OpenPlotter project

[Saqqara]

Never mind me... I had switch wired wrong. Still, I can see that a way to stop openplotter triggers and actions during startup would be helpful.


Humidity is working. I also have a relay clicking nicely using the outputs.



Sent from my iPhone using Cruisers Sailing Forum

[conachair]

Originally Posted by Saqqara

Never mind me... I had switch wired wrong. Still, I can see that a way to stop openplotter triggers and actions during startup would be helpful.

If you have a linux machine then you can edit the config file. Put the SD card into the linux machine and go to:
/home/pi/.config/openplotter/openplotter.conf

Open that in a text editor and you'll see something like..

[SWITCH1]
enable = 1
gpio = 5
pull_up_down = Pull Up

[SWITCH2]
enable = 0
gpio =
pull_up_down =

Change the 1 to 0 for the offending switch, save and you should be able to get back in again.

[Arne Henriksen]

Originally Posted by Arne Henriksen

...the guts to fire up the solder iron yet, but am kind of ready now

Well, I really managed to solder on 4 small wires here, and got it working :-)

The downside seem to be that my NMEA apps on the iPad and iPhone seems to be strugling with recognizing all the new values in the NMEA stream...

Is the selected NMEA sentences for these data the 'standard' out there, or is there several possible values for - say, barometric pressure and heel?

[Saqqara]

I have barometric pressure and air temp working in Boat Instruments app and MidWifi app on iOS, along with heading, lat Lon sog AIS...

But yes we have some sentences that are correct but not commonly supported yet... Mostly because until now few boats could measure humidity and angle of heel except at great expense. It is worthwhile to contact the app developers with requests and tell them about openplotter with samples from nmea stream.




Sent from my iPhone using Cruisers Sailing Forum

[Sailoog]

Lots of questions
I see we need the documentation updated ASAP

Originally Posted by Vamonos

I was just playing with the WiFi AP feature of OpenPlotter. By adding a line to OpenPlotter.py (at line 202):

self.available_share.append('usb0')

I was able to tether my Android phone to the Pi and then share that internet connection through the Access Point. Seemed useful to me.

Great! I think I should include connected USB devices into the list of possible interfaces. Noted, I will do some test.

Originally Posted by conachair

So far its the Pi with usb into a signalink attached to an Icom 7000 ham radio...
...isn't GNU radio on openplotter already? Google brings up a some stories of problem with ALSA. I'll have a play soon.

Do you know if it could work with a cheap and simple USB audio dongle as well?

gnuradio is not installed but is on jessie repo. I was able to compile it in whezy too (after hours )

yes please share your conclusions.

Originally Posted by conachair

One thing though, my win7 laptop doesn't seem to want to connect to the Pi access point *unless* the Pi is passing through internet access as well.
Seems fine on android, don't think I've checked linux yet.

Any news about this?

Originally Posted by addboy

Anyone making a IMU and or a Pressure/Temperature sensor?

RTIMULib (the library used in openplotter) currently supports the following IMU, pressure and humidity sensors:
https://github.com/sailoog/RTIMULib2

Originally Posted by Arne Henriksen

Care to share which pins are needed and to where, to get this running?
How do you mount it - just close/at the Pi, or with a longer wire so you can get it away from electric/magnetic disturbance?

Connect to I2C pins (SDA, SCL, 3.3V, GND).

Yes, you should mount it away from your Raspberry and any metallic object or magnetic field.

OpenPlotter will detect your devices if they are on the list.

If your device is not detected or is not the right one try clicking in "reset" and re-opening openplotter. If you still have problems try to edit manually the config files into /home/pi/.config/openplotter/imu/ folder:
IMU: RTIMULib.ini
Pressure: RTIMULib2.ini
Humidity: RTIMULib3.ini

Important: Calibrate your IMU

Originally Posted by Saqqara

what would it take to get a column of 8 or so "buttons" in a browser window to use to trigger actions? Another small enhancement with huge implications.

Can you imagine a beautiful panel instrument with sexy gauges and custom virtual switches to trigger openplotter actions? Running from any tablet/phone/laptop browser connected to openplotter access point? I love it! Noted!

Originally Posted by Saqqara

Next up I need to hook up a second i2c device, the HTU21D humidity/temp. I have not looked up how to do that yet, since I already have one i2c device connected (anyone know? I believe it just connects to same pins with the IMU in parallel)

Yes, just connect in parallel to the same i2c pins and let openplotter do the work.

