OpenCPN Runs on Embedded ARM

[seandepagnier]

I think it would be better to share without any charts, then have a separate torrent or image which contains the charts if needed, because most people already have them, and some people don't need charts in the US

[akopac]

JM, I had the same problem. Freddy and I tried Aruntu on his system and it worked with my Cubieboard2. Went home with a HDMI to DVI adapter and even direct on my tv through HDMI it wouldn't work. I tried through VNC to change the resolution . No settings worked. Not sure what the problem was. I'm getting a Banana Pro to try it out. Lubuntu with acceleration should be near plug and play hopefully.

[akopac]

Some thoughts on the Banana Pro Board

There were a couple of features that inspired me to try the Banana Pro.
1. Almost same GPIO 40 pinout and form factor as Raspberry Pi B+and A+ with direct compatibility with all the original RPI GPIO. There are a lot of interesting boards that may facilitate interfacing to autopilots and other onboard equipment from the RPI ecosystem. There is a TNC controller (X-TNC) for HF digital mode as well.
2. I think the Cubietruck gave up some LVDS/LCD compatibility but gained Wifi and Bluetooth ability from the Cubieboard 2 evolution. The Banana Pro has both.
3. The Banana Pro has a standard Micro USB connector for power.
4. There is is a ton of OS's and Apps that work (or have been ported) for the RPI and also work on the Banana Pi Pro. Nice to move away from the A6 processor of the RPI, but also nice to still have it's hardware and software compatibility.

The nice thing about the Cubietruck is with 2 gig of ram compiling is much faster for development, but previously somebody mentioned 2 gig is not necessary to run Opencpn. Banana Pro is $50 on Amazon. I'm not trying to sell anybody on the Banana Pro, just giving my thoughts...

[sbfreddie]

Originally Posted by NahanniV

I tried Aruntu, but was unable to enable the VGA port. I was able to run it and see it with VNC but it did not work with VGA or with my DVI to HDMI adapter.

Did you include all the plugins ?

For a file that big, I would again suggest starting a torrent to share the bandwidth burden.

Cheers,
JM.

JM:
When you tried to use VGA did you go into the uEnv.ct file and change the settings to redirect the video to the VGA port instead of the HDMI Port? If you don't set the the options it will not put out anything on the VGA port. Its basically a choice between VGA or HDMI but not both. I also have had problems with adapters in general, you have to be careful because some of them just don't work.

I did built most of the plugins (building the plugins is part of my build script). Here is a list:
aisdecoder (requirement for rtlsdr.pi)
celestial_navigation_pi
climatology_pi
gradar_pi
objsearch_pi
rtl-sdr (requirement for rtlsdr.pi)
rtlsdr_pi
squiddio_pi
statusbar_pi
trimplot_pi
vdr_pi
watchdog_pi
weather_routing_pi
weatherfax_pi
wmm.pi

Thanks,
Freddie

[sbfreddie]

Originally Posted by boat_alexandra

I think it would be better to share without any charts, then have a separate torrent or image which contains the charts if needed, because most people already have them, and some people don't need charts in the US

Sean:
Yes, I agree, and the first image I built did not have any charts. However someone asked about including charts with the cache built (which takes about 18 hours on my CubieTruck) so I made that image which is twice the size.
I don't think there are very many CubieTruck or Cubie2 owners out there so this may be a waste of time on my part.
However I still find that the CubieTruck is the best choice out there considering the very small power requirement and the all the features it has.
I now have a Bananapi Pro and I am not particularly impressed with the two images I have tried. You cannot watch a movie or listen to music, and OpenGL-ES2 does not work properly on the Lubuntu (Ubuntu 14.04) image. I now trying out the Rasbian image, however this image cannot play movies or music right out of the box. I am still fiddling with the OpenCPN building and operation. I let you know how it goes.

Thanks,
Freddie

[NahanniV]

Originally Posted by sbfreddie

JM:
When you tried to use VGA did you go into the uEnv.ct file and change the settings to redirect the video to the VGA port instead of the HDMI Port? If you don't set the the options it will not put out anything on the VGA port. Its basically a choice between VGA or HDMI but not both. I also have had problems with adapters in general, you have to be careful because some of them just don't work.

