With UK charts on a Raspberry Pi

[pragmatist]

We wanted to run a Raspberry down below in the dry and a tablet in the cockpit as a chart plotter display using OpenCPN. Technically there's no issue but then we come to the thorny problem of charts. We are aware of the CM93 charts available on the internet but would rather like some legal charts for the UK.

Without going into the rights and wrongs of the UK Hydrographic Office charging for charts, whilst the US equivalent doesn't, has anybody any idea how to source UK charts at a sensible price ? This must be possible as VisitMyHarbour, MemoryMap etc can issue charts for the whole of the UK for around £50. The only price we can find on the Hydrographic Office web site for UK-wide digital charts is £6,000 ! Anyone know why the disparity ? and, indeed, where could we legally get charts for tens of pounds, not thousands ? I've asked this on the YBW forums
UK Charts but not had any real success so hope you guys can help !

[muttnik]

I think the two pertinent questions here are:
1. Is there an ARM version of the s63 plugin or one planned?
2. I remember some mention of people talking to the UK hydrographic office about licensing their charts for use with the s63 plugin using a similar licence to that used by visitmyharbour or polar navy. Did anything come of that?

[pcmm]

I would think that as long as you are using a raspberry Pi 2b you should have enough power. Just make sure you have a large micro SSD like 32GB or more so that you have room for the charts.

[bcn]

Re. S-63 for ARM: this is on a to-do list but we have as well the Android which would require another, different approach for the fingerprint and licensing stuff. So not for the day after tomorrow.

Licensing charts from UKHO: yes, this possible for are very reduced amount for the leisure market (ENCs and RNCs) under the condition that you will a) encrypt the charts and b) will not call these "official charts" but just "based on charts released by Admiralty/UKHO".

We are aware that VisitMyHarbor and others are not available for Linux.
Going this way would require some infrastructure and upfront spending.
Investigations how this can be done and possible alternatives are under study.

More or less the same story is valid for German (BSH) and French (SHOM) chart sets. The upfront investment hurdle in the case of SHOM is more significant.
In the case of SHOM the ENCs do not cover regions which are important for OCPN users, so raster has to be taken into account. This implies encrypted raster.
The next playground in this context.

There is no risk that we will have a boring time....

Hubert

[muttnik]

Thanks for the update Hubert. I'm guessing there would be quite a few people willing to pledge/pay in advance for UKHO charts if an initial outlay needs to be covered.

[bcn]

Perhaps I didn't put the stress on the right point.
$/€ etc. is one issue.

Developer capacity and administration of this stuff another.

We are working on it.