Feature Requests

[hasse_A]

Hi!

While testing AIS functionality I saw this.
I think there should not be any alarm for Base Station or ?
If you are to collide with that you got serious problems.

/Hans

[Hakan]

Hasse..
Why not? If the station is within your alert rules and you're about to sail in it, wouldn't that hurt as much as an anchored boat?

[hasse_A]

Maybe.
I can accept that it would be good if you are asleep and are about to strike the shore. Otherwise, if you are not aware and you don't see that you have land ahead maybe you should get new glasses or spend your time doing something else.
/Hasse

[Hakan]

Could he same be applicable for an anchored super tanker??

Just kidding!!
Sluttjótat från min sida/Håkan

[did-g]

Originally Posted by hasse_A

Maybe.
I can accept that it would be good if you are asleep and are about to strike the shore. Otherwise, if you are not aware and you don't see that you have land ahead maybe you should get new glasses or spend your time doing something else.
/Hasse

I think it's already fixed in 4.4.0:
commit c33792b5af25b92440e1ef177a132f043e5ddfe1
Author: David Register
Date: Wed Apr 27 22:18:41 2016 -0400

Do not Alert on CPA incursion for AIS Base Stations (FS#1804) (FS#1749)

[wingssail]

I have attached a sample of what I think is a simple way of doing it, just give us another way to acknowledge it

[rgleason]

Also adding items to the right-click menu under AIS would be quicker.
"Acknowledge"
"Silence"

[wingssail]

That works. I'm really happy this topic is back in play, I've been interested in a solution for about 5 years now (I guess I should just try some development on it myself if I am impatient)

The key requirements for a solution, from my perspective, are:
1. Acknowledgement (or Silence) must be persistent, meaning it lasts for the duration specified even if the target goes outside the alarm limit then comes back in. (this could be accomplished if acknowledgments are recorded in the AIS Target list; if that MMSI has had an acknowledgement previously then honor it).
2. Acknowledgments must be applicable even when the alarm is no longer sounding (many alarms are so transient that the user has insufficient time to hit the acknowledgment button) the addition of this on the AIS right click menu would do that.
3. It would be helpful to be able to do it from the AIS list because, in a area with many targets, once the alarm stops you might not know which AIS target caused the alarm nor which to click on to prevent further ones. On the AIS List, if you could see for each target on the list how many alarms you had received, then you could know which one to acknowledge.
BTW, I never have figured out the difference, operationally, between acknowledge and silence.

[rgleason]

WingsSail, good summary and detail. Maybe put it in your Tracker item?
Also, 5 other things possibly.
1. Ensure that the ship is highlighted when the Target List comes up.
2. Ensure that the highlighted ship in Target List is bracketed on the chart.
3. Possibly have a Last alarm time field, sort by that so last one is at the top??
4. Possibly have a stationary Silence / Acknowledge button that will work on the most recent one?
5. In the Menubar (not toolbar) have a Silence/Acknowledge in the AIS dropdown that works on the last alarm?

I think we're going to have to decide which one or two ways are the best way to do it, and suggest that!

[kubota]

I have looked at the supplemental hardware for Nema 2000 to USB/PC
interface. The actisense looks like a good product but it is quite expensive and does more than i really need (or want) for opencpn.

I have only sensors on my N2K bus feeding opencpn so don't need a bidirectional bus nor want the possibility of introducing instability.

Does anyone know of a recieve only N2K to USB interface?

If not, I have been playing with canbus interfaces for awhile, is
there any other demand for a one way device to surveil N2K and
feed it to a PC via USB and thus into Opencpn?

Pricepoint to get 100 boards printed, program the uProcs, and deliver in
kit form to be assembled by user would be around $50 at a guess.
If there is any interest we could always shop out to china for a number
of stuffed boards ready to be boxed and connected (save those old mentos boxes).

Please put me out of my misery and point me to a nice off the shelf solution so I don't have yet another development project.

thanks

k

[petter5]

USB - N2K converter | Sailoog

[bcn]

Look at the OpenPlotter project.
Home | Sailoog
There is a inexpensive piece of hardware and some pointers how to run it.
Not "click and run", but if you want to fiddle with it, it should be doable.

The other pointer for this project you will need in this context is CANBOAT
https://github.com/canboat/canboat/wiki

SignalK uses CANBOAT, but we have no SignalK to OpenCPN functionality (yet).

[kubota]

thanks a lot for the info.

already had my own homebrew hardware/software suite (PIC18F hosting CANBUS, i2C, and async serial to RPI3s). Using apache server to deliver digital instrument displays on HTML5 canvas with real time updates (which was an interesting problem as i wanted to stay in userspace).

I am too old and jaded to keep supporting my own hw/sw so I am proudly trashing the whole mess, moving to some combination of the sw/hw you pointed me too, and regaining my freedom.

Started coding this ages ago on a pic and a beagle board waiting for the RPI model A to come out. Now just as happy to be rid of the effort. Amazing what was happened while I was away from cruising for 10 years.
Used to be a rarity to find programmers out there. Has every engineer
and programmer bought a sailboat?

Now I can do something truly rewarding like varnish the caprail and
grouse about the damn kids and their 64 bits. in my day we only had 8 bits
and they were made out of wood. had to carve them ourselves. whippersnappers.

cheerio and thanks again

k

[brucechun]

Hi Dave,
Could it be possible to have the VDR functionality properly supported by both OpenCPN for PC and Android. The current plug-in only work with PC and does not record any time for reference and playback.
Bruce

[bcn]

Bruce..

one point is the VDR for Android and the other one a "time-stamped" version of the VDR.

The latter would require some amendments to the plug-in and has one drawback which would have be to discussed:
The file wouldn't be a "plain NMEA stream" anymore.

Either you create a second parallel file with time stamp entries for every sentence or you need some functionality to
- ignore time stamp
- ignore that the time stamp is missing (and reconstruct perhaps an synthetic one from the time data within the NMEA messages) - in case of a simple, plain NMEA file
- strip time stamp from file to get a V1 NMEA stream