I did built most of the plugins (building the plugins is part of my build script). Here is a list:
aisdecoder (requirement for rtlsdr.pi)
celestial_navigation_pi
climatology_pi
gradar_pi
objsearch_pi
rtl-sdr (requirement for rtlsdr.pi)
rtlsdr_pi
squiddio_pi
statusbar_pi
trimplot_pi
vdr_pi
watchdog_pi
weather_routing_pi
weatherfax_pi
wmm.pi

Thanks,
Freddie

Hi,

Yes, I did try to edit the Uenv file, but got into a state where I had no display at all. I will have to give it a try again with a new image.

I have seen a distribution that was setup to clone the hdmi and vga outputs, so I think it can be done. I think that would require modifying and compiling the fex file.

I will eventually just buy an HDMI monitor.

I was the one who asked if charts were included, but perhaps that makes the filesize too big. If Sean changes the compressed files so that the originals are no longer required it would be much better.

I also use the Navico RADAR plugin.

Is it not possible to include the repositories for Opencpn and Plugins now that they are available ? Wouldn't that make it easier to update ?

It would be interesting to see how many people would download your image.

Cheers,
JM.

[sbfreddie]

Originally Posted by NahanniV

Hi,

Yes, I did try to edit the Uenv file, but got into a state where I had no display at all. I will have to give it a try again with a new image.

I have seen a distribution that was setup to clone the hdmi and vga outputs, so I think it can be done. I think that would require modifying and compiling the fex file.

I will eventually just buy an HDMI monitor.

I was the one who asked if charts were included, but perhaps that makes the filesize too big. If Sean changes the compressed files so that the originals are no longer required it would be much better.

I also use the Navico RADAR plugin.

Is it not possible to include the repositories for Opencpn and Plugins now that they are available ? Wouldn't that make it easier to update ?

It would be interesting to see how many people would download your image.

Cheers,
JM.

JM:
I use an old flat 21" screen TV I already had, it has 3 HDMI inputs which is pretty typical. I know that the VGA can be made to work because I have seen people using them on the Cubie Forums. Perhaps if you look on the Aruntu thread on the CubieForums or go to the Aruntu Website: aRUNTU | Ubuntu modding for ARMHF devices.

The different file sizes are: Aruntu with no maps = 3.6G, Aruntu with RNC maps and cache built = 6.73G
Quite a difference in sizes.

I don't think the repositories that they are using would allow images that size, but you would have to ask somebody else, perhaps Nohal would know.

I have a torrent created, am just waiting for someone to be interested to post it.

Thanks,
Freddie

[verkerkbr]

Originally Posted by sbfreddie

Sean:
Yes, I agree, and the first image I built did not have any charts. However someone asked about including charts with the cache built (which takes about 18 hours on my CubieTruck) so I made that image which is twice the size.
I don't think there are very many CubieTruck or Cubie2 owners out there so this may be a waste of time on my part.
However I still find that the CubieTruck is the best choice out there considering the very small power requirement and the all the features it has.
I now have a Bananapi Pro and I am not particularly impressed with the two images I have tried. You cannot watch a movie or listen to music, and OpenGL-ES2 does not work properly on the Lubuntu (Ubuntu 14.04) image. I now trying out the Rasbian image, however this image cannot play movies or music right out of the box. I am still fiddling with the OpenCPN building and operation. I let you know how it goes.

Thanks,
Freddie

This tread is about OpenCPN on a small "nano" system. However I tried to play a BBC HD recorded file on the Banana and this worked, although rather slowly. But normal video content certainly works. But who likes to run video on his navigation system ? From a SD Card ? Image does not fit on my monitor. But it is not a HD monitor.

Not yet tried the audio.

[sbfreddie]

Originally Posted by verkerkbr

This tread is about OpenCPN on a small "nano" system. However I tried to play a BBC HD recorded file on the Banana and this worked, although rather slowly. But normal video content certainly works. But who likes to run video on his navigation system ? From a SD Card ? Image does not fit on my monitor. But it is not a HD monitor.

Not yet tried the audio.

Verkerkbr:
I disagree with your statement about this thread, it is entitled "OpenCPN Runs on Embedded ARM" which to me implies any embedded ARM board.
I tried to play a 1080p video under Lubuntu it plays at about 2-3 FPS with both CPU's at 100%, and on Rasbian it just won't play at all (this means the cedarX stuff has not been installed). This indicates that the necessary work has not been done by the folks at Bananapi before they released their software images.

