opencpn chart groups not working

[Jeremy 5426]

Originally Posted by Hakan

Jeremy..
I do not fully follow your S-63 file locations by your text but for start:
Be sure all S-63 files and key files are present.
Read more in the manual here. Not less from item 6. Start from there and see if your chart is included by "All charts" group.

And don't forget to update chart database after any change of chart file directories.

Thanks Hakan, the file locations I've given is where opencpn has created all the prepared ENC charts (.os63 files).

All charts are available and usable in the 'All Charts' chart group what I'm doing is creating additional chart groups using the existingos63 files to try and improve performance.

I used the same technique previously to create a group and this is working but I can't repeat the process.

Thanks

[barcoMeCasa]

Originally Posted by Jeremy 5426

All charts are available and usable in the 'All Charts' chart group what I'm doing is creating additional chart groups using the existingos63 files to try and improve performance.

The charts you want to group showing in AllGroups doesn't actually confirm that every file you need to view them is in /home/pi/.var/app/org.opencpn.OpenCPN/config/opencpn/s63/s63charts/NZ/Waitemata though..

If you point chart files directories at *only* /home/pi/.var/app/org.opencpn.OpenCPN/config/opencpn/s63/s63charts/NZ/Waitemata and all charts shows them then you'll know for sure and narrow down the search a little more. good luck

[Jeremy 5426]

Thanks for all your suggestions. The reason I started this thread was to try and improve performance in opencpn which is sluggish (1-2 second response) when panning and moving around on the chart display. Using the touchscreen is slower than a mouse but both are laggy, especially when compared to navionics.

I started investigating chart groups as a few posts state this is the biggest performance gain. I created a new group and this did improve performance marginally and having created a group I tried to create another one to prove the process but this failed and this is where I'm stuck.

I created a new group called 'Hauraki Gulf' and manually created a directory called 'HaurakiGulf', I copied .os63 files from the All Charts group location to this new directory and then added this directory to the group. I'm not sure what else I did but it worked in that i can select this group on the charts display and the charts are visible. The only contents in the new directory are the <chartname>.os63 files.

I followed the same process and created a new group called 'Waitemata' a new directory and copied .os63 files into it, as above the only files in the directory are <chartname>.os63 files however opencpn keeps saying the group is empty.

It would be useful to know how this works technically, eg what conditions need to be met before the group is saved with it's charts. Are there dependencies on other files, config?

I've recreated the database and prepared the enc files again but no diff.

These are the groups defined in opencpn.conf.
Groups]
GroupCount=3
[Groups/Group1]
GroupName=NZ
GroupItemCount=1
[Groups/Group1/Item0]
IncludeItem=/var/config/opencpn/s63/s63charts/NZ/NZ
[Groups/Group2]
GroupName=HaurakiGulf
GroupItemCount=1
[Groups/Group2/Item0]
IncludeItem=/var/config/opencpn/s63/s63charts/NZ/HaurakiGulf
ExcludeItems=/var/config/opencpn/s63/s63charts/NZ/HaurakiGulf/HaurakiGulf;
[Groups/Group3]
GroupName=Waitemata
GroupItemCount=1
[Groups/Group3/Item0]
IncludeItem=/var/config/opencpn/s63/s63charts/NZ/Waitemata

What's also confusing me is that /var/config does not exist, the s63 charts are actually stored in /home/pi/.var/app/org.opencpn.OpenCPN/config/opencpn/s63/s63charts

I'm familiar with Linux as I work with it everyday as an Oracle DBA. I've checked for hidden files and sym links in /var but nada, is this some Debian black magic?

thanks again..
jeremy

[Jeremy 5426]

well after writing all of that the new group Waitemata is now working! I restarted opencpn and was looking at the log files so I could see what the diff was when selecting different groups and it just started working - wtf? I'll do some analysis of the logs to see if I can figure out what the problem was before.

cheers
Jeremy

[Jeremy 5426]

I had a look at the logs (opencpn.log) and noticed this activity when the chart is displayed.
:32.307 MESSAGE chartdb.cpp:1286 Initializing Chart /var/config/opencpn/s63/s63charts/NZ/Waitemata/NZ405324.os63
19:23:32.307 MESSAGE s63chart.cpp:848 ********************Init()
19:23:32.308 MESSAGE s63chart.cpp:251 /home/pi/.var/app/org.opencpn.OpenCPN/bin/OCPNsenc -n -i "/home/pi/.var/app/org.opencpn.OpenCPN/config/opencpn/s63/s63SENC/NZ405324.es57" -o "/tmp/QxTNKK" ...
19:23:32.377 MESSAGE s63chart.cpp:251 /home/pi/.var/app/org.opencpn.OpenCPN/bin/OCPNsenc -c -i "/home/pi/Charts/ENC_ROOT/NZ/NZ405324/5/0/NZ405324.000" -o "/home/pi/.var/app/org.opencpn.OpenCPN ...
19:23:35.238 MESSAGE s63chart.cpp:251 /home/pi/.var/app/org.opencpn.OpenCPN/bin/OCPNsenc -n -i "/home/pi/.var/app/org.opencpn.OpenCPN/config/opencpn/s63/s63SENC/NZ405324.es57" -o "/tmp/8r8HHG" -u ...

this shows that the *.es57 files in s63SENC are used so I'm thinking that after preparing the s63 files in Chart Files and restarting opencpn this updated something for the new group and it started working.

I'm going to move on from the groups for now and look at the performance.

thanks.
Jeremy