icon of boat and direction line off

[armand.seguin]

Hi,

I have had OPN CPN working great in the past, but on a changeout of the Simrad autopilot Compass I've developed an issue.

The icon for the boat and the direction line are not the same! The direction line seems to be correct and where the boat is headed, but the "boat" on the screen is off many degrees.

I may be using the wrong term(s) in the directions as to where to find help on this setting, nor in here on the web.

And, very possibly related is that the Radar Overlay is also not lined up perfectly with the shoreline.

Thanks for your help.

Armand

[Baikal]

Calibrate the compass
Check and remove metal objects lying near the compass sensor

[armand.seguin]

Baikal,

Thanks. I will do that, but I have now had several in the same spot, and they worked fine. There was some "check" of compass interference and it was within allowances. So I don't suspect that...first. Nevertheless, never bad to recalibrate.

FYI - Since it is now an older Simrad autopilot, when I call tech help and wait for over an hour, they then say they need to switch me to a senior tech...where you again wait. Seems no way to get Sr. Tech without the long slow process first. Of course, Simrad would not know a thing about settings in OPN CPN.

Thanks,

Armand

[wholybee]

OpenCPN simply points the icon the direction the compass says the boat is pointed. You could probably Google for directions to calibrate and align the compass.

A non-scientific method is to just physically rotate the compass until the boat faces the right direction on the screen. If, when changing the compass, you left a screwdriver near it, that will cause this error also.

[stevead]

changeout of the Simrad autopilot Compass I've developed an issue.

Since it is now an older Simrad autopilot

What does the Simrad Autopilot display for your heading? Does it concur with the heading read from your binnacle (or even a hendheld) compass?

In OpenCPN have you inadvertently disabled the World Magnetic Model (WMM) plugin and not manually configured the magnetic variation?

If it's an "older" Simrad autopilot, is the heading output connected to OpenCPN via NMEA 1083? If so, in the OpenCPN Connections->NMEA debug window, what are the heading sentences ?