I built and installed OpenCPN on my Bananapi Pro running Rasbian and when I run it, it seems to work, but under closer inspection OpenGL-ES2 has not been installed because the OpenCPN.log states very plainly that it is using the Software Rasterizer.
So I tried to build glshim and the build fails with an error, so all I can figure is that the image has not had OpenGL-ES2 built properly. I understand that the Kernel has the Mali stuff built into it but that is not enough, if you have any interest in further information on this process please consult the linux-sunxi website, because they have several web pages devoted to this process.

As far as I'm concerned the Bananapi Software systems images are about in the same state as the Cubie was about a year ago.

I have talked to at least two people on this forum about Videos and Audio on their navigation systems and they seem to think that most small boat owners don't have the electrical power available on their boats to power more than one computer 24 hours a day never mind multiple computers with different purposes. Some of them don't even have enough power to run a laptop 24 hrs a day.

This is why I think the CubieTruck is such a great fit as it only uses about 5W maximum when its running
and averages about 2-3 W most of the time.

Anyway I am glad you are happy with your Bananapi, but I think it has a long way to go to catch up to the versatility of the CubieTruck running Aruntu (Ubuntu 13.10)

Thanks,
Freddie

[seandepagnier]

Originally Posted by sbfreddie

Verkerkbr:
So I tried to build glshim and the build fails with an error, so all I can figure is that the image has not had OpenGL-ES2 built properly. I understand that the Kernel has the Mali stuff built into it but that is not enough, if you have any interest in further information on this process please consult the linux-sunxi website, because they have several web pages devoted to this process.

Maybe you need to install the linux-sunxi dev packages?

What error do you have?

I have talked to at least two people on this forum about Videos and Audio on their navigation systems and they seem to think that most small boat owners don't have the electrical power available on their boats to power more than one computer 24 hours a day never mind multiple computers with different purposes. Some of them don't even have enough power to run a laptop 24 hrs a day.

I put my chromebook (which uses 8-22 watts) to sleep when I'm not using it.
I can run it 24 hours a day if needed, but the batteries will be at a lower state of charge. A second computer would become a problem if I need to run my fan or rice cooker etc..

This is why I think the CubieTruck is such a great fit as it only uses about 5W maximum when its running
and averages about 2-3 W most of the time.

Yes, the cubie truck uses about 1/3rd the power, and has about 40% the processing power of the chromebook which has dual core haswell cpu.

[verkerkbr]

Originally Posted by sbfreddie

Verkerkbr:
I disagree with your statement about this thread, it is entitled "OpenCPN Runs on Embedded ARM" which to me implies any embedded ARM board.
I tried to play a 1080p video under Lubuntu it plays at about 2-3 FPS with both CPU's at 100%, and on Rasbian it just won't play at all (this means the cedarX stuff has not been installed). This indicates that the necessary work has not been done by the folks at Bananapi before they released their software images.

I built and installed OpenCPN on my Bananapi Pro running Rasbian and when I run it, it seems to work, but under closer inspection OpenGL-ES2 has not been installed because the OpenCPN.log states very plainly that it is using the Software Rasterizer.
So I tried to build glshim and the build fails with an error, so all I can figure is that the image has not had OpenGL-ES2 built properly. I understand that the Kernel has the Mali stuff built into it but that is not enough, if you have any interest in further information on this process please consult the linux-sunxi website, because they have several web pages devoted to this process.

As far as I'm concerned the Bananapi Software systems images are about in the same state as the Cubie was about a year ago.

I have talked to at least two people on this forum about Videos and Audio on their navigation systems and they seem to think that most small boat owners don't have the electrical power available on their boats to power more than one computer 24 hours a day never mind multiple computers with different purposes. Some of them don't even have enough power to run a laptop 24 hrs a day.

This is why I think the CubieTruck is such a great fit as it only uses about 5W maximum when its running
and averages about 2-3 W most of the time.

Anyway I am glad you are happy with your Bananapi, but I think it has a long way to go to catch up to the versatility of the CubieTruck running Aruntu (Ubuntu 13.10)

Thanks,
Freddie

Good Morgen Freddy,

just tried the sound on the Banana. It also works, but is default directed at the HDMI instead of the headphone connector.