Originally Posted by boat_alexandra

Does openplotter calibrate the intertial sensors?

Of course:

Note about magnetometer (compass) calibration

For many IMUs, fused data may be completely unusable unless the magnetometers have been calibrated.

RTIMULib2 has two mechanisms that can be used to calibrate the magnetometers:

Manual calibration. This is where a tool such as RTIMULibCal has been used to add magnetometer calibration data to the RTIMULib.ini file. Once this is done, there should be no need to repeat calibration unless the magnetic environment changes. Check the Calibration.pdf document for more details regarding manual calibration.

Runtime calibration. This mechanism is used if there is no manual calibration data. The magnetometers will remain uncalibrated until a sufficient range of readings has been obtained in each of the axes. The code will continue to monitor magnetometer readings for new maxima and minima and update the calibration data as required. This data is not saved so the procedure will start from scratch if the code is restarted.

https://github.com/sailoog/RTIMULib2

Originally Posted by ben373

I am interested in getting started with this project. Understand most of it and I can programming in c . I would like to know what screen you are using.

Welcome! openplotter is growing and yes, we need help. Specially from coders. OpenPlotter is written in python but needs many C libraries.

Any HDMI screen is good. Avoid composite video screens.

Originally Posted by NahanniV

I wonder if the RPi2 would be fast enough to run the Winlink2000 Airmail client software ? Seems like it might be possible Using Wine and QEMU, I think ?

Or perhaps the Paclink-Unix client with generic Email client.

Eventually I hope there will be an opensource Linux client.
WL2KGO is a work in progress.

Setting this stuff up is beyond me, but I'd be happy to help test it.

It should be but I think wine is not ARM compatible. I have no experience with the alternative softwares, anyone?

Originally Posted by Saqqara

Sadly I have discovered a need for a way to stop openplotter from running actions at startup. I apparently have it shutting down if a switch is on or off.

Ideas?

I knew this would happen someday

I will try adding an icon to stop all actions to desktop or toolbar. Actually that script (stop all actions) was written standalone to be called from anywhere.

Originally Posted by Saqqara

Humidity is working. I also have a relay clicking nicely using the outputs.

Great! can you describe or reference your hardware and setting?

[Saqqara]

Originally Posted by Sailoog

Can you imagine a beautiful panel instrument with sexy gauges and custom virtual switches to trigger openplotter actions? Running from any tablet/phone/laptop browser connected to openplotter access point? I love it! Noted!

Oh yes, I imagine all of that! But there are many potential projects and apps to give us the sexy instruments, but only you can give us the virtual switches.

I was just asking the SignalK group about the potential to improve the InstrumentPanel.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!to...lk/WYTx-wIJUf4

It seems more of the conversations about SignalK are on Slack now.
Join the Signal K community on Slack!



Greg

[petter5]

Originally Posted by Sailoog

OpenPlotter already supports out of the box:

• MPU9250 9DOF IMU
• MS5611 Barometer
• U-blox M8N Glonass/GPS/Beidou

And it should not be a problem to adapt the rest of features. That board seems a good compact solution but.... really expensive... isn't it? anyway I will consider it when we reach the autopilot stage. Thanks!

I received my NAVIO+ today and loaded openplotter_rpi_v0.6.0beta3 and is trying to figure out how to enable the onboard U-blox M8N Glonass/GPS/Beidou module. I tried to enable gpsd but it seems that it do not work out of the box that way. Any tip how to get the onboard U-blox M8N to work would be fine. MPU9250, MS5611, sensor is detected but also a HTU21D sensor wich accordin to the specs for NAVIO+ is not present.

[Saqqara]

Run the update from github Sailoog describes in post 146. I'm not sure he's updated the pi image to include the latest code. Pretty also saw a false positive of the humidity sensor prior to this update.

I believe also my GPS dongle wasn't immediately recognized without some steps. I ran the GPSD utility and also had to add it to the multiplexor on the first tab. Sorry I don't have it in front of my right now so I can't give specifics.

[petter5]

Originally Posted by Saqqara

Run the update from github Sailoog describes in post 146. I'm not sure he's updated the pi image to include the latest code. Pretty also saw a false positive of the humidity sensor prior to this update.

