Openplotter on Raspberry Pi3B+

[Przemko]

Hello, I want to build simple navigation system for my father. I install openploter on my Pi. I get charts from o-chart shop. I order cheap USB GPS reciver:

and cheap DVB-T-DAB-FM receiver like that one:


to recive AIS data. I will follow that tutorial:https://blog.videgro.net/2015/12/ras...-ais-receiver/

Please advise whether this set will work without internet on board and whether these two devices connected to the Raspberry Pi need an additional power HUB.

Regards Przemek

[pcmm]

The radio receiver will need additional power or powered USB hub. When I was playing with this on my 3B it kept shutting down the pi due to the power draw.

[Przemko]

Thanks for fast answer. Can You tell me if that GPS will work out of the box with openplotter or I will need to install drivers, because I read somewhere that it works out of the box with raspberry pi?

[petter5]

It works - I have tested this model. But it is more for a desktop sailor than a real sailor. Not easy to mount outside under open sky without exposing for the environment,,,

Originally Posted by Przemko

Thanks for fast answer. Can You tell me if that GPS will work out of the box with openplotter or I will need to install drivers, because I read somewhere that it works out of the box with raspberry pi?

[Przemko]

Originally Posted by petter5

It works - I have tested this model. But it is more for a desktop sailor than a real sailor. Not easy to mount outside under open sky without exposing for the environment,,,

Hmm, so it won't work in cabin connected directly to Raspberry Pi?

[petter5]

Mostly it will work, but it is not optimal.

Originally Posted by Przemko

Hmm, so it won't work in cabin connected directly to Raspberry Pi?

[mikedefieslife]

Most decent GPS devices and units should easily work indoors especially on a boat unless it's steel or aluminium. Right now inside my port hull my garmin handheld GPS is receiving data from 19 satellites. Similarly a super old BlueNext GPS I used in 2008 used to work just fine under the seat of my motorcycle and that was whilst travelling through hills, valleys, cities etc..

Don't worry too much if you don't have a direct line of sight to the sky. It does however help to get an initial fix. After that it should be fine.

[fxykty]

I’ve used the exact same USB GPS dongle plugged into my MacBook and sitting on my nav table in the main salon of our cat. Foam core fibreglass above and several slanting windows and hatches, but no direct sight of the sky above. Had enough GPS signal to keep OpenCPN happy.

Setting up a Pi 4 to be our boat computer now and GPS will come from the boat Seatalk network via a Yacht Devices gateway. But direct connection of the GPS dongle also works. You just need to set up the connection in OpenCPN.

[Reefmagnet]

Save some grief and get a daisyHAT or similar if the budget permits for AIS. Much easier to setup and more suitable to an actual working environment. GPS pucks work fine inside the cabin if the boat is fibreglass (you may need to experiment with placement of the puck). Another alternative to GPS is to provide it to the Pi via NMEA 0183 from another gps enabled device if you have one. In this latter case, an RS422 to USB adaptor is required, and these are quite cheap to purchase online.

[hreuver]

Originally Posted by Reefmagnet

Save some grief and get a daisyHAT or similar if the budget permits for AIS. Much easier to setup and more suitable to an actual working environment. GPS pucks work fine inside the cabin if the boat is fibreglass (you may need to experiment with placement of the puck). Another alternative to GPS is to provide it to the Pi via NMEA 0183 from another gps enabled device if you have one. In this latter case, an RS422 to USB adaptor is required, and these are quite cheap to purchase online.

If you don't use AIS or a connection to either NMEA0183 or NMEA2000 you don't have to worry about galvanic isolation.

I would prefer the solution without AIS and without connection to the board network to keep things simple. Therefore the USB-GPS offers a simple and cost-efficient solution.

The second hint would be the power supply: buy a version that supports 3A for when you upgrade from RPI3 / 1GB to RPI4 / 2GB.

If you buy a new RPI there is no reason to search for a RPI3B+. If you want powersaving, choose the RPI3, if you want performance choose the RPI4. Right now the RPI3B+ and the RPI4 cost about the same, therefore you'd only choose an RPI3B+ when it's available for zero cost.

