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seandepagnier · 30-07-2015, 07:30

I am starting a new thread. because the old thread was the watchman plugin which was later renamed.

Basically I rewrote the ui for the plugin and I was hoping to get some feedback. It might in a few cases be more annoying to use, but it's a lot more powerful now. That is because it can have many alarms for the same type.

For example, you can have a quiet sound play if you are off course 20 degrees, but a really loud one if it is 90 degrees. Similarly, you might have hard and soft alarms for other features, or like in the case of the draw plugin, a several boundary alarms each with different settings.

If there is something wrong or can be improved with the interface let me know.. it also corrects several bugs from before so I am hoping to release a new version of this plugin soon.

rgleason · 30-07-2015, 15:11

It is compiled and uploaded to
OpenCPN Beta File Thingie 2.5.7
rguser rgpass
4.1.718 Win PI directory

Sean it looks like you've been working on this a lot. Seems much more flexible with some really nice alarm features that can be configured, and it allows multiple alarms of the same type to be constructed. The first screens are a little blank but after forging ahead to see how it works ... I think this is going to become a favorite tool.

After setting up an Anchor Boundary in East Harbor, Fishers Island, NY. I tried to find the Boundary GUID in Ocpn_draw Boundary Properties to enter it and see if this works.

I guess there is a little more to do to get the GUID ID from Ocpn_Draw into Watchdog. ----Wait a minute... I did not update the opencpn.lib!!! Maybe that is needed, but it did compile fine.

(Later)
I recompiled Watchdog with the new opencpn.lib from yesterday. "Get GUID" does not seem to do anything.

I looked for a GUID in the Ocpn_Draw Properties box and in the Path and Point Manager and I did not find one listed. It might be a good idea to have those available in those two menus. Anyway I could not find it so I could not put it in manually.

I think this feature is almost there. I hope others will test this plugin over the next couple of months beccause it has changed a great deal in the UI.

rgleason · 30-07-2015, 15:19

Please Note if you are installing Watchdog into 4.1.718 Ocpn

Quote:

Don't forget to install and make sure that for a parallel install that the plugin dll and the ocpn_draw data directory have actually installed under "Plugins" directory. Verify it please. You may find the files under an extra Opencpn directory that the installer made which will be under your own Opencpn4.1.718 parallel install directory.

There has been some change in cmake files that is causing this. I think Pavel needs to fix. Happens with Ocpn_draw too.

jongough · 30-07-2015, 15:55

Rick,
The Get Boundary GUID gets the GUID of the boundary surrounding the boats current location. This enables setting an anchor watch easily. I have updated the Path/Boundary properties box to show its GUID. You could copy/paste this into this field.

The intention, however, is for the watchdog to ask OD if a particular lat/lon is in a boundary and to have the boundary GUID passed back if it is. The watchdog could then use this whilst under way to see if the predictor was going to enter a boundary. The internal code is there, just not the JSON message, to see if a lat/lon is in a particular boundary.

Now that I know it works and that the watchdog can be used I think we need to workout what would be useful for this capability.

Jon

rgleason · 30-07-2015, 16:43

I like this feature. You need to know where you are going, but how nice would it be to draw a boundary around areas where you don't want to go?

How would a user know that his boat needs to be within the boundary before getting thee GUID? Its easy enough to "move here" but maybe Watchdog should have a reminder even if it does not know a GUID or find one... perhaps message appears when the Watchdog does not find a Boundary with a GUID, saying "No boundary found, is the boat inside the boundary?"

rgleason · 30-07-2015, 16:50

Thanks Jon,
Moved the boat to the boundary, and tried to "Get Boundary GUID" and it was found. Then set Boundary alarm to 1 min. and then "move boat here" out of the boundary.

Watchdog say "Boundary time invalid" with no alarm.
I wonder why.

jongough · 30-07-2015, 18:32

Rick,
The OD stuff is all I was really working on, but I needed a way to test that the JSON messaging was working, so I did a quick and dirty patch to the watchdog plugin so that I could do some testing. I used the anchor watch facility as it made it easy to test, move the boat in, get the GUID, move the boat out, get a blank.

The OD code will return a GUID if the Lat/Lon passed to it is inside a boundary. This Lat/Lon does not need to be associated with the boat at all. In fact the OD plugin does not care, it just knows to check a location. So, when moving the watchdog plugin could make a request to the OD plugin once a minute (or whatever interval seems appropriate) to see if a 'predictor' Lat/Lon existed in a boundary. If it did an alarm could then be raised. The predictor could be based on COG and say time or distance, then this facility would be really useful (to me at least). But I started to get bogged down in understanding the watchdog alarm coding and did not want to spend too much time doing that at the expense of fixing up bugs in the OD plugin.

Now that we know that OCPN or a plugin can communicate with OD and that useful stuff can be passed back I just need to know what information is required and work out a message content that seems sensible. I would hope that other plugins could make use of this as well, perhaps the logbook plugin for logging the passing over or into a boundary. I am not sure I have time to build all the possibilities for all the plugins and OCPN as well as trying to get OD working and tidy.

Jon

Baikal · 31-07-2015, 21:37

Why draw the boundaries of what is functional and complicate additional actions

It needs a simple alarm anchorage in two clicks.
1. activate / deactivate the alarm at his position the vessel
2. adjust the radius of the zone

jongough · 01-08-2015, 21:52

I was using the anchor watch as a test to see if I could get the communications working. I do not have the ability to test with a GPS and moving, so I did the next best thing. Move the boat to see if it worked.

The more useful alarm will be for areas where there are uncharted dangers which you know about (there are plenty of these around Australia). These can be marked up on the chart and the watchdog can check to see if you are likely to enter one on your current course and raise an alarm if this is the case. There are also military zones which come and go and you normally get notified of an irregular area that is an exclusion zone via VHF, again, being able to mark these on the chart and to use the watchdog to help avoid them would be useful to me, if no one else. That was the whole purpose of building the boundaries capability.

Jon

Baikal · 01-08-2015, 22:39

It would be nice to automatically synchronize the position of the vessel at anchor alarm activation plug WatchDog.
What do you think about this?

jongough · 01-08-2015, 23:03

I am not quite sure I understand what you mean. Can you explain what you want the anchor alarm set too? Would you be looking to just set the anchor alarm to a set distance from the anchor waypoint or something else?

The interface to the watchdog alarms has just been changed, can you have a look at that and see if you can describe how you would like the anchor alarm to work?

Baikal · 01-08-2015, 23:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by jongough

I am not quite sure I understand what you mean. Can you explain what you want the anchor alarm set too? Would you be looking to just set the anchor alarm to a set distance from the anchor waypoint or something else?

The interface to the watchdog alarms has just been changed, can you have a look at that and see if you can describe how you would like the anchor alarm to work?

Now to install the anchorage is necessary to go to the configuration and press "Sync to Boat" - this is unnecessary manipulation!

Command "Sync to Boat" should be activated automatically when you turn on plug-in watchdog

========================

The problem in the plugin
Configuration enabled "Enable only if Watchdog Dialog is visible" cause it to crash OpenCPN after restarting the application.

[Settings / Watchdog]
Enabled = 3
DialogPosX = 884
DialogPosY = 324