nohal]

Gilletarom,
yes, I've read your comment. Closing GE is intentional on startup in 0.5. Mail me your logfile so I can have a look if it contains some useful info as of why the GE view is not properly connected in your case - I can't reproduce it on my machines...

Pavel

[Gilletarom]

Originally Posted by nohal

Gilletarom,
yes, I've read your comment. Closing GE is intentional on startup in 0.5. Mail me your logfile so I can have a look if it contains some useful info as of why the GE view is not properly connected in your case - I can't reproduce it on my machines...

Pavel

A moment

Yoruk has the same machine as me. First we see, if all is reproducible.

Gilletarom.

[Gilletarom]

Hello,

Other problem.

I try to install 240-324 and the plug-in GE on an other PC.

GE was not installed on this PC. Before installing it, out of curiosity, I started OpenCPN and plug-in. Then crash of OpenCPN.

Best regards

Gilletarom

[sinbad7]

Nohal..

I have installed the latest versions of both OpenCPN and the GE plug-in and it seems to work fine on Vista. However,neither MY ship nor any AIS targets display in the GE window although I have ticked the plugin option.

Tore

[nohal]

Tore...
The plugin does not intend to display AIS targets at all (yet?). For the boat to display, you have to have the GPS (or some sort of a simulator like Manimaul's MMG playing a previously recorded trip) connected - if there are no NMEA events, the boat can't be displayed as the plugin doesn't get any position info. If you have a GPS connected and the boat's not displayed, send me the log so I can have a look for the cause.

Pavel

[sinbad7]

Nohal..

AIS targets also create NMEA signals which are displayed in OpenCPN.
Unfortunately,I am an armchair sailor presently but I have connection to world-wide AIS network data. I just assumed all NMEA signals would be displayed.

Thanks for quick response.

Tore

[sailias]

Originally Posted by nohal

Guys...

Version 0.5 beta of the GE plugin is available

• Download the attached file gecomapi_pi.doc, change the extension to .dll and place it into the plugin directory in your OpenCPN installation

Pavel

Greets:

Was wondering what the secret handshake is on windows to renaming files. When I change the name of the file to gecomapi_pi.dll windows still sees the doc extension in fact it (windows) sees it as gecomapi_pi.dll.doc even though its displayed as gecomap_pi.dll but the icon remains as notepad file. Very strange...dont use windows much, apologies in advance.

Best regards and thanks

/ch

[nohal]

sailias,
I would think that your problem will be what's described at How to Show File Extensions in Windows
Windows just tries to be smarter than the user here as usually

Pavel