[Przemko]

Thanks everyone for Your advice. I will check in home that set now because of that virus situation I cannot get to my father and check that on his boat. I have plenty of time to test it. Today I recive DVB-T dongle and will check how it works in home. My father will be very happy about gps and actual maps. If he like AIS data on that maps meybe he will buy daisy AIS reciver later.
I have already buy Rpi3B+ and openplotter with maps installed.
Can You tell me what other plugins I can enable on openplotter that will be useful for him and works offline?
Regards Przemko

[Przemko]

I try today to connect DVB-T reciver to Rpi but failed. On my ubuntu laptop it works fine but on Rpi when I start opencpn I see info that Opencpn need access to serial ports. There is no port in system. Install drivers for serial and connect to usb ports. I add user pi to dialout and tty group but that doesn't work. When I go to Serial app in openplotter I see in devices tab device ttyAMA0. Also I see thare's rtl_sdr file in /usr/bin/ folder so I'm thinking that do I need to clone it from github?

[hreuver]

In Inshore waters the Daisy AIS might be usefull. Offshore I'd prefer a transponder since it makes you visible for the bigger ships since many radar reflectors are known to perform under par.

As for usefull plugins:
The plugins I first check are opencpn-draw, objsearch and weatherrouting.

If your sailing area is the Baltic Sea you might want to test the standard included Grib plugin and WMM plugin first. Those are standard, but for the eastern part of the Baltic sea you will find some compass issues similar to what your paper map shows.

If you are using OpenPlotter you can also use the Grib plugin to make gribfiles from XyGrib visible in OpenCPN.

The weather-routing plugin is a nice gimmick and works in some situations.

The opencpn-draw modules allows you to mark interesting or dangerous (shallow) areas. It also allows you to mark areas on the map when you get a VHF message where you would marked the areas with pencil on a paper map. A very important tool to give some fresh information to the oher crew members when you are sailing in shifts.

The objsearch is a very efficient tool to find places where you know the name but not the exact location. Also when a VHF call mentions a certain area or bouy this plugin allows you to look it up efficiently.

For me WMM, Grib, Objsearch and OpenCPN-Draw are mandatory when installing OpenCPN.

[hreuver]

Originally Posted by Przemko

I try today to connect DVB-T reciver to Rpi but failed. On my ubuntu laptop it works fine but on Rpi when I start opencpn I see info that Opencpn need access to serial ports. There is no port in system. Install drivers for serial and connect to usb ports.

I add user pi to dialout and tty group but that doesn't work.

When I go to Serial app in openplotter I see in devices tab device ttyAMA0. Also I see thare's rtl_sdr file in /usr/bin/ folder so I'm thinking that do I need to clone it from github?

First and foremost you need to take one step at a time.
After adding the pi user to the groups dialout you need to login for those groups to become active. Most direct way is a reboot after changing the groups.

Then it works in most cases and you can stop reading the rest of this message.

The problem is the checking if the user rights for serial ports. The order of checking the serial ports are:

/dev/ttyS*
/dev/ttyUSB*
/dev/ttyA*

After checking all ports in this order with the first port not accessible you get this error message. I think this bug has been solved (only) recently.


If you don't use serial ports for stuff like a modem you could change the ownership of all serial devices to root.dialout.

Don't add normal users (like pi) to the tty group. You don't login as admin into windows for ordinary webbrowsing or do you?


If nothing works create a file in /etc/udev/rules.d named 66-usb-serial:

#
# Give world read/write access to ttyS* and ttyUSB* serial devices for users in the dialout group
# 
KERNEL=="tty[A-Z]*", GROUP="dialout", MODE="0660"

This is a workaround to get the group set to dialout for all serial ports. On most systems it does not break security.

You could also just ignore the message since it does not stop OpenCPN from working. But for your father that might not work (such a false error message is very annoying).

[Przemko]

Hi, @hreuver. Thank You very much for tips about plugins I will check them all and try.
Now I'm focused in DVB-T dongle and to make it work. I try many options and I have to go to raspi-config and enable serial port to get rid of that notification about "opencpn don't have access..." thaen I can add connections in opencpn gui in connections tab.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Kr9MkBpqkDZA9zXN6
But when I try to save I have that info:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/iftZJuNGnn5J3jb5A
so I delete Your 66-usb.serial file and add this one.
Then I reboot and everything looks OK but I have info when start system check about there's no connection with Signal K and ther's a conflict between serial connections.
I also go to terminal and start rtl_sdr test that is already installed with openplotter iinstallation. That is result so it looks OK.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/mYafNTotTygAb5TT8
Do I have to make something else? I live in central Poland and don't have any maps here so I will not see any ships but can I test that opencpn will work with that DVB-T reciver?
Regards Przemko