Waypoints not prcessed

[opencpnuser]

Waypoints or Routes are not prcessed by OpenCPN though the NMEA sentences requiered are coming in from tha plotter.

Also OpenCPN should accept NMEA 2000.

A request with high priority.

[rgleason]

I believe Opencpn will connect to nmea2000 through its new SignalK interface and SignalK devices



https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/do...ftware:signalk

[stevead]

A well known problem that OpenCPN does not parse WPL & RTE NMEA 183 sentences to create waypoints & routes.

I don't know why.

From my perspective it's an oversight. Unfortunately we're forced to import waypoints & routes using GPX, a XML format that stupidly uses decimal degrees which I have never seen used on a nautical chart, pilot guide etc.......

Re NMEA 2000, In addition to using Signal K (as Rick mentioned), there is also the TwoCan plugin (which Rick failed to mention !).

Your choice depends on what platform you use (Windows, Linux, Mac) and what features you require.

[opencpnuser]

Of course it will connect, i.e. with the most B&G, Garmin and other plotters with internet connection.

But still OpenCPN it will not process any Route, Waypoit or Track data. OpenCPN does not support that in any way. You can check what is communicated in OpenCPN in the GPS debug window. Let it run for a while and then copy the log.

On B&G you can upload routes and other stuff in .usr-format.
by using the the page on http://192.168.0.217, which is the plotter address.

To convert from GPX to almost any other format that the plotter requires you can use an app: GPSBabel (In the B&G case choose GPX XML in the input file and Lowranse USR for the output file.) There are many options depending on your plotter.

Signal K will not change that in any way. And it is a one way indata connection.

You can easily see what sentences i provides using in/out connections in OpenCPN and of course the plotter connected to internet.

It is easy to check the sntences flow by http//192.168.0.217:10110
Run it for a while make some wayoint changes, and then copy it all to Notepad++, sort it and remove duplicates.

Now, 192.168.0.217 is my adress. You have to find your own plottter adress. The port 10110 is for B&G plotters, so it may vary.

To find out if FTP works for you, you can use ftp://192.168.0.217 in the browser. Then you might see what is on your SD-card on the plotter.

Often the SD card is protected for security and copyrigt reasons, so using a FTP client will probably cause an error. But a least give it a try.

[rgleason]

Originally Posted by stevead

Re NMEA 2000, In addition to using Signal K (as Rick mentioned), there is also the TwoCan plugin (which Rick failed to mention !).

Sorry, Steve for the oversight, I kind of lumped it all together in my mind with SignalK, which I should not have, there is of course the TwoCan option which is a reasonable alternative too.

[bdbcat]

Stevead...
re:
"I don't know why."


I know why: Because I have yet to hear a valid and sensible use-case.


We have this observation: It cannot be easier to create a route on a chart-plotter than it is using a PC or laptop. This is strictly due to the better ergonomics of a PC compared to a conventional chart plotter. Mouse/keyboard/big monitor is always better than touch screen with multilayer menus and on-screen keyboard of plotter. Ergo, why would one need to send a route from the plotter to OCPN?


So I'm listening now. Why else would someone want this functionality?


Thanks
Dave

[fgd3]

While under way it may be easier to create a route on the chart plotter because it is at the helm. One example: you're preparing to run a marked channel. You use the chart plotter to lay out a quick route on screen where the turns in the channel are. Later you might wish to save that route in OpenCPN for fine-tuning or storage. But I thought we could do that easily by saving the chart plotter route in GPX format and copying that file to the computer for use in OpenCPN.


I don't understand what opencpnuser is trying to do that doesn't work.


Fabbian

[stevead]

It cannot be easier to create a route on a chart-plotter than it is using a PC or laptop.

Hmmm....With what I perceive to be the current limitations of the Route & Mark Manager, I beg to differ.

