OpenCPN track issues

[Fuga]

I am not sure the best way of getting this addressed.



I keep hoping for solution to the problem I have always had to be incorporated.



With 'track on', when OpenCPN picks up an erroneous position fix from the GPS, it will slavishly display the track, sometimes to 0 degress longtitude and latitude, and quite often a point either due north/south or east/west of the true position.



This leaves the track practically useless, and the screen cluttered with false track lines.



How this arises is anyone's guess - either an error by the GPS, or when converting from Seatalk to NMEA, perhaps. It may be a feature of my installation.



However it would be easily addressed if OpenCPN had a validation process to check that a reading is valid. By initially taking a number of positions, and checking that they are within a sensible range of each other, successive readings can be compared, and any rogue readings ignored. None of us have craft that operate at the speed of light!


My current version is 5.2.0 - and runs under Linux Mint.

[wholybee]

I have been meaning to report this also. It isn't technically OpenCPNs issue, but it should be able to deal with it.

When my Vesper AIS powers on, it reports the GPS position as 0N,0W until GPS fix is achieved. On a long passage I occasionally need to reset it, and OpenCPN moves my boat off the coast of Africa.

I only have the issue when the Vesper resets, and it is always to 0N,0W.

However, to the OP's issue. If you are getting lots of erroneous data from the GPS, you should look into that. What GPS do you have and how is it getting into OpenCPN? I just got a yacht devices wifi gateway. There seems to be a bug (with the wifi gateway not opencpn) when using UDP, and NMEA sentences are dropped, and the GPS fix is erratic. I don't have the problem using TCP.

[CSYChip]

The track can be manually edited by going into Properties but I usually export a gpx and edit it in a text editor. Delete the bad points and re-import the gpx and OpenCPN will fill in the heading, sog between points, etc.