I believe also my GPS dongle wasn't immediately recognized without some steps. I ran the GPSD utility and also had to add it to the multiplexor on the first tab. Sorry I don't have it in front of my right now so I can't give specifics.

I'm trying tto calibrate magnetometer with ellipsoid from the openplotter> sensors>IMU>calibrate and it only fails:

Processing ellipsoid fit data...
GNU Octave, version 3.8.2
Copyright (C) 2014 John W. Eaton and others.
This is free software; see the source code for copying conditions.
There is ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. For details, type 'warranty'.

Octave was configured for "arm-unknown-linux-gnueabihf".

Additional information about Octave is available at GNU Octave.

Please contribute if you find this software useful.
For more information, visit Get Involved

Read Bugs to learn how to submit bug reports.
For information about changes from previous versions, type 'news'.

error: no such file, '/home/pi/.config/openplotter/imu/RTEllipsoidFit.m'
error: source: error sourcing file '/home/pi/.config/openplotter/imu/RTEllipsoidFit.m'

Ellipsoid fit returned 256 - aborting.



After copying RTEllipsoidFit.m from GITHUB https://github.com/richards-tech/RTI...EllipsoidFit.m
and trying once more, I get this error:


-: 1432 +--: 198 -+-: 591 ++-: 347
--+: 3072 +-+: 1077 -++: 1983 +++: 1967
Failed to open ellipsoid fit raw data file


Processing ellipsoid fit data...
GNU Octave, version 3.8.2
Copyright (C) 2014 John W. Eaton and others.
This is free software; see the source code for copying conditions.
There is ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. For details, type 'warranty'.

Octave was configured for "arm-unknown-linux-gnueabihf".

Additional information about Octave is available at GNU Octave.

Please contribute if you find this software useful.
For more information, visit Get Involved

Read Bugs to learn how to submit bug reports.
For information about changes from previous versions, type 'news'.

error: fscanf: invalid stream number = -1
error: called from:
error: /home/pi/.config/openplotter/imu/RTEllipsoidFit.m at line 41, column 15

Ellipsoid fit returned 256 - aborting.

I did a GIT update as decribed in post 146 and tried once more calibrate magnetometer with ellipsoid and got the same error "failed to open ellipsoid fit raw data file"

[TBillings]

I wish I would've found this thread a few months ago...

I used the MPU-9150 to make a calibrated IMU for my boat, and have all my instruments (GPS, DST-800, the IMU, and hopefully a replacement wind vane soon) plugged into an Arduino, which then multiplexes the data out to an RPI. But the RPI's only function is to wirelessly transmit the NMEA stream with stripeydog's kplex.

I want to switch over to OpenPlotter and ditch the Arduino altogether, but I'm not as familiar coding on the Pi... the one thing holding me back is that I use the IMU to filter my depth, water speed, and wind speed to correct for vessel roll and pitch, as well as the rate at which it is rolling/pitching (my triducer is unfortunately offset by about 23 degrees from the vertical (which throws off depth/paddlewheel info) due to some poor planning involving my holding tank).

If I ditch the Arduino and connect everything to the Pi, is there a simple way to manipulate the NMEA data before OpenCPN reads it? I'm not asking for someone do to the work for me, of course--I don't mind having to learn a few things on my own. And as far as connecting the additional instruments to the RPi, I'm assuming I'd get an RS-232/422 to USB converter? Or is it more efficient to connect to the pins with a TTL converter?

[conachair]

Originally Posted by MatthewDurst

I wish I would've found this thread a few months ago...

I used the MPU-9150 to make a calibrated IMU for my boat, and have all my instruments (GPS, DST-800, the IMU, and hopefully a replacement wind vane soon) plugged into an Arduino, which then multiplexes the data out to an RPI. But the RPI's only function is to wirelessly transmit the NMEA stream with stripeydog's kplex.

I want to switch over to OpenPlotter and ditch the Arduino altogether, but I'm not as familiar coding on the Pi... the one thing holding me back is that I use the IMU to filter my depth, water speed, and wind speed to correct for vessel roll and pitch, as well as the rate at which it is rolling/pitching (my triducer is unfortunately offset by about 23 degrees from the vertical (which throws off depth/paddlewheel info) due to some poor planning involving my holding tank).

