OpenCPN

[pascalG]

Dave,

it happens when inserting a WP, dragging a WP or Editing a WP or editing a route (after clicking OK)

i currently have two routes, one is 34 WP, one is 103 WP.

doing some more testing, it's actually random. not as more points are being edited as it seems to be yesterday... odd. first WP I moved was saved/redrawn with a 7 sec. delay... last ones had no delay. I'll keep an eye on it and if i can come up with a pattern, I'll let you know!

[GDD]

Regarding Cm93 Charts:

Hi everyone. I stumbled upon both this forum and OpenCPn today while researching problems I am having using CM93 charts in Western Canada. Hopefully someone can help me , and hopefully I can contribute to the discussion here.

I have been using CM93 charts for sometime now, mostly with the old cmapecs program (the one that has to run in 256 colours). I tried out MaxSea 10.3 but found that program very cumbersome. OPenCpn looks like a great visual implementation of CM93, however I think I may have found a problem.

Most of the people on this forum are likely using a 2002 edition of CM93, as this is what is on most file share networks. You can check your the year of the charts you are using be reading right next to where it says what scale you are at.


Newer version of CM93 have been released, they can be found by searching google for may 2009 cm93.


Now that i'm done with the preamble, I"ll describe my issue:

Charts 'seem' to be missing in the new editions. The CM93 2002 edition shows all charts published by the Cdn hydrographic service. So it is unlikely the missing charts were removed from the CM93 collection. So I suspect a change to the structure of the files and folders or the CM93 dictionary. The problem is especially bad around south west Canada. In the both the 2008 and 2009 CM93 editions charts are missing in the following places:

E Level at Desolation Sound and Cortes bay (50.03N 124.55W)
D and E level charts for the northen portion of the Straight of Georgia (49.2N 124W to 49.5N 125W)
E and F level charts for most of the Fraser River (49.05N 123.08W)

All of these charts are included in the 2002 edition.

At first I suspected missing or corrupt files, then I made the following discoveries:
The .inf files in each folder within the CM93 collection do not seem to do anything. You can delete them and OPenCpn still shows the maps the same as before.
Also, the files for these location are present in the Cm93 folders, but OpenCPN is not finding them. I know this because for my first example (50.03N 124.55W) The opencpn log tells me it cannot find the file, yet the files are there in windows explorer.

Here is the log.


13:54:11: 2009-07-23 -------Starting opencpn-------
13:54:12: Using existing Config_File: C:\Documents and Settings\gdddd\Application Data\opencpn\opencpn.ini
13:54:12: Setting Viewpoint Lat/Lon 50.0611, -124.924
13:54:12: Using s57data in C:\Program Files\OpenCPN\s57data
13:54:12: Using Tide/Current data from: C:\Program Files\OpenCPN\tcdata\
13:54:12: Setting Viewpoint Lat/Lon 50.0611, -124.924
13:54:12: NMEA Data Source is....None
13:54:12: AIS Data Source is....None
13:54:12: Using WVSChart datafile: C:\Program Files\OpenCPN\wvsdata\wvs43.dat
13:54:12: NMEA AutoPilot Port is....None
13:54:13: Initializing Chart C:\Documents and Settings\gdddd\Desktop\CM93_May2009_Zone8\CM93\003 00000\A\00300000.A
13:54:13: Loaded CM93 Dictionary from C:\Documents and Settings\gdddd\Desktop\CM93_May2009_Zone8\CM93\
13:54:13: Loading CM93 cell C:\Documents and Settings\gdddd\Desktop\CM93_May2009_Zone8\CM93\039 00660/D/04200702.D
13:54:13: Could not find LUP for NAMFLO
13:54:13: Loading CM93 cell C:\Documents and Settings\gdddd\Desktop\CM93_May2009_Zone8\CM93\039 00660/D/04200705.D
13:54:13: Could not find LUP for LITHOU
13:54:13: Could not find LUP for NAMFIX
13:55:09: Loading CM93 cell C:\Documents and Settings\gdddd\Desktop\CM93_May2009_Zone8\CM93\039 00660/B/04200690.B


Thoughts?

I would love to work this out, as then I could use OpenCPn and the recent CM93 charts for my area, not the (relatively) crummy Cdn raster charts.

[sinbad7]

bdbcat..

Dave.. Siitech does NOT make use of a cache file for their FREE Web VTS network. All AIS messages are received into the network over direct TCP/IP feeds. All their 7000 odd targets display FULL info within a few minutes accessing the network. Using SeaClear with the same AIS feed,all target info is displayed within minutes.

The distribution of the yellow/green targets using OpenCPN with the same AIS feed is very strange indeed. Most of Scandinavia,Northern Holland,Greece and ALL of the St.Lawrence river are showing all info in green. The heavily trafficated Dover Strait have virtually NO green targets showing at all. Only very sparse green targets are shown around the rest of the world. And this situation is repetitive,always the same situation. It REALLY is a puzzle I wish someone smart would solve. Have a look at the screendumps.

[bdbcat]

Sinbad7....

Still no way for anyone other than you to read the siitech data stream.
Impossible for me to debug.