From my experience I only know of two ways to create a route in OpenCPN:

1. Import from a GPX file
2. Drawing the route on the chart canvas.

I could be totally wrong, but I feel that the first method, for non tech savvy users and without relying on third party tools or scripts is difficult. And again without additional tools or scripts, converting degrees decimal minutes to decimal degrees as required by the GPX standard is just a pain in the arse. As I stated previously, I have never used any nautical chart, pilot guide or Notice to Mariners that have used decimal degrees. For example:

SECURITE
FM JRCC AUSTRALIA 190358Z MAR 20
AUSCOAST WARNING 138/20
DRILL RIG MAERSK DELIVERER/OXOY2 IN POSITION 14-05.59S 123-08.34E
2.5 NM CLEARANCE REQUESTED.
NNNN

The second method is great on a stable boat and also when the area on which you are planning your route is easily viewable on the screen. However if I am planning a route sometimes I just want to add a series of waypoints to the route, perhaps change their order, reverse them etc. without even viewing a chart, which I may do later to make sure I am not going to bump into anything. Or perhaps I am just creating a route to represent a set of race marks.

There are several things I would like to see improved with the Route & Mark manager.
1. If I wish to create multiple waypoints, I have to open the "New Waypoint" dialog every time.
2. I can't create a route from the Route & Mark manager.

Just some simple usabilty features. See attachments for some very old UI that I wrote aeons ago that illustrate creation of multiple waypoints and a "waypoint picker" used to create a route.

But this digresses from the original question concerning OpenCPN's lack of processing of WPL & RTE NMEA 183 sentences. I appreciate that while parsing the WPL sentence & adding the waypoint is trivial (a dozen lines of code ?) there are other considerations. If I can send a route or waypoint to a chartplotter, surely I should be able to do the reverse ?

BTW, In the next release of TwoCan, having discovered that OpenCPN does not parse WPL & RTE sentences, there will be the option that when processing NMEA 2000 PGN 129285 messages, in addition to converting them to WPL & RTE NMEA 183 sentences, to also create the waypoints & routes.

[bdbcat]

Stevead...


Thanks for the input.
I maintain that the most user friendly method of creating a route is to use the OCPN GUI. Drop the waypoints visually. If they need close accuracy, edit the points in OCPN waypoint properties dialog. But we may agree to disagree.


" I appreciate that while parsing the WPL sentence & adding the waypoint is trivial (a dozen lines of code ?) there are other considerations."


Indeed. Thousands of supported GPS receivers and plotters. Various "special cases" supported by one plotter or another. What to do about point and route name collisions? etc, etc. Not trivial....


I give a simple example:


1. Create route on OCPN. Use human readable point and route names.
2. Send to GPS. Names will be truncated for many devices.
3. Edit the route on the plotter. Say add a point.

4. Send back to OCPN.
5. What now? Names do not match any corresponding points on OCPN route. In fact, since O keeps track of items by GUID, and this info was lost when sent to the plotter, there is no easy way for O to know what the user wants. Replace the old route in O? But which route? Or maybe add a new route? Then user needs to remember to delete her old route.

6. Do this a couple of time to the same route, and your have a mess.


So, the UI questions are not trivial.


In a developer resource constrained environment, this feature just does not have the priority, yet. Extensive testing would be required.



Thanks
Dave

[seaton.cris]

Originally Posted by stevead

Hmmm....With what I perceive to be the current limitations of the Route & Mark Manager, I beg to differ.

From my experience I only know of two ways to create a route in OpenCPN:

1. Import from a GPX file
2. Drawing the route on the chart canvas.

I could be totally wrong, but I feel that the first method, for non tech savvy users and without relying on third party tools or scripts is difficult. And again without additional tools or scripts, converting degrees decimal minutes to decimal degrees as required by the GPX standard is just a pain in the arse. As I stated previously, I have never used any nautical chart, pilot guide or Notice to Mariners that have used decimal degrees. For example:

SECURITE
FM JRCC AUSTRALIA 190358Z MAR 20
AUSCOAST WARNING 138/20
DRILL RIG MAERSK DELIVERER/OXOY2 IN POSITION 14-05.59S 123-08.34E
2.5 NM CLEARANCE REQUESTED.
NNNN

The second method is great on a stable boat and also when the area on which you are planning your route is easily viewable on the screen. However if I am planning a route sometimes I just want to add a series of waypoints to the route, perhaps change their order, reverse them etc. without even viewing a chart, which I may do later to make sure I am not going to bump into anything. Or perhaps I am just creating a route to represent a set of race marks.