This is the GL section of my OpenCpn log:

10:38:00 CET: Opencpn language reload for: nl_NL
10:38:00 CET: Loading catalog for: opencpn-dashboard_pi
10:38:00 CET: Loading catalog for opencpn core.
10:38:01 CET: OpenGL-> Renderer String: Software Rasterizer
10:38:01 CET: OpenGL-> Version reported: 2.1 Mesa 10.1.3
10:38:01 CET: OpenGL-> Texture rectangle format: de1
10:38:01 CET: OpenGL-> Using Vertexbuffer Objects
10:38:01 CET: OpenGL-> Using Framebuffer Objects
10:38:01 CET: OpenGL-> Using FBO Stencil buffer
10:38:01 CET: OpenGL-> Using Stencil buffer clipping
10:38:01 CET: OpenGL-> Using Scissor Clipping
10:38:01 CET: OpenGL-> Not Using compression
10:38:01 CET: OpenGL-> Minimum cartographic line width: 1.0
10:38:01 CET: OpenGL-> Minimum symbol line width: 1.0
10:38:02 CET: ChartDB Cache policy: Application target is 432 MBytes
10:38:02 CET: Loading chart db version: V018

I understood that the Cubie has about the same hardware specs then the Banana things. Although the Cubie has more memory inside.

The difference is that the Banana's run OpenCPN with Lubuntu "out of the box".

I have also tried to run OpenCPN on the interesting Adaptec Parrallela board. But this board had problems with the changing of the fonts. And also needs a fan to cool the processor.

I will follow your efforts to get the Cubie running OpenCPN.

Regards,


Bram

[NahanniV]

Originally Posted by verkerkbr

Good Morgen Freddy,

just tried the sound on the Banana. It also works, but is default directed at the HDMI instead of the headphone connector.

This is the GL section of my OpenCpn log:

10:38:00 CET: Opencpn language reload for: nl_NL
10:38:00 CET: Loading catalog for: opencpn-dashboard_pi
10:38:00 CET: Loading catalog for opencpn core.
10:38:01 CET: OpenGL-> Renderer String: Software Rasterizer
10:38:01 CET: OpenGL-> Version reported: 2.1 Mesa 10.1.3
10:38:01 CET: OpenGL-> Texture rectangle format: de1
10:38:01 CET: OpenGL-> Using Vertexbuffer Objects
10:38:01 CET: OpenGL-> Using Framebuffer Objects
10:38:01 CET: OpenGL-> Using FBO Stencil buffer
10:38:01 CET: OpenGL-> Using Stencil buffer clipping
10:38:01 CET: OpenGL-> Using Scissor Clipping
10:38:01 CET: OpenGL-> Not Using compression
10:38:01 CET: OpenGL-> Minimum cartographic line width: 1.0
10:38:01 CET: OpenGL-> Minimum symbol line width: 1.0
10:38:02 CET: ChartDB Cache policy: Application target is 432 MBytes
10:38:02 CET: Loading chart db version: V018

I understood that the Cubie has about the same hardware specs then the Banana things. Although the Cubie has more memory inside.

The difference is that the Banana's run OpenCPN with Lubuntu "out of the box".

I have also tried to run OpenCPN on the interesting Adaptec Parrallela board. But this board had problems with the changing of the fonts. And also needs a fan to cool the processor.

I will follow your efforts to get the Cubie running OpenCPN.

Regards,


Bram

Hi,

You are not getting much if any performance improvement by running OpenGL at the moment; On your system the OpenGL functions are being done in software instead of being handled by the video hardware. You could try following the instructions in the developers Wiki to build and install Seans GLshim. If you got that working, the performance improvement would be similar to what you experienced moving from the RPi to the BananaPi.

But performance is subjective, so if you are coming from the RPi to the BanaPi life is good even without hardware acceleration.

The hardware of the BananaPi and the CubieTruck are very similar so the performance should be equal. OpenCpn will run "out of the Box" on some OS images for CubieTruck, but what we are struggling with is squeezing the last bit of performance out of it.

Cheers,
JM.

[verkerkbr]

OK, if a better performence is possible I certainly like to try it. But the present performence is good enough for using OpenCPN. And there is clearly a difference between switching GL on or off in the OpenCpn settings.

The alarm bells of OpenCPN are now ringing and at the moment the music of Swiss Jazz is playing very clear via my speakerset. There is no issue with the sound on the Banana board. You only have to redirect the sound to the headphone socket instead of HDMI.

As stated before, Firefox, Chromium, Samba are running very well, Citrix client works, email. Also the Brother network Printer works. How about printing the ENC charts on a A3 colour printer ? Then you have a paper version and a digital one.

Regards,


Bram

[NahanniV]

Originally Posted by verkerkbr

OK, if a better performence is possible I certainly like to try it. But the present performence is good enough for using OpenCPN. And there is clearly a difference between switching GL on or off in the OpenCpn settings.

The alarm bells of OpenCPN are now ringing and at the moment the music of Swiss Jazz is playing very clear via my speakerset. There is no issue with the sound on the Banana board. You only have to redirect the sound to the headphone socket instead of HDMI.

As stated before, Firefox, Chromium, Samba are running very well, Citrix client works, email. Also the Brother network Printer works. How about printing the ENC charts on a A3 colour printer ? Then you have a paper version and a digital one.

Regards,


Bram

I should have mentioned that the biggest performance improvement is with raster charts.

If you want to try, here are some instructions that I recently updated for the CubieTruck:

http://opencpn.org/ocpn/node/322

The only thing I would add to those instructions is to make a backup copy of anything you will be overwriting, so you can go back to your working system if the new version fails.

You already have a working image and you may already have Glxgears on your system, if so skip to the Glshim part. You should see the frame rate reported by Glxgears increase after installing the Glshim library (frame rate may be capped to your monitors refresh rate).

I think you may be able to use your existing installation of OpenCPN. After installing the Glshim library you should see "Mali400" in the log for OpenGL-> Renderer String:

For the best performance with raster charts set texture compression cahcing and rebuild the cache in opencpn->settings->display->advanced->graphics->Options

Good Luck, and let us know how it goes.

JM.

[sbfreddie]

Originally Posted by boat_alexandra

Maybe you need to install the linux-sunxi dev packages?

What error do you have?

Sean:
Here is the output from my build script:

Now lets download glshim from Seans Github account.....
Now lets do cmake of glshim.....
-- The C compiler identification is GNU 4.8.2
-- The CXX compiler identification is GNU 4.8.2
-- Check for working C compiler: /usr/bin/cc
-- Check for working C compiler: /usr/bin/cc -- works
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info - done
-- Check for working CXX compiler: /usr/bin/c++
-- Check for working CXX compiler: /usr/bin/c++ -- works
-- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info
-- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info - done
-- Configuring done
-- Generating done
-- Build files have been written to: /home/bananapi/glshim/build
Now lets build glshim.....
Scanning dependencies of target GL
[  5%] [ 11%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/GL.dir/gl/light.c.o
Building C object src/CMakeFiles/GL.dir/gl/eval.c.o
[ 16%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/GL.dir/gl/array.c.o
[ 22%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/GL.dir/gl/wrap/glstub.c.o
[ 27%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/GL.dir/gl/wrap/gles2.c.o
[ 33%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/GL.dir/gl/wrap/gl.c.o
[ 38%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/GL.dir/gl/wrap/gles.c.o
[ 44%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/GL.dir/gl/texgen.c.o
[ 50%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/GL.dir/gl/raster.c.o
[ 55%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/GL.dir/gl/list.c.o
[ 61%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/GL.dir/gl/gl.c.o
[ 66%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/GL.dir/gl/pixel.c.o
[ 72%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/GL.dir/gl/stack.c.o
[ 77%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/GL.dir/gl/math/eval.c.o
[ 83%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/GL.dir/gl/line.c.o
[ 88%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/GL.dir/gl/texture.c.o
[ 94%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/GL.dir/glx/glx.c.o
/home/bananapi/glshim/src/glx/glx.c: In function ‘xrefresh’:
/home/bananapi/glshim/src/glx/glx.c:158:11: warning: ignoring return value of ‘system’, declared with attribute warn_unused_result [-Wunused-result]
     system("xrefresh");
           ^
[100%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/GL.dir/glx/lookup.c.o
Linking C shared library ../lib/libGL.so.1
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lEGL
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
make[3]: *** [lib/libGL.so.1] Error 1
make[2]: *** [src/CMakeFiles/GL.dir/all] Error 2
make[1]: *** [src/CMakeFiles/GL.dir/rule] Error 2
make: *** [GL] Error 2
Building of glshim failed.....
 more information on errors refer to the log file in the build directory.
bananapi@lemaker:~$

It appears that during the linking stage it cannot find libEGL on this image. I looked carefully and it is just not there.
It seems the created of this image did not build the user land files as discussed on the linux-sunxi web pages about installing the Mali libraries.
What do you think?

Thanks,
Freddie