So...
If you will capture a very large sample of the stream, say 10 minutes worth from scratch, and send to my email, I may be able to extract the type [5] messages, count them, and see where they are going and why they are not displayed. Maybe I'll be smart enough....

Dave

[sinbad7]

Hi Dave..
I was asking for input from the forum at large. There are always someone with good ideas. You have done a fantastic job with the program,I just want to see it work like other AIS compatible programs. No puns intended.

Producing a large AIS stream is no problem but sending it to you can take a long time from my system. Are you able to collect from say Dropbox which has 2 GB of free space?

Best regards
Tore

[IMG][/IMG]

[bdbcat]

Sinbad7
Dropbox will be fine. Send me a link....

Thanks
Dave

[GDD]

Regarding CM93 charts.

I made a mistake somewhere in my logic. It seems that there is some sort of problem either with my 2008 CM93, or with the OPenCpn, or both. Going to keep working on this till I find something conclusive to share.

[GDD]

Got something figured out...it seems that Opencpn might be more rigid in its scales then the old cmapecs program. There is an area of the Straight of Georgia around 49.30N and 1214.12W where the highest detail chart is at 75 000:1 . Cmapecs shows this area fine, but OpenCpn only gives you the 1,000,000:1 chart. So it seems the as if chart is missing when you use Opencpn. Has anyone seen that before?

[sinbad7]

GDD

I have the 2003 version of cm93 and like you, I find the entire Fraser river (Great Lakes?) missing as well as the E and F maps of the Straight of Georgia. This was also the case using the same cm93 with MaxSea. Desolation Sound and Cortes Bay however both had the E charts.

I also downloaded a couple of nav progs from the same Russian site you mention but they were both missing headers in many of the files AND full of virus as it turned out later, so I discarded the lot and did not attempt to download the 2009 version.
If C-Map stopped supporting cm93-2 years ago I can not understand who is updating it?

Perhaps your downloaded 2009 version also have missing headers in the files mentioned as you say they are listed in the directory? Also remember it is important in OpenCPN to have ALL the cm93 files in one directory,preferably not as a sub-directory. The .ini file is also hidden by Vista in some remote directory.

Keep us informed if you find the solution. Who knows, there mey be many more map areas missing?

[GDD]

Hi Sinbad7,
Thanks for the info
How do know which files are missing headers?

I have a version (2006 or so) that seems to work in Maxsea, in all the areas you mentioned.

The OpenCpn log file makes it possible to figure out exactly which CM93 file corresponds to each area and zoom level. I have been comparing files in the 'working' 2006 verison with the not-working 2008 verison. The same files are in each of the two version's directories, but the newer version's are SMALLER in these places with errors. If you've seen missing headers before, then i'd bet that explains what I'm seeing.

Also, the question about who is updating these files is a very good question. They have the new dates in the files, but clearly they aren;'t done to the standard you'd expect for Cmap. When did Cmap stop supporting Cm93/2?

I'm going to give up on these updates, but I would love to see OpenCpn display the CM93 files as well as cmapecs and maxsea do, since its display is so much slicker and adjustable.

[bdbcat]

GDD, and others....

CM93 2009 is definitely different from earlier versions. In many areas, charts of a particular scale have been reduced in coverage. Who knows why, and how these things get updated.

Here is an example, from your part of the world.
I used the old windows CMWFW application to display E scale charts at the same location, with each of two CM93 datasets. See the attached screenshots.

The left shot is old cm93, the right shot is cm93_May2009.

Note the difference in coverage, and the apparent difference in density of depth contours.

Which is better? User's choice, I guess...

Anyway, there it is. Caveat emptor on cm93

Comments?
Dave

[oddysea]

Hi Dave, new to this!

Firstly thank you for for all you efforts in creating this AWESOME program, really delivers the goods without all that annoying "other stuff"

Secondly a slight glitch

Using you latest version, connected AIS via shipplotter and then through MixW serial bridge, get all ais info from ships in area, but they remain yellow, in referring back to Shipplotter the Class B info is coming thru, read your AIS article which mentions the cache, but followed a "new" ship coming in and still after 2hrs still remained yellow!

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Thanks again

Mike

[oddysea]

Hi Dave

Changed from Shipplotter to AISMon and green comes thru

[bdbcat]

Oddysea...

Welcome aboard!

The current version of opencpn (1.3.2) has some problems with AIS Class B targets. This is a known problem, and will be corrected in the next release.
Are your problem targets known to be Class B?

If you are running Windows, you may be interested in the Beta test version of opencpn v 1.3.3 which may be downloaded and tested from

opencpnbeta


On Shipplotter, you may want to set it to look at the message stream, and then look for a Message type [5] or [24] for the target of interest (MMSI Number), over a long time. If neither of these messages are received, then the ship name is coming from the Shipplotter cache, and opencpn will not have received the ship name.

Thanks for your interest in opencpn.

Dave

[idpnd]

I found this library for software decoding of AIS messages on linux - https://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuais/. Looks like a rather economical solution! There are some instructions for extracting the signal from standard vhf radios here: Discriminator Output