There are several things I would like to see improved with the Route & Mark manager.
1. If I wish to create multiple waypoints, I have to open the "New Waypoint" dialog every time.
2. I can't create a route from the Route & Mark manager.

Just some simple usabilty features. See attachments for some very old UI that I wrote aeons ago that illustrate creation of multiple waypoints and a "waypoint picker" used to create a route.

But this digresses from the original question concerning OpenCPN's lack of processing of WPL & RTE NMEA 183 sentences. I appreciate that while parsing the WPL sentence & adding the waypoint is trivial (a dozen lines of code ?) there are other considerations. If I can send a route or waypoint to a chartplotter, surely I should be able to do the reverse ?

BTW, In the next release of TwoCan, having discovered that OpenCPN does not parse WPL & RTE sentences, there will be the option that when processing NMEA 2000 PGN 129285 messages, in addition to converting them to WPL & RTE NMEA 183 sentences, to also create the waypoints & routes.

Steve, I was wondering if I might be able to message you with respect to this UI that you built. I work on a US research vessel and we use O for our science ECDIS.
there's a ton of waypoint manipulating and the like, I've written some perl/python scripts that take in a template csv file that integrates with the bridge's ecdis, and I read that and write a gpx route or waypoint (depending on my entry syntax). but you still have to access O to import, activate, etc.

I looked through the user manual and saw the command line syntax is really basic, and was wondering if you were able to integrate through the UI you wrote and actually do some of the stuff I've been doing. Looking for some insight. haven't contacted the developers (yet).

thanks!

[Rasbats]

Steve...

Also interested in the old UI you showed. Is the code available?

Is a plugin the way forward for an improved routes and waypoints manager? Perhaps it could sync with 'navobj.xml' and 'navobj.xml.changes' (Read only). Additional routes and waypoints could be fed back in to the main program via the API.

My interest is the RTZ file format for interface with ECDIS. A plugin could export in that format. Perhaps it could also read the WPL/RTE NMEA stream.

Mike

[hoolie]

Originally Posted by bdbcat

Stevead...
re:
"I don't know why."


I know why: Because I have yet to hear a valid and sensible use-case.


We have this observation: It cannot be easier to create a route on a chart-plotter than it is using a PC or laptop. This is strictly due to the better ergonomics of a PC compared to a conventional chart plotter. Mouse/keyboard/big monitor is always better than touch screen with multilayer menus and on-screen keyboard of plotter. Ergo, why would one need to send a route from the plotter to OCPN?

So I'm listening now. Why else would someone want this functionality?


Thanks
Dave

I am considering adding a cockpit RPI system to my existing chart-table W10 on-board system and I would like to use the "send to GPS" feature of OCPN to transfer routes and waypoints between the two systems. The existing transfer mechanism seems to include all the necessary data, including route name, so I believe it would be straightforward to unpack the NMEA data stream to the Route Manager on the target machine. No complicated or proprietary manufacturer protocols, just OCPN to OCPN.

ps I know you have said the UI problems are difficult but something quite simple like replacing entirely routes of the same name would do or just creating a new instance of a route. Or it could just import the route as if it were a GPX file

[rgleason]

Hoolie,
Maybe it would be easier to make a batch file or script to copy navobj.xml file back and forth?
Maye with renode you could make it a push button?

[hoolie]

Rick
I hadn't thought of swapping the navobj.xml file between devices, but it sounds a good idea as the transferred data set will be more complete than using basic NMEA sentences. And if a transfer goes pear-shaped there will still be back-up versions to fall back on.

I'll think about it and try to devise something simple!

[bcn]

You might consider the RTZ format for route exchange.


We had already some discussions here in the OCPN forum, there is a helper program from Rasbats for import/export from/to OpenCPN GPX https://github.com/Rasbats/opencpn.rtz.assist


RTZ is an international standard and mandatory for ECDIS.