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[idpnd]

Originally Posted by Pellehaha

Short happiness...... The dongle went back to 9600 baud when it was disconnected and when asking the support at the manufacturer, he answers "The default settings is 9600. When you unplug the GPS after some time it will reset to default.

That's super annoying. You said you've tried PolarCOM, you know you can set the baud rate for each input and output on there?

Otherwise, do consult GPS Devices | Official OpenCPN Homepage for know supported devices, and put a warning for your dysfunctional unit into that table

On the other hand, as netsurfer already said, this could be a reasonable feature request I guess.

[Pellehaha]

yes, but it doesn't actually says it won't work with other than 4800 so I am wondering if I do something wrong. This is staed in the manual:
Maybe the folloiwing statemant needs to be uptdated in the helptext:
"NOTE: OpenCPN automatically configures baud rate, bits, parity, etc. These do not need to be separately specified."

[idpnd]

The only info on this is from the German community where setting to 4800 helped another user. If it works on other chart progs the issue must be at our end (with opencpn) I suppose?

[emsworthy]

Originally Posted by idpnd

The only info on this is from the German community where setting to 4800 helped another user. If it works on other chart progs the issue must be at our end (with opencpn) I suppose?

Hi this is my first post, sorry it really isn't a moan, just a chance to add to this brilliant programme. Thanks.

I too have a USB dongle that is rigidly fixed at 9600. It too works with MaxSea and SeaClear but I really want it to work with OpenCPN. Is there a simple workaround for this? If the FAQs weren't so confident that it "automatically adjusts to the appropriate baud rate" I may have been a little more careful with which one I bought.

All help gratefully received.

Cheers.

[brak]

Originally Posted by idpnd

Per, you have to change the dongle port settings, not the windows port settings!!

You *might* be able to use PolarCOM input/output settings to produce a different baud rate. I have not tested this however.

PolarCOM does what any other program can do - it controls port settings through appropriate OS API. That is to say - based on the system it will call a function that sets port baud rate to whatever user selected.

So:
1) the "baud rate" on the virtual serial port that is visible to the system is meaningless by itself - the data is arriving over USB which has no concept of "baud rate" (well, it has a rate, lots of bauds )
2) if the serial2usb device has appropriate functionality implemented, it will apply this "external" USB-side baud rate to the physical serial port on the other side. If it works with Maxsea - it does sound like the device has this capability.

A bit offtopic:
There is a ton of Prolific drivers out there and under different systems I had success with different ones (XP worked with the driver that failed for Windows Vista and vice versa). The only way to find out is to try.
There is also a ton of poorly designed USB-to-serial devices based on Prolific chipset. I just discarded two that could only input, not output data - and am waiting for a new set. It's a lottery - there is little guarantee that a new device will work any better. FTDI-based devices have somewhat better track record. This is not a fault of chipset per-se, however Prolific is less expensive so all sorts of low quality manufacturers tend to use it to build sub-standard devices.

[Rik-lu]

where the hell is the opencpn config-file ???

as I have 1.36 AND beta 2.1 installed at the same time in two different directories. It seems as I have only one config-file.

so when I change settings in 1.36 , the settings are also changed in 2.1.

I prefer to have two config-files for each programm-version.

How can I do this ?

thanks in advance

[idpnd]

The config file is in the standard location defined by the %APPDATA% string. You could keep to versions and rename them & drop them in?

[Rik-lu]

Thank you, I found the opencpn.ini.

seems to be possible to have two different opencpn-folders in the %APPDATA%
and renaming them. but risky if you mess them up.

I think I prefer to have only one version installed while sailing.

I could also log off and login as other user in windows for testing the beta version. would be save and the ini file would be in the appdata of the other user.

Any better idea ?

[idpnd]

I could also log off and login as other user in windows for testing the beta version. would be save and the ini file would be in the appdata of the other user.

That sounds a clever way of doing it. It depends on your usage really.

I think I prefer to have only one version installed while sailing.

The stable version is usually destined for production use, although some people choose to use the testing version in the field. That's up to you really, and you should certainly assess your risks when using experimental/various configuration files and build versions on your nav computer..

[a_hoffner]

I am using windows 7 I can select my CM93 root folder into my Open CPN chart table but when I click on ok, i get a brief flash then nothing, just the chart of PR that comes with the CPN download. Any suggestions?

[a_hoffner]

Oops! I answered my own question by looking at past replies to a question of mine. I reinstalled my cm93 folder...it was missing the last handful of files i.e. info stuff. I'm up with cmaps on windows 7

[idpnd]

Hard to say really, I would guess two possibilities:
* User does not have permissions to access folder
* CM93 file set corrupt

Post the contents of your log file here please. Look under important files on this page to locate it.

[a_hoffner]

Thanks very much for your reply. I did get cm93 working and I really like the idea of working with an open chart program so am an eager learner. It turns out that when I installed the cm93 maps on my new laptop I somehow left out the text, bin and edn files. So the installation wasn't good. I reinstalled, then updated to edition 2 and cmaps work great.
I do have another issue which I've been pursuing through the charts thread and that is about raster charts. I partially solved my question. I have many cds of raster charts but none would open up in cpn until I came to the posts about types of rnc charts that cpn supports. My installation works with bsb and kap files but many of my charts are of other types. I don't read well enough between lines of posts to see whether any of the talk of conversion would work for me? Seems to be related to nz charts.

[idpnd]

Supported chart formats here:

Chart Formats | Official OpenCPN Homepage

The NZ charts come as uncalibrated image files, no work, BUT calibrated by Marco here:

MCE66 - Software

[a_hoffner]

Thanks for chart format info. Will have to go thru my raster charts. Unfortunately for places near me (esp. Philippines, and parts of Indonesia) the cmaps don't have detailed coverage but raster do. I did just download from the Southeast Asia china sea chart site. Curious about it.
s/v oddly enough