squiddio plugin

[seandepagnier]

I have been playing around with the squiddio plugin, compiled fine even cross compiled with no problem.

It seems to import waypoints for a given area, but I am unsure which area are defined. Perhaps it could optionally display these? Is this the best way to store these points of interest, as general waypoints? I accidentally moved some very easily. I also don't see how these can be easily updated with minimal bandwidth or how the data can be displayed in a table format with various fields.

I would really like to see sailing tracks in specific regions to identify passes, and routes in areas with poor chart detail.

This is a great start; I do not know the intention for future developments.


Sailing Destinations Plugin | Official OpenCPN Homepage
https://github.com/mauroc/squiddio_pi

[coupdemistral]

Boat_alexandra:

Thank you for taking the plugin on a "shakedown cruise". I guess "good start" pretty much sums it up regarding the state of the project. I appreciate yours and everyone else's feedback on where to take it next.

It seems to import waypoints for a given area, but I am unsure which area are defined.

Right now I am looking at sectors of 5x5 degrees (lat x lon). Why lat-lon and not , say, Country or region? Had to do with bandwidth. Some countries like the US and GR yield very large sets. Regions or states, as in California or the French Provence, may be too small. Why 5x5 and not 2x5 or 10x10? Totally arbitrary. It seemed like a good compromise in terms of size of the JSON response between more busy and more remote sailing grounds.

Perhaps it could optionally display these?

Do you mean display the sectors' perimeters on the map?

Is this the best way to store these points of interest, as general waypoints? I accidentally moved some very easily.

Waypoints seemed to be the obvious choice given what's available in the plugins API. Not sure if they are theoretically the best, but they seem to do the job. It doesn't look like the plugin API allows me to declare the waypoint as "unmovable", but I may be wrong. In any event, the WP will be at its original location once you reload OpenCPN (the source gpx doesn't get modified by incidental dragging of the WP)

I also don't see how these can be easily updated with minimal bandwidth ...

It looks like the JSON response to a download request averages about 20-30KBytes, plus of course all the http data in the response. Agree that bandwidth will be an issue, but 30K seemed reasonable. It was one of the reasons for keeping the sectors fairly small... Your thoughts?

...or how the data can be displayed in a table format with various fields

Good point. Have not thought about that. The easiest thing would be to make the data available as CSV download from the squiddio site (e.g. perhaps on this view next to the gpx download link). Making it available in the plugin would be a bit more work for me, but, hey, it's an opensource app! (Hint hint).

I would really like to see sailing tracks in specific regions to identify passes, and routes in areas with poor chart detail.

Agree. I thought about this being one of the natural new features. Since the whole idea behind sQuiddio is to create a user-sourced universal repository of sailing POIs, it makes sense that these tracks be submitted by users, so it's a question of coming up with the right UX.

This is a great start; I do not know the intention for future developments.

Thank you! I suppose "future developments" is what this thread is all about. Very open to ideas here.

Cheers!

[rgleason]

Have git and compiled and tried it on Windows with MSVC++ and the process was very straightforward. Then of course I had to try it! I think this could potentially be our Active Captain if we all contribute. Very intuitive app. Was wondering how to use it and right clicked after Options > Enable Squiddio and found that a right mouse click exposed the necessary commands. I really like the website <---> plugin linkage. Very nice. There are some other plugins being worked on with a similar kind of linkage for Kap.

What is behind the name?

Thank you.

[rgleason]

Is there an easy way to delete all the Squiddio waypoints? I had to delete in groups using the menu deletee button because the keyboard delete does not work. I would like a view that showed only squiddio waypoints, so that I could manually select all and delete. For example. Also would like to be able to easily turn off this clutter until I need it.

Very nice system, but I don't want it on all the time and I don't want it slowing down my navigation. I would use it for making reservations and planning, I believe.

[coupdemistral]

Thank you Rgleason. Glad you find it intuitive enough.

Agree there is lot of potential for growth behind the plugin<->Web site combination. I am working at a couple of new features which I will share with this forum as soon as they gel a bit more. Boat_alexandra already mentioned the notion of routes to be shared among users...keep them coming!

I will also soon publish a high-level doc on what can be exchanged between the plugins and the web site through a RESTful API (e.g. getting destinations by geography, friends' positions etc. ). The DownloadLayer() method in the plugin provides an example of how the interaction works. Much of it is still work in progress, but the doc should be enough to get everyone's creative juices flowing.

What's behind the name? Hmm..not much, other than squid, and the Indian Ocean domain suffix, both having somewhat of a maritime connotation, I guess.

Last, I need to thank Nohal for all his help in testing the plugin and creating the installation packages.

More soon..

[coupdemistral]

Is there an easy way to delete all the Squiddio waypoints? I had to delete in groups using the menu deletee button because the keyboard delete does not work.

Rgleason: did you try with the 'hide sQuiddio waypoints' option in the context-sensitive menu? The cursor needs to be positioned in the area of the sector you want to hide, and you have to repeat this for each sector that you have downloaded. Kind of a pain, I guess. (Perhaps a 'hide all squiddio waypoints' option would be better). If you position the cursor on a sector that you have hidden, it should give you the option to show the waypoints again.

Of course you can manually (and permanently) delete the layer by deleting the gpx file in ~/.opencpn/squiddio (Linux). The name of the file reveals the sector's coordinates. For instance SQ_N08W24.gpx is corresponds to the sector between 40 and 45 deg. north (5x8=40 since each unit in the file name corresponds to 5 degrees) and 120 and 125 deg. west.

[rgleason]

Could also turn off squiddio in options. Had not thought of that.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

[seandepagnier]

I dont understand why there is a ~/.opencpn/squiddio/raster_texture_cache anyone else see this?

[nohal]

Sean...
Yes, it got created there now for me as well when I started the cache rebuild with the squiddio plugin enabled. Reason? Somewhere in the code, it is mine about as much as yours...

Pavel

[Gilletarom]

Hello All,

I installed version 0.2 of Squiddio plugin with O331931. But I do not have an icon in the icon bar. Is this normal?

Best regards,

Gilletarom.

[LeaseOnLife]

Originally Posted by Gilletarom

Hello All,

I installed version 0.2 of Squiddio plugin with O331931. But I do not have an icon in the icon bar. Is this normal?

Best regards,

Gilletarom.

no button, but context sensitive menu (right click):

[AISEAG]

Hi,

OpenCPN 3.3.19.31 - XP

First try with the pluging.

I am wondering why the directory (documents and settings/all users/openCPN/squiddio) has been created outside the pluging directory ?, this behavior is not the one followed by others plugings.

Serge

[nohal]

Serge...
This is exactly how the plugin should and has to behave. The data not available during installation, such as the POIs you download, must be stored in the data directory, not in program files directory (which is typically not writable to the user on any decent system).
All the plugins that need to create data behave like that.

Pavel

[Gilletarom]

Hello All,

Can anyone explain to me why the CM93 folder was copied into folder squiddio?

B.R. Gilletarom

[nohal]

Gilletarom, Serge, Sean & all...
The problem with changing the application data dir into the squiddio plug-in folder identified and worked around in https://github.com/mauroc/squiddio_pi/pull/4
The real flaw is in the OpenCPN's plugin API though. It should not pass a pointer to the real variable but return a copy instead. The problem is we would have to break the compatibility with existing plugins to fix it...

Pavel