Feature Requests

[rgleason]

1. Generic Polar - Create a kind of generic polar chart that is based upon just three user set variables (LOA, SA, Displacement) all the other variables that are needed just become proportional to some universal boat for simplicity.

2. Real Polar Development - This Generic Polar is then modified to become more accurate by recording data that has been selected by the user. The user will have to consider the various factors such as sea, tides, sail changes, crew and weight changes, foul bottom, etc.

3. Plugins -There are two plugins that might help, VDR and the Hydrostatic Survey because they both record nmea data, and VDR plays it back.

Jonasaberg's PCSail - Excel sheet to make VPP for Sailing yachts Thread has some other thoughts about this.

[myocean]

NKE Autopilots, used a lot for Open 40 and Open 60 racers, offer a feature which allows to have the autopilot turning the boat into the wind automatically as soon as a crew is over board (equipped with a personal transmitter - proprietary NKE system).
Wouldn't it be great to have a similar feature in OpenCPN, based on AIS SART?
This would mean that the MMSI's of the SART devices which are on board get registered in OpenCPN and the autopilot output is changed accordingly in case of MOB.
I think this is possible only if the wind direction is available in the system.

[wdkester]

I was just using my car Garmin today and noticed that when I neared a turning point(same as waypoint in Ocpn) the Garmin did a auto zoom in, and as I was leaving the turn it returned to the former zoom level. This might be a useful feature for Ocpn. I would like to set the # of zoom in levels.

[RHaston]

We use helicopters to clear the Canaveral offshore launch danger zone for NASA & other users. AIS was a Godsend. From altitude you can pickup ships 80 miles away. This is important when you are tring to keep them out of a 20x60 NM box that closes for 2 hours or more.

The perfect software for us would have an addition to the standard AIS target projection line. It would allow me to input a clock time (well actually two times - the beginning and end of the rocket launch window) and display where the boat will be at those times.

The simplest version would just automate the changing of the projection line by subtracting the present time from the target time - either every few minutes or at the tap of an update icon.

I can see other military users that might like this, but I'm guessing it may be of limited use to boaters. I just thought it would be worth checking.

Thanks

[brianalex]

On smaller netbook screens vertical space is limited (600 pixels). It would be nice to turn the Status Bar off but duplicate the info on the dashboard plugin. Adding a "bearing/distance to cursor from ownship" instrument to the dashboard would be helpful.
Also adding the VMG from the Console to the dashboard improves versatility.
I've implemented these features for my own use and they have been quite useful.
I've also made the SOG and COG subject to the NMEA Filter settings.
Pull requests for these features have been submitted to the OCPN gurus for their consideration. Below are screenshots showing the dashboard instruments for Brg/Rng and VMG (the left image shows no VMG as there is no active route/waypoint).
Thanks
Brian

[vincentapel]

i hope Opencpn can improve the Route Manager wherein you can print or save the route in office document or excel form and as pdf perhaps. and also the instead of waypoint numbers it can be change to editable names.

[cagney]

Originally Posted by vincentapel

i hope Opencpn can improve the Route Manager wherein you can print or save the route in office document or excel form and as pdf perhaps. and also the instead of waypoint numbers it can be change to editable names.

Good suggestions.....that are already implemented in the current beta.
Test 3.1.919 or wait for the next stable release in a while.

Thomas

[vincentapel]

thanks, just installed the beta 3.1 and the waypoint names is editable.
i still wait for the "save as and print" functions on the route manager. hihi!
also is there a way wherein the new route created cab be seen on the the logbook 1.1 plugin? what do you think? my apologies for such inquisitiveness.

great work guys.

best regards
vincent

[sailias]

If im not mistaken gpsbabel can output the gpx format to csv. You can load that into a spreadsheet. Wrt to pdf, well openoffice will export anything to pds. Check out the file format output capabilities of gpsbabel. I think you may like it.

/ch

[JesperWe]

Originally Posted by vincentapel

i still wait for the "save as and print" functions on the route manager. hihi!

Hihi or not, just click the right key, select Copy as Text, and paste into Excel, word or any other such program.

Much faster than save as, and you can choose the formatting yourself instead of having just one fixed.

[vincentapel]

got it. thanks Jesperwe, but one line is missing the departure date and time.
why it is not included even you selected copy all as text?

my apologies for asking that much.

[JesperWe]

Originally Posted by vincentapel

got it. thanks Jesperwe, but one line is missing the departure date and time.
why it is not included even you selected copy all as text?

Good question ;-) It will be in next beta.

[vincentapel]

hi, is there anyone who have updates on cm93v2? i'm using updates from jan2011.

thanks for the help.

[dpons]

It's been a struggle for Debian users, but at last we are able to compile OpenCPN without important issues, since 3.x.

There are a couple of remaining glitches, and one of them is important: relates to sound. As it builds, the OpenCpn sound system works erratically. For example, the anchor alarm bells sound only once. This issue relates to the sound support on the wxwidget package. The answer from the development team is to put in place some external libraries instead of the ones provided by Debian. Even though that works, is not very easy (need to recompile, know about package management) and it would be complicated to people that are simple users.

At some point I remember reading adding points of configuration to use /usr/bin/play (or something equivalent) instead of the wxwidgets built-in sound support. That would greatly simplify solving this endemic issue to regular users of Debian.

Internally, it might not be the most elegant solution (ugly fork/exec or system() calls), yet at the user level is far more elegant than struggling with package sources and synaptic.

Diego

[dpons]

I'm using the date and time feature of the route manager, it helps me to get a more accurate estimate of ETA.

I would suggest in future versions to allow for a custom predicted speed for each segment, instead of a single expected speed for all of them.

For example, leaving from a river anchorage I to do 2 kt for about 4 miles thru several segments; in other cases, I know of current issues what would change predictably the SOG in several segments.

Obviously this apply mostly to short trips, if you are crossing an ocean this does not matter, but I'm not doing that too much :-)