Not reading all sentences for autopilot

[mcm]

Yes, I have been using chart plotters since the early 80's, perhaps my language is the issue, here is the problem, when using the drop mark here function and then asking the vessel to steer to that point by sending the info to the opencpn appropriate com port to instruct the autopilot to steer to there, it does not do that, if however I make that point a "navigate to here" without it being a mark, then it works just fine, that's all folks..

[bdbcat]

mcm...


"asking the vessel to steer to that point by sending the info to the opencpn appropriate com port to instruct the autopilot to steer to there, it does not do that,"


So that we may all understand, will you detail the exact steps you use to do this task? Both within OCPN, and otherwise, please.



Thanks
Dave

[Dsanduril]

It sounds like in the first case you are sending the waypoint information to the AP and then expecting the AP to handle all the calculations for getting there. In that case the AP will still need to receive position (at a minimum) information from somewhere. That would mean passing through the GPRMC sentence even when no route is active in OpenCPN. Or having some other NMEA connection to the AP from a GPS. What is the make/model of the AP? Are you sure it has these capabilities?

Otherwise you will need to have an active route in some plotter that makes the calculations and then sends the APB (autopilot ‘B’ sentence) or the same information in other sentences so that the AP knows where to go.