If I ditch the Arduino and connect everything to the Pi, is there a simple way to manipulate the NMEA data before OpenCPN reads it? I'm not asking for someone do to the work for me, of course--I don't mind having to learn a few things on my own. And as far as connecting the additional instruments to the RPi, I'm assuming I'd get an RS-232/422 to USB converter? Or is it more efficient to connect to the pins with a TTL converter?

It might be easier to keep the arduino as a multiplexer sending nmea to the pi, rather than have to start from scratch again. That's the road I think I'll go - how do you get the nmea in at the moment, are you using software serial or a mega with the extra serial pins?

[petter5]

Originally Posted by Sailoog

OpenPlotter already supports out of the box:

• MPU9250 9DOF IMU
• MS5611 Barometer
• U-blox M8N Glonass/GPS/Beidou

And it should not be a problem to adapt the rest of features. That board seems a good compact solution but.... really expensive... isn't it? anyway I will consider it when we reach the autopilot stage. Thanks!

I'm struggling to use the NAVIO+ onboard U-blox M8N with openplotter. It seems it need ublox-spi-to-pty or ublox-spi-to-tcp https://github.com/emlid/Navio/tree/master/Utilities

and if using
ublox-spi-to-pty you should bee able to use GPSD in openplotter NMEA0183 settings to get the gps nmea data. When excecuting ublox-spi-to-pty in a terminal window, you can see that /dev/pts/1 is opened, but no outpus is observer in the show output window ( NMEA setings)

Since you stated that the M8n is supported out of the box, have I missed something, or is additional steps required. Any help to configure openplotter so that all sensors on the NAVIO+ is detected and starts when booting would be great.

[TBillings]

Originally Posted by conachair

It might be easier to keep the arduino as a multiplexer sending nmea to the pi, rather than have to start from scratch again. That's the road I think I'll go - how do you get the nmea in at the moment, are you using software serial or a mega with the extra serial pins?

I have an Arduino Mega, with everything going in a serial port. Before my anemometer broke, I had that going into a digital pin with software serial. This is the writeup on how to do all that if you're a noob like me: King Tide Sailing: How to Connect any NMEA-0183 Device to an Arduino

I think that is the way I'm probably going to go. I don't have an onboard screen anyways, so I'm fine with just using my laptop with OpenCPN for now... but I definitely want a dedicated system later on.

[Sailoog]

Originally Posted by Saqqara

Oh yes, I imagine all of that! But there are many potential projects and apps to give us the sexy instruments, but only you can give us the virtual switches.

I was just asking the SignalK group about the potential to improve the InstrumentPanel.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!to...lk/WYTx-wIJUf4

It seems more of the conversations about SignalK are on Slack now.
Join the Signal K community on Slack!

Maybe your are right...I was thinking of modifying the signalK Instrument Panel and adding there these virtual switch but maybe it should be better keeping them independent and under password. All the crew should be allowed to see navigation data from their phones but having the power to enable some actions could be dangerous.

I am in the google group and Slack too but always in silence because I can not assume more work

[Sailoog]

Originally Posted by petter5

I'm struggling to use the NAVIO+ onboard U-blox M8N with openplotter. It seems it need ublox-spi-to-pty or ublox-spi-to-tcp https://github.com/emlid/Navio/tree/master/Utilities

and if using
ublox-spi-to-pty you should bee able to use GPSD in openplotter NMEA0183 settings to get the gps nmea data. When excecuting ublox-spi-to-pty in a terminal window, you can see that /dev/pts/1 is opened, but no outpus is observer in the show output window ( NMEA setings)

Since you stated that the M8n is supported out of the box, have I missed something, or is additional steps required. Any help to configure openplotter so that all sensors on the NAVIO+ is detected and starts when booting would be great.

I have never tested this hat because is a little bit expensive so when I affirmed that some of its components will work on openplotter out of the box, I was assuming they were connected normally and it seems that they aren't. Step by step...

It seems that the GPS is conected by SPI so first of all go to Menu>Preferences>Raspberry Pi configuration and be sure the SPI interface is enable.

Then execute ublox-spi-to-pty to create /dev/pts/1

Now you have to start gpsd, try typing gpsd /dev/pts/1 in a terminal (I do not remember if you need sudo)

Finally create a network input (GPSD) in openplotter (NMEA 0183 tab) and apply changes. If you have satellite connection and all is ok you should have data in the NMEA inspector (show output).

If it works we will try to make this run at startup.