12vdc Marine Computers

[rgleason]

Evidently USB needs a USB-Serial converter and lots of chokes in the radio setup so the COM port is very useful. - Picture moving the computer to specific uncomfortable remote locations due to signal problems with pactor.

[bfloyd4445]

Originally Posted by skipmac

If anyone knows of a true, sunlight viewable screen for a reasonable price I'm interested. Been looking and most of them seem to be in the $1000 and up range.

I've looked and your right they are around $1,000.

[BoomBrake]

Your thoughts, comments and experience sought on my potential electronic Navigation setup:

Navigation OS:
Xinutop - http://marinux.tuxfamily.org
or
Navigatrix.net - http://navigatrix.net/nxdoc/index.html

Low Power ARM 12V computer:
Trim-slice Pro - Max 6W draw - $120 - http://trimslice.com/web/trim-slice-pro-specifications
or
Utilite Pro - Max 8W draw - $219 - http://utilite-computer.com/web/util...specifications

At $120 each, could easily could have two with one as backup.

Both same manufacturer, have serial AND USB Ports, take 12V, small footprint, have WiFi, and both 32G SSD storage. The cheaper Trim-slice Pro looks more than enough for OpenCPN charting.

Has anyone specific experience with this Trim-slice unit and OpenCPN? .

[Tantalus]

Do you know if all the software has been compiled and tested with an A9 processor?

[BoomBrake]

No, good point though. I am able to compile source myself and know that Ubuntu will compile and install on both these ARM CPUs. The OpenCPN software on A9 or the other Nav software on the Nav linux builds may be an issue. Not found any info on the web.

Any others with OpenCPN Tegra 2 successful installs? I'll probably order one of each and start experimenting with compiling OpenCPN on the A9.

Trim-slice: Tegra 2: There is an Ubuntu 12.10 build on same CPU. Here is some stuff for OpenCPN on the Tegra 2 CPU and here (Tegra 2 CPU is also in Motorola Xoom) quarter way down page.

Utilite: Freescale i.MX6 quad-core Cortex-A9: Actually comes with option for Ubuntu preinstalled and is shipping in 7 weeks. It does support OpenGL ES, OpenVG and OpenCL of which OpenGL is a requirement for decent display on OpenCPN.

Of course all this is not ready for the "prime time" but the possibility and low power consumption is amazing. Happy to experiment and advise results here.

[dasboot72]

Im running Opencpn 3.2.2 1009 on Trim Slice pro (Ubuntu 12.04). So far so good - relative stable, some issue with memory leak and the unit gets very warm (Should not be a problem says manufacture).
Im still not convinced that the Trim Slice is better than the Fit-pc2 with x86 CPU.
There is a lot more "power" in the Fit-pc2 and it idles a lot more running opencpn than the Trim Slice. Its cooler and very stable.
I have also tried getting the Raspberry Pi stable enough running opencpn, but had to discard it due to its recurring SD-card corruption issue (and thats a shame because it would have been the ultimate platform - power consumption, price, size, availability...).

Mikkel

[BoomBrake]

Thanks for the info dasboot72, what Ubuntu source and install guide did you use, can you share any links? Or was it pre-installed?

[dasboot72]

The Trim Slice came with pre-installed Ubuntu based on Ubuntu 12.04 armhf. The install procedure on the Trim seems hard and I would only use the image of Ubuntu that compulab provides (Its basicly a smartphone - not a PC).
Trim-Slice OS Installer - Trim-Slice Wiki
OpenGL is not supported on the Trim

Opencpn beta -Installed prerequisites and compiled opencpn.
Compiling - Linux | Official OpenCPN Homepage
Its a bit of work to get the sound working..

Did that answer the question?

Regards

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by capt-couillon

I thought I would share a discovery I made while looking for an efficient light weight OS.

The word is Navigatrix.

Yup. I've linked it a few times here as well, so I'm surprised that more people don't know about it.

As the captain describes, it's a lightweight Lunix distro, all set up with marine and navigation apps.

One of the useful things about Navigatrix is that it it s "live" distro, which means you can copy the distro onto a USB stick or an SD card, and boot it up on just about any PC without having to install. This means, for example that any PC laptop can be tested and used as a temporary "navigation" computer without disturbing its installed OS.

I have the latest Navigatrix installed onto an 8 GB SD card along with some charts, and a couple of older eee netbooks which will boot on it.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by BoomBrake

Your thoughts, comments and experience sought on my potential electronic Navigation setup:.

The world of small ARM-type computers seems to be changing real fast. It seems there's a new one out every couple of months. The Beaglebone Black is like a bigger Raspberry Pi... and we're probably no more than a year away from the next generation board from Raspberry. So, I don't know if it's worth committing to a 12v ARM computer yet.

That being said... I think the bigger bang for the buck, short-term, would be a used small laptop or netbook. They're complete, encased, and inexpensive. I bought a refurbished 10" eee netbook for about $225 last year. They're power-draw isn't trivial, but if you're not running the thing constantly, it shouldn't be too onerous.

Dasboot - the Raspberry Pi's are notoriously touchy about the SD card you use. Also, here's something discussing another SD card fix

[rgleason]

Thanks for all the new options. I am going to try the navigatrix usb drive for now.
How much do you think the Hartwell processor would change the current draw picture?
as compared to Boombrakes's
Trim-slice Pro - Max 6W draw - $120
Utilite Pro - Max 8W draw - $219

I've been thinking a box with no salty airflow would be best and last longest!

[NahanniV]

Has anyone tried an MK802 ? They seem to be readily available and fairly inexpensive.

[jonasaberg]

Mikkel/dasboot,

Maybe the wrong forum for a Raspberry Pi (RP) discussion, but would it not be possible to have the system boot from a SDHC card but for the rest run from a solid state disk connected via USB?
Another cheaper option may be to run OCPN from a USB3 stick. It is reported from a couple of sources that the mediaplayer XBMC interface runs much faster if it is installed and run from a USB stick. It is also reported that the USB stick should be version 3, and not version 2
The RP only has a version 2 port, but is still reported to communicate faster with a v3 stick

I have not tried running OCPN on my RP, but from what I have heard it works fine to have it run the navigation itself, but is a bit slow to do the actual passage/route planning on it.

Another idea:
Would it be possible to:
1 Install OpenCPN on the RP as an installation running from a USB stick.
2 Mount the installation directory from an external, faster, power hungry PC connected via ethernet.
3 Start the OpenCPN@RP on the external PC.
4 Do the route planning, etc, on the external PC.
5 Exit the OCPN from the external PC.
6 Start OPENCPN on the RP and let it perform the navigation.

Would this work? It would be almost like having a OCPN on a USB stick that is moved from a PC to the RP, but without physically moving it..kind of...

Thoughts?

/Jonas

[bfloyd4445]

I think the important thing here is the display and how well it can be read in the sun. Any pc, net-notebook can run opencpn just fine, its seeing the screen that's the issue. I have trouble with win7 when used with my garmin gps 12 but other than that works great.

[NahanniV]

Originally Posted by bfloyd4445

I think the important thing here is the display and how well it can be read in the sun. Any pc, net-notebook can run opencpn just fine, its seeing the screen that's the issue. I have trouble with win7 when used with my garmin gps 12 but other than that works great.

The power consumption of most "net-notebook(s)" is 30W and up.
The computers being discussing in the last few posts are all less than 10W.
I would like to hear what works in this category.

Sunlight readable displays would be nice, but most are too expensive and too power hungry.

What I'm thinking of is an always on nav computer that I switch the display on and off as needed.