OpenCPN Radar Overlay PlugIn

[spiv]

Originally Posted by bdbcat

OPie91....
.........
We are still accepting donations in order to fund future Radar Overlay projects.
........

Thanks
Dave

I put some money in the kitty the other day, for any OPCPN development.
Having a Furuno Navnet, of course I'd love to be able to do some sort of integration with my laptop and OPCPN......

Thanks for the great effort so far!

[bdbcat]

Dear interested followers.....

We have first light for the Garmin Radar Overlay PlugIn

Thanks to the super-generous donation program, I have acquired and installed a GMR18 HD radar scanner, and built the very rough first prototype of the Radar Overlay PlugIn.
Image attached.....

As you can see, there is lots more to do with rotation, scaling, transparency, smoothing, intensity modulation, etc, etc....
But it is alive, and I'm jazzed!

More anon....

Thanks again
Dave

[Opie91]

Thanks for the update! Looking good!

[maxxflow]

Cool! Quite thrilled to see the investment paying off - certainly getting more bang for my couple hundred bucks than I would have buying off-the-shelf stuff...

A feature I have seen in a few commercial systems, that I really like, is dull colored echoes when overlapping charted land, and a brighter color being used when the echo is over water. Would that be doable, at least for vector charts?

[Charlie]

I am having a hard time donating to either the radar project or OpenCPN could you give me an easy to follow link.

[bdbcat]

Charlie...

The standard donation portal may be reached at
https://sourceforge.net/donate/index...roup_id=180842

Thanks for your consideration
Dave

[Surveyor]

This thread deserves a little bump back to page 1

[bdbcat]

Thanks, Jim....

Progress being made here, and soon we shall have something to talk about that works.

I'm working on GUI stuff now, and how to control the thing.
Also, rudimentary signal processing to improve the display presentation.

Stay tuned
Dave

[LeaseOnLife]

Staying tuned..... for more radar-porn

[bdbcat]

Hi folks...

Well, the time has come to start talking about the hardware interface for the Garmin radar overlay PlugIn. Potential users of this PlugIn will have some decisions to make. Cabling and possible supplementary components may be required, so I thought I'd give a little heads-up on this topic.

See attached draft document.

The PlugIn itself is almost ready for Beta testing. I am scrubbing the operation in all modes and platforms at my disposal. I am using the base OpenCPN Version 3.0 release for testing.

Unfortunately, I am currently stuck at a dock for a few more weeks, so the overlays I can generate at this point are getting boring... As a result, the actual performance is yet to be tested at sea. Soon, now...

Anyway, all comments solicited at this point.

Thanks for your interest
Dave

[bcn]

Hi Dave,

found this comment of yours in the paper:

Interface Type 1: OpenCPN Master Mode, using existing Garmin chartplotter.
In this scenario, the installation includes an existing Garmin chartplotter interfaced to the radar scanner. It is desired that the chartplotter and OpenCPN computer may have shared access to and control of the radar scanner. This mode will provide improved display resolution and performance, as the OpenCPN computer may directly control the radar scanner as required.

Can you explain this a bit more, especially the improvements achieved?

And do you think that the "modification" of the ethernet cable for hibernation is a common feature for the ethernet connected radar devices? Will get my hands on a Geonav unit in August.

Hubert

[bdbcat]

bcn...

Thanks for reading the document.

Consider this scenario in slave mode:

The chartplotter is zoomed in so that 1 mile radar range is optimal for its display. OpenCPN is monitoring in slave mode. If OpenCPN is zoomed out further than the chartplotter, it will still have only scan data for the 1 mile radar range. OpenCPN will have no radar data beyond 1 mile, because in slave mode OpenCPN does not control the scanner.

The converse case is even worse: Say the chartplotter is set to small scale, zoomed way out to say 16 mile range. If OpenCPN in slave mode is zoomed in to large scale, maybe 1 or two miles, then the resolution of the data on the OpenCPN screen will be very poor. It will be highly "overzoomed", and blocky in appearance.

I'll simulate this today and post some images soon. I have no Garmin chartplotter, but I can connect two computers to my net and run one in master mode, one in slave mode, all connected with Type 2 interface.

Regarding the cable mod: I suspect Garmin has gone their own way with this. The pins they use for control do not conform to POE (Power Over Ethernet) standards (wonder why not?).

I might hope that other radars will do this a bit smarter, such as listen for ethernet activity on a specific address to wake up. We shall see.

Thanks
Dave

[bcn]

Dave,

finally I found a pin-out for the Geonav and it seems that they have an (optional) external switch and the ethernet separated from that. ("please contact your service center for more information about the ON/OFF switch" - lovely). From the description it seems to trigger a hibernation function as well:
"does not switch the main power but only controls the internal DC power"

Anyhow, we will have to wait to play with this.

In the meantime standing by and looking forward to see the results from your experiments

Hubert

[bdbcat]

bcn...

Can you send me some copy of the pin-out document for the Geonav? Digital photo would be OK if you only have hard copy.

Thanks
Dave

[bcn]

Manual is underway - hope your mail account can cope with 6 MB