Opencpn Dashboard issuses

[osprey_II]

Just decided to give opencpn 4.8 a try and I have a couple of questions or issues related to the dashboard plugin. First a minor issue of not being able to change the color of the fonts for the various items data, labels etc. The second issue it that the compass display (true or gps) loses its labels (degrees, direction labels etc) almost immediately when I run the software. They are there for a second or two then disappear. I have installed on vista and XP laptops. Anyone experience anything like that?

[rgleason]

That is strange. Are you using opengl under display or not?
Have you tried reinstallation?

You could also try tactics_pi plugin which is separate but based on dashboard and has other good sailing features.

[rgleason]

Others will have some ideas about this I believe

[osprey_II]

I installed on different computers, same on both. I checked the opengl option as well. I am attaching a screen shot of dashboard issue I have.

[CarCode]

As you might see yourself in your screenshot you have no GPS data available. So Dashboard also cannot show anything. Fix your GPS connection first.

Gerhard

[osprey_II]

The GPS connection makes no difference. I still cannot get compass roses to display only for a second or two when I run the program, they then blank out. I reinstalled the program on 4 different computers running vista, XP, and two newer computers running Win-7. Attached is another screen shot showing the compass rose on the wind gauge and a good GPS signal but blank gauges for the GPS and true compass. Is there a setting in the GPS connection that needs to be set? I thought the compass roses were just labels that should not depend on a GPS signal. Any help would be appreciated.

[bcn]

A longer part of the NMEA debug window or better some log from the VDR plug-in?

[transmitterdan]

If the NMEA messages containing GPS data do not arrive often enough then the dashboard GPS compass and true compass will time out and go blank for lack of data. It is almost certainly the cause of the issue you experienced. The GPS data coming in via NMEA needs to be regular enough to keep updating the data stream. The COG from the GPS data is needed to update the GPS compass in the dashboard. So the best guess is that something is interfering with the flow of NMEA data into the computer.

[CarCode]

Originally Posted by transmitterdan

If the NMEA messages containing GPS data do not arrive often enough then the dashboard GPS compass and true compass will time out and go blank for lack of data. It is almost certainly the cause of the issue you experienced. The GPS data coming in via NMEA needs to be regular enough to keep updating the data stream. The COG from the GPS data is needed to update the GPS compass in the dashboard. So the best guess is that something is interfering with the flow of NMEA data into the computer.

That is not correct!
There is a GPS watchdog timeout of 6 seconds and if that occurs a line in the log file is written:

16:32:40 CET: GPS Watchdog Timeout is: 6 sec.
16:32:44 CET:    ***GPS Watchdog timeout at Lat:35.7802   Lon: 10.8322

Gerhard

[nohal]

Originally Posted by CarCode

That is not correct!
There is a GPS watchdog timeout of 6 seconds and if that occurs a line in the log file is written:

16:32:40 CET: GPS Watchdog Timeout is: 6 sec.
16:32:44 CET:    ***GPS Watchdog timeout at Lat:35.7802   Lon: 10.8322

Gerhard

Gerhard...

What exactly does this message form the OpenCPN core have to do with the dashboard plugin, please?

Thank you very much in advance

Pavel

[nohal]

Originally Posted by osprey_II

The GPS connection makes no difference. I still cannot get compass roses to display only for a second or two when I run the program, they then blank out. I reinstalled the program on 4 different computers running vista, XP, and two newer computers running Win-7. Attached is another screen shot showing the compass rose on the wind gauge and a good GPS signal but blank gauges for the GPS and true compass. Is there a setting in the GPS connection that needs to be set? I thought the compass roses were just labels that should not depend on a GPS signal. Any help would be appreciated.

osprey_II...

The screenshot you posted is very hard to read, but it does not seem you have data available for most of the configured instruments - There is no compass data and no wind data at all. The RMC sentence states your speed is 0.0 and is missing COG.
From what I can see you only have position and sat constellation data and all of it is displayed correctly.

Pavel

[CarCode]

Originally Posted by nohal

Gerhard...

What exactly does this message form the OpenCPN core have to do with the dashboard plugin, please?

Thank you very much in advance

Pavel

I can't remember having you asked something.

Gerhard

[osprey_II]

I will have to look at the gps data feed in more detail, its giving very fast updated less than 1 second. I am not excluding or filtering any sentences and the gps works with NOBELTEC. I do not have wind data however and I am sitting home with a puck Holux GPS.

I thought the SOG and COG were computed from the GPS position data. I have no external speed/dir/depth/wind data connected. The fact that I am stationary I still should see noisy COG data, that is correct. But I am not seeing any changes at all in COG or SOG which I agree is suspect.

[osprey_II]

Maybe I need to be moving for it to work. I just checked in NOBELTEC and SOG and COG is also exactly 0.0. And NOBELTEC works on the boat I was on with the same GPS connected.

[Moo]

Originally Posted by osprey_II

Maybe I need to be moving for it to work. I just checked in NOBELTEC and SOG and COG is also exactly 0.0. And NOBELTEC works on the boat I was on with the same GPS connected.

most if not all GPS need to be moving at some speed (sometimes configurable) before they will give a SOG and COG. Otherwise you just get noise based on positional errors.