Navico RADAR plugin

[Foeboat]

Hi,

If I have a Simrad broadband radar dome (BR2) but not the associated plotter/display head, is using the Navico plugin/OpenCPN in lieu of a dedicated display a reasonable approach? I understand the reliability/waterproofness/daylight visibility issues, I am asking about the performance of the Radar plugin and if there are any lost features if I go with the OpenCPN approach.

I am currently using a Raspberry Pi to run OpenCPN but let's assume that I upgrade to: a Wintel Pro Mini PC Intel Atom x5-Z8350 (Up To 1.92 GHz) Fanless Desktop Computer running Windows 10 (64 Bit) [2GB/32GB/4K/Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/USB 3.0]

Many thanks in advance for any insight/experience!

David

[petter5]

Works great for raspberry or an old laptop with Linux. If you absolutely want to carry 100 kilos extra, it will also run just fine using windows 10.
More important with great software than great hardware, but either will do fine.

Originally Posted by Foeboat

Hi,

If I have a Simrad broadband radar dome (BR2) but not the associated plotter/display head, is using the Navico plugin/OpenCPN in lieu of a dedicated display a reasonable approach? I understand the reliability/waterproofness/daylight visibility issues, I am asking about the performance of the Radar plugin and if there are any lost features if I go with the OpenCPN approach.

I am currently using a Raspberry Pi to run OpenCPN but let's assume that I upgrade to: a Wintel Pro Mini PC Intel Atom x5-Z8350 (Up To 1.92 GHz) Fanless Desktop Computer running Windows 10 (64 Bit) [2GB/32GB/4K/Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/USB 3.0]

Many thanks in advance for any insight/experience!

David

[Foeboat]

Thank you Petter5, this sounds very promising. I was going to switch to a windows machine (reluctantly) with more power than the rasp Pi because I understand from the plugin documentation that OpenGL has to enabled and (if I recall correctly, the rasp Pi didn't work well with OpenGL enabled. Happy to be wrong on this! Thanks again.

Best,

David

[petter5]

Just follow the discussion on this forum and you will see that opengl works fine with raspberry pi these days. - if using rapberry, I suggest that you use the openplotter distrubution for pi, since everything is already installed
Sailing with free hardware | Sailoog

Originally Posted by Foeboat

Thank you Petter5, this sounds very promising. I was going to switch to a windows machine (reluctantly) with more power than the rasp Pi because I understand from the plugin documentation that OpenGL has to enabled and (if I recall correctly, the rasp Pi didn't work well with OpenGL enabled. Happy to be wrong on this! Thanks again.

Best,

David

[JeroenAdam]

Runs fine using 50% of my 15.6" portable display, takes power from Intel NUC which is connected straight to battery bank.

[merrimac]

Jeroen, nice setup. Nice to see our hard work being used so well.

David, yes OpenGL is absolutely mandatory. The issue is that the radar needs to redraw the entire screen all the time, unlike charts which don't (need to) change on screen as often. Especially when you want to use higher redraw rates, which make the radar look like a real radar with the new radar beams (spokes) drawn as soon as they are received.

I recommend that you test the latest RPi image with OpenGL and see if that works for you using charts. The radar plugin can also be installed and the 'emulator' mode selected. This will just generate a series of geometrical wedges but it allows you to test the performance without buying a radar.

I haven't tested the RPi3 in a year or so. At the time it did not really work for me, with OpenGL enabled I think I had crashes and unreliable chart displays, if memory serves me correctly. It may very well have been fixed now, at the time the video drivers were experimental.

[verkerkbr]

with the RPi3 a lot of progress has been made.

De RPI3B+ is working with OpenGL and the VC4 driver. With a main processor load around 30%. Kernel version is 4.14.31 and with Linux Stretch (Debian 9.1)

Glxgears is now running at 900 FPS.

Sorry that I cannot try the Radar plugin, simply because I have no radar !

Bram

[Recy]

Is chart overlay working with the plugin?

[Andreas29]

Originally Posted by Recy

Is chart overlay working with the plugin?

Hi,

yes.

I use a raspberry pi2 with Jessie but the latest kernel, the vc4 hardware acceleration driver and OpenGL on .
OC 4.8.2, the navico plugin 3.0 and a simrad 3g.
With oesenc vector charts or with Google earth raster charts for overlay no probs.

Regards

Andreas

[Recy]

Originally Posted by Andreas29

Hi,

yes.

I use a raspberry pi2 with Jessie but the latest kernel, the vc4 hardware acceleration driver and OpenGL on .
OC 4.8.2, the navico plugin 3.0 and a simrad 3g.
With oesenc vector charts or with Google earth raster charts for overlay no probs.

Regards

Andreas

Thanks good to know.