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HeviiSail · 01-03-2023, 05:36

I can appreciate your frustration, Wayne.

Please note that as you're running the latest Mac OS, you face the risk that none of the drivers (ie: the earlier ones) will work for you! Apple has a rep for making life miserable for Third Party software developers and their End Users when updating their operating systems.

Check, specifically, whether the drivers are compatible with Mac OS 13. If they are, dump anything at all related to the currently-installed driver and start anew, carefully following and acting upon any prompts.

CarCode · 01-03-2023, 08:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by HeviiSail

I can appreciate your frustration, Wayne.

Please note that as you're running the latest Mac OS, you face the risk that none of the drivers (ie: the earlier ones) will work for you! Apple has a rep for making life miserable for Third Party software developers and their End Users when updating their operating systems.

Check, specifically, whether the drivers are compatible with Mac OS 13. If they are, dump anything at all related to the currently-installed driver and start anew, carefully following and acting upon any prompts.

Before posting you should inform yourself. Please come back when you have some knowledge about the macOS. Apple has done its best to keep out malware and so installs some barriers against not signed software. Any reliable developer is able to sign his software.

HeviiSail · 01-03-2023, 08:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by CarCode

Before posting you should inform yourself.

Fully informed over here, my fine friend. As a long-time Mac owner and user of FOSS, I'm quite aware of the issues arising from Apple's upgrades.

waynekoide · 04-03-2023, 00:52

Finally got it to work! I tried the same things as you all have suggested over and over again and it finally worked! I guess persistence pays! Thank You!

pendragon · 10-03-2023, 13:20

[QUOTE=waynekoide;3749116]Howdy

I'm brand new to this forum and brand new to Open CPN so I apologize if the answer to my question is already posted somewhere.

I'm running Open CPN 5.6.2 on my mid-2012 macbook pro (w retina) and OS 10.15.7 (Catalina). Recently I purchased a Globalsat BU-353-N (GPS hockey puck) from Amazon. I actually ordered a BU-353-S4 but they delivered the N model - when I called GPS city (provider for Amazon) today, they told me that the "N" model was the new and improved version and that the -S4 was no longer being produced. Not sure what to think about this because all the literature I read pointed to the -S4 model for my laptop.

In any event, I have spent the entire afternoon downloading drivers from both the Gloabalsat and Prolific websites loaded them on my laptop and the gps unit NEVER APPEARS in the serial dataport dropdown menu.

The gps unit is flashing red indicating that it is working but the Open CPN app is not seeing it - very frustrating. Questions:

Is the BU-353-N the correct unit for my laptop(s)? BTW I also have a brand new macbook pro running OS Ventura and OPen CPN. Tried to load the appropriate drivers to this laptop with equally negative results.

Can someone point me to the DEFINITIVE link for download for the appropriate drivers?

After another round of negative results, should I just get a refund for this device and find other means to get a gps signal from my boat (currently in Mexico) to Open CPN? I'm running B&G Zeus3 and Vesper XB800 AIS both of which have wireless networks available.

I hear great things about Open CPN but if I can't get a GPS signal to the app, what's the use? It was not going to be my PRIMARY means of navigation but a backup to my other systems.

Suggestions?

Aloha,

Wayne Koide
s/v Flyer
Nuevo Vallarta, MX/QUOTE]

You might want to set the baud rate to 9600

CarinaPDX · 10-03-2023, 13:33

Some thoughts on your GPS model. The original BU-353 used a navigation-grade GPS module (the Sirf Star III if I remember correctly). The BU-353-S4 used a (newer) cell phone grade GPS (less capable, lower power) and thus in some ways a step down but still entirely functional. Globalsat is being very secretive about the modules used in the BU-353N and BU-353N5, but the N looks to be a GPS (with SBAS) only and the N5 a GPS/GLONASS/Beidou/Galileo receiver that can track 3 systems at a time. These are almost certainly an improvement over the S4 so be happy that you have the N. FWIW the uBlox 8N module (which might be used with the N5) receives the satellites of the 3 chosen systems, evaluates their contribution to the solution, then stops using those that don't contribute to accuracy. In practice GLONASS is dropped as an inferior solution (even the Russians use GPS in Ukraine). I am not completely current but a few years ago BeiDou and Galileo were still in development and not able to improve on GPS but I expect that to have changed. At any rate I doubt in practice if having multiple systems improves accuracy enough to notice in our application - GPS remains the top solution. So enjoy what you have and don't sweat the small differences.

For those wanting the latest and greatest, something to consider is that accessing the features on the more powerful GPS modules requires some difficult programming, and unless the manufacturer of the puck (GlobalSat in this case) added flash memory or a battery the programming is lost at every shut down and must be re-done on startup. I am pretty certain that the BU-353 variants do not store the settings over shut downs. But as I said, GPS-only works just fine so unless you need to fiddle just leave it alone.

Greg

Iains boatyard · 13-03-2023, 04:01

😳😳😳😳😳😳🙁 this post just reinforces why I am too scared to upgrade my Open CPN
My two versions, separate laptops, are very old but stable.

nohal · 13-03-2023, 04:03

Upgrading OpenCPN version has nothing to do with installing drivers for hardware, this thread is pretty much completely irrelevant for you I'm afraid.