OpenCPN SIMRAD/LOWRANCE Radar Overlay PlugIn

[Vesta]

[ve7mdl]

Merrimac,

Thanks, I look forward to seeing the result. Alas, I am not a programmer anymore, but perhaps I can do some of the testing?

I did receive my Digital Yachts fluxgate compass today and hooked it up. The radar now works on my Windows machine. The next step is to move it to the Linux machine in the wheelhouse. I am waiting for a dry day - in Vancouver....

Cheers, ....Erik.

[rgleason]

There are three repositories for BR24 Radar.
Douwe - has MPR85 from Hakansv
Nohal - update swedish translation
Canboat - has MPR50 from Douwe

Is Pavel's repository the one that should be used?

[merrimac]

Originally Posted by rgleason

There are three repositories for BR24 Radar.
Douwe - has MPR85 from Hakansv
Nohal - update swedish translation
Canboat - has MPR50 from Douwe

Is Pavel's repository the one that should be used?

What do you mean with "3 repositories"? Github? There are 10 forks from canboat repository. nohal (Pavel) is 258 commits behind canboat. canboat has Douwe's mpr#90, not #50.

Official builds are made from canboat/BR24radar_pi. The latest production release is 1.3, available in binary and source form. It works fine with OpenCPN 4.2.0 as the binaries were built with wxWidgets 3.0.

Douwe and Hakan both have slight improvements that fix some minor bugs, they released these as 1.301/1.302. However, this work suffers from some bit rot in that it doesn't merge back to canboat/BR24radar_pi/master easily.

If you want to play around, I recommend you try the 'radarwindow' branch. It is cutting edge stuff but since last weekend it is getting quite usable.

The 'radarwindow' branch will soon become 2.0 beta. It is an almost full rewrite with a completely revised class structure that is much more maintainable and does away with a large number of kludges, warts and other nasty stuff in the code. This was necessary as the biggest changes are in the UI. We now draw up to three radar pictures: one each in separate windows for each 4G radar, and one overlay over the chart.

The separate radar windows can be switched on and off, as can the overlay. So whatever you prefer. The radar windows can be 'docked' on the side of the chart display or shown floating over the chart.

The radar control dialog hides automatically if not used.

Furthermore, you can now choose OpenGL calls between Sean's "Shader" code and the existing "Vertex" code. On old hardware the Vertex code may be better. On new hardware, especially ones with good GPU but slow CPU, the shader code is better. The shader code also produces a nicer 'softer' display. Douwe is still working on optimizing the Vertex code.

[rgleason]

Merrimac thanks for the summary. It's very helpful. I did not realize the scope of the effort. Sorry about my terminology.

[ve7mdl]

Hi Merrimac,

So what do I set the repository to for Ubuntu (15.10) binary install? The nohal/opencpn repository does not work.

Cheers, ....Erik.
Home

[merrimac]

Hi Erik,

The PPA is behind -- it doesn't have 4.2.0 compatible versions yet and it also has 1.2 as the latest release. I will contact Pavel to check what's up.

It also turns out that something has changed in how OpenCPN is built between the 1.3 binary release and the O 4.2 release, so the Linux binaries on my download page don't work either. I will re-release these soon.

[rgleason]

Any thoughts on this Ultimate Sensor Fusion Solution for a heading sensor?

https://www.tindie.com/products/oneh...eid=f9dd1eeba1

[merrimac]

I just heard from Pavel, he's been traveling for the last two months and will get back to OpenCPN soon. He'll update the PPA and make the plugin available (and move O 4.2 to the production PPA.)

[rgleason]

Question:
Is this able to output Nmea 0183 data, Nmea sentences for heading etc?
Interested in it for a boat heading sensor. [Sent from Ultimate Sensor Fusion Solution page]

Onehorse responded:

NMEA is a standard GPS output. This device is an absolute orientation sensor that outputs scaled accelerations, rotation rates, and magnetic fields as well as quaternions, from which Yaw (heading), Pitch, and Roll can be derived.
See: https://github.com/kriswiner/EM7180_SENtral_sensor_hub/wiki/E.-Typical-Resul ts-Using-the-SENtral
Kris Pesky Products
To respond, reply to this email or visit http://discuss.tindie.com/t/em7180-invensense-inc-9-axis-gyro-accel-magn-mpu-9250/7907/2 in your browser.

https://github.com/kriswiner/EM7180_SENtral_sensor_hub

[merrimac]

Originally Posted by ve7mdl

Hi Merrimac,

So what do I set the repository to for Ubuntu (15.10) binary install? The nohal/opencpn repository does not work.

Cheers, ....Erik.
Home

I've installed a new Ubuntu 15.10 amd64 VM and re-built the 1.3 plugin. This fixes the crashes seen when installing the plugin built with the 12.04 release. The issue is that O4.2 for 15.10 is compiled with GCC 5, which implements CXX11 and thus has a different ABI.

You can thus download a 15.10 amd64 image from https://github.com/OpenCPN-Navico-Ra...d64%7Ewily.deb
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[ve7mdl]

Hi Merrimac,

I downloaded the PI last night and tried to install it today. It is the same that was posted a couple of weeks ago and it crashes O4.2.0. The log says it uses API version 110 while the built-in PIs use API 106.

Perhaps I picked up the wrong build of O4.2.0 ???

Cheers, ....Erik.
Home

[merrimac]

Erik,

Make sure you use the O4.2 from ppa:nohal/opencpn.

Are you SURE you used the ~wily.deb? It is NOT the same as the old one. It should be 210304 bytes long.

Try shasum on the plugin .deb, the output should be:

shasum br24radar_pi-1.3-1_amd64~wily.deb
389f65bb66049c72832eeb0963df3ed0b464d183 br24radar_pi-1.3-1_amd64~wily.deb

The API difference is irrelevant.

[ve7mdl]

Hi Merrimac,

The name and the size match. I'll have to check the checksum tomorrow, but it installs OK. It just does not work with O4.2.0. I did get OpenCPN from the nohal/opencpn and it works fine (although none of the plugins on the repository worked as of a few days ago).

I hesitate to set up a development environment here because of the cost to download source files (I'm on wireless Internet - we live aboard) and I also prefer to keep my navigation computer off the net and as clean as possible. I'll have to wait for all the plugin binaries to get posted. No rush.

Cheers, ....Erik.
Home

[Douwe Fokkema]

Originally Posted by merrimac

V1.3 has just been released. It is compiled using wxWidgets 3.0.2 so it is compatible with 4.1.x on Windows and Linux, and with 4.1.x and 4.0.0 on Mac.

Many thanks to @douwefokkema and @Hakansv! In particular Douwe was the main driver this time, he implemented all new features!

• Improved performance (better OpenGL calls)
• Support for dual radar mode (4G only)
• Various improvements to dialogs and radar state
• Various fixes to guard zones
• Multi sweep filter added. This allows a more stable image by averaging over multiple radar scans
• New ''Advanced > Installation'' menu allows control of bearing alignment, antenna height, local interference rejection and side lob suppression
• Radar-only support without GPS or heading
• Hot switching between radar chart overlay and radar only display
• Radar controls (such as gain, sea state, etc.) now reflect actual radar settings instead of desired value from plugin. This allows cooperation between multiple OpenCPN installs and/or one or more chart plotters

We hope you enjoy this release.

The binaries can be downloaded from our own site at opencpn-navico-radar-plugin.github.io

This release was last autumn.
But when you look at the OCPN site for plugins PlugIns for OpenCPN 4.2 | Official OpenCPN Homepage you will only find a link to rel br24radar_pi release 1.2. And behind the link it is 1.2 indeed. The link to the sources points to canboat/master which does not contain the sources of 1.3 but an intermediate experimental version.


Then there is the following statement:

Originally Posted by merrimac

What do you mean with "3 repositories"?

Douwe and Hakan both have slight improvements that fix some minor bugs, they released these as 1.301/1.302. However, this work suffers from some bit rot in that it doesn't merge back to canboat/BR24radar_pi/master easily.

The above is wrong, the reason that this does not merge is that canboat/master is messed up and does not have 1.3, version 1.302 is perfectly all right.


Then there are questions about radar without a heading. Kees (Merrimac) answers:

Originally Posted by merrimac

Radar overlay without a compass heading is never going to work reliably IMO. . There is a "radar only" mode in v1.3 but it is a kludge -- it basically just paints black over the chart display. You can enable that in Options > Plugins > BR24radar_pi > Preferences.

Yes, it paints black the chart as without heading you can not do an overlay. Doing it this way is easy and you have the bearing and distance functions of OCPN still available, so no need for a VRM and EBL. And it is not accessed in a difficult way through preferences, but with a single click on the menu you toggle radar-only on and of. Now you will still have a radar when your GPS fails! But don't use AIS in this mode, the AIS targets are not head-up oriented, thus useless.


In a recent post rgleason asked: where to find 1.3
Kees (Merrimac) gave a long and complicated answer that did not answer the question but was merely promoting his new unfinished radarwindow version. Why not just give the link?


So what's wrong with 1.3. Why not publish the links and binaries so that all can use it?


The updated 1.3 (1.302, there was a bug in 1.3) is the best version we ever had. It has lots of new functionality. It is the first release that is stable, all earlier versions would crash sooner or later. This one just runs day after day. I feel that the only thing that is wrong with 1.3 is that it is too good. Merrimac are you afraid that no one will use it? Don't worry, I will stop the maintenance as soon as there is a better version.


BR24radar_pi version 1.302 can be found at:
https://github.com/Hakansv/BR24radar_pi/tree/Ver1.302
and
https://github.com/douwefokkema/BR24...tree/update1.3


A binary version for windows, compiled for OCPN 4.2 is attached. Remove the .pdf extension and put it in the plugins directory of your